Here’s our 30th AMA recap!
Thank you to the Infinity Chain Club for participating in Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Ardor on December 22, 2020. This guest star,
Alberto Fernandez — Jelurida Software Engineer
Introduction
Alber,
Sure, My name is Alberto Fernandez and I am part of the team of Jelurida, the company behind the development of the Ardor and Nxt blockchains. I work as a software engineer and business developer. I have been responsible of expanding the business lines of Jelurida along with my colleagues and participated in some developments lately
in the past, I work for big corporates as a software integration specialist. When I discovered blockchain back in 2013 I fell in love with it and here I am!
Q1. Can you provide a simple description Ardor, how did you get idea create Ardor?
Alber,
Ardor is a blockchain platform that is ready for mass adoption for the current industry needs. It has the following features:
- Multichain with a unique parent-child chain architecture. Most of the top coinmarketcap blockchains are literally trying to implement such an architecture, which is more complex than they initially thought. It also has the advantage of creating your own chain than can even be a permissioned child chain.
- Consensus-as-a-Service, the security of the whole network relies on the parent chain ARDR. or root chain are other projects that are copying our technology like to name it. This approach is way far more secure than side chains, that relies its own validation process to secure their transactions. The consensus is Proof-of-Stake
- The Ardor chains can be interoperable if required.
- High scalability. Currently it has been tested around 100 tps and several parameters have been artificially capped, so thanks to the architecture this number can be increased more.
- Easily customizable-yet-compatible blockchain development patterns. Meaning that you can develop your solution using the pre-defined smart transactions or you can decide to develop you own smart contracts
So, the idea to create Ardor came thanks to the vision of the blockchain bottlenecks that prevent companies from considering using a public blockchain for their own processes. The core developer did have a great vision 4 years ago. We can say that Ardor is an evolution of Nxt that solves these problems.
Q2. Can you tell us about the advantages of Ardor using Multi-Chain Platform and Child Chain Interoperability? How is better than other platforms?
Alber,
Sure!
In Ardor, the parent chain ARDR is responsible for the PoS consensus and in the other hand the multiple child-chains have all the functionality to develop decentralized applications.
The benefits of this design comes from a new piece in the equation called bundlers. The bundling process is used to group child chain transactions into a transaction on the Ardor chain. It improves on-chain scalability to around 100 Tx/Sec as well as the ability to remove child-chain transactions from the blockchain after they are confirmed to reduce blockchain bloat, by the way we are about to public the Ardor 3.0.0 release that includes the mentioned pruning feature. Bundling also enables to sponsor the transaction fees for their child chain users allowing a seamless experience for the users.
The child chains are interoperable. Hence, when a new child chain is created it can use the service that are built on top of other blockchain as well as make transactions with the assets, messages and other features of Ardor.
This design is better than other platforms because, first it is available today on mainnet, ready for use! Secondly, it is ready to be integrated with current software companies. We are very sure that we are better to our competitors because we have many cases of companies have not been able to finish a development with Ethereum (for instance) and they finally chose us.
Q3. Why did you choose Proof-of-Stake Consensus? What are the advantages and benefits of choosing PoS in the Ardor ecosystem?
Alber,
Back in 2013, the Nxt developers realized that the Proof-of-Work consensus is not sustainable in the long term. So they started to implement the PoS that currently uses Ardor, as Ardor comes from Nxt. The advantages are:
- A cheaper entry to be part of the network and earning transaction fees
- More energy efficient
- You can have your own full node in an Android device
- 7 years of a PoS consensus algorithm running without security issues
Without such as a consensus, it would have been much more difficult, or even imposible, to implement al the Ardor features that it has. I would remark that the market speaks for itself, top coinmarket cap solutions are PoS or planning to migrate to PoS. As we are already 100% PoS it looks we took the right decision 7 years ago. We firmly believe that the market was claiming PoS since few years ago
Q4. About $ARDR, can you explain about the tokenomics and use-cases? How do you make sure it captures the value of the ecosystem you are building?
Alber,
The public token ARDR is a utility token used to secure the PoS algorithm used by the Ardor platform. When you get ARDR tokens you are getting two things at once:
- The possibility of launching a node and forge (or mine) new blocks, hence earning transaction fees
- The utility of paying fees to issue transactions
So it is about regular token economy. The more companies we have, the more demand we will have for the ARDR token. The more transactions we have, the higher changes to get blocks with very profitable fees when forging.
The companies and individuals that are getting a bag of ARDR in the early days will be the ones more prepared when the adoption is increased. I would say that the most common use-case of ARDR for a company or an organization that builds a dApp is paying the transaction fees of their users:
Imagine a game that uses blockchain to keep track of the records, would you force your users to get crypto to pay the transaction fees of a public blockchain? you’d better identify them and sponsor these fees by yourself instead
Q5. What are the major milestones Ardor achieved so far & what are in future pipeline?
Alber,
The major milestones in terms of development are:
- The launch of in production in January 2018 after being on Testnet around 1 year, so it is not a whitepaper or an intention
- The Ardor lightweight contracts that are stateless and do not rely on the consensus of the blockchain. They are deployed in shards as well.
- The integration with hardware wallets (Ledger Nano S and X, more hardware ledger integrations to come).
Many other milestones that can be seen in the roadmap as follows: https://www.jelurida.com/ardor/roadmap
There are many other milestones such as advanced technical documentation, cloud nodes available and official Ardor Azure app, permissioned child chains, our network nodes participation have been increased up around 1500 nodes, tax reporting tool and many others.
Marketing wise we have expanded our operations to Africa, Korea, Japan and China, we deliver each week information about our achievements and the crypto publications are following closely.
For the future we have the imminent 3.0.0 release that can will activate on testnet the pruning and snapshotting feature. We also have the future release of our first vertical, a bridge game that uses our technology. More information can be found for instance in https://www.coinspeaker.com/jelurida-on-chain-version-bridge/
Customer wise we are dealing with big corporates such as Esri Spain, Henkel among others. And we are very likely to have a new important one very soon that I wish I could speak about it now! 💣
TWITTER QUESTIONS
Q1: @ApaguJohan
How are Jelurida and Ardor connected? Why are there so many blockchains within Jelurida? I saw multiple tokens (ARDR, IGNIS, NXT), so can you explain to us what is the role of each of them?
Alber,
Jelurida is a company created by the core developers of Ardor and Nxt. Jelurida holds the IP of the software and is a profit company that also licenses the creation of Ardor child chains.
There are two blockchains with Jelurida:
- Ardor/ARDR. Within Ardor the child chains can be created. Ignis is the first child chain which provides the platform for decentralized application development and is permissionless, anybody can access and buy assets, exchange IGNIS for other child chain tokens, send messages and all the features described here: https://ardordocs.jelurida.com/Features
- Nxt. It is a separate blockchain. It is the first 100% PoS and it has been running without flaws since 2013. The NXT token is dual token, it works for paying transaction fees and it has the functionality as well. Nxt is also maintained and has its own roadmap: https://www.jelurida.com/nxt/roadmap
Each token has a different purpose as you can see.
Q2: @VOHAVU1
Building this project over the years is commendable. What challenges, difficulties and lessons do you have as an Ardor team? What is the Ardor plan to achieve its goals by the end of this year?
Alber,
In terms of development we have faced many challenges as we are pioneering the blockchain space. Since issues related to connectivity to library issues caused by third party software.
In terms of adoption we suffered the fact that the market was not ready yet for the blockchain technology so we have created new business lines such as consultancy and learning services. It was a smart movement because we are getting this year the fruit of the seeds planted during the blockchain bear market. The lesson learned is that we have to make customers understand how they can benefit from Ardor.
In terms of marketing, we keep on expanding and for instance, participating in this good AMAs 🙂
By the end of the year we are planning to release the new Ardor version that will activate the pruning feature on testnet.
Q3: @ryuuuubtc12
Ardor is currently going well and is receiving positive attention. What will you do to get more exposure and adoption? What is the Ardor message for the Community today?
Alber,
At this moment the most relevant exposure has come for the usage of our technology by big vendors. Recently Esri Spain developed a prototype for a supply chain solution and presented in several conferences. We are extending our marketing operations to China and Japan and we are strongly present already in Europe, Africa and South Korea.
We have started to develop a bridge game that will attract the attention of the gaming industry that sooner or later will need blockchain to improve their decentralization and services.
The message for the Community is that this huge amount of work will pay off
Q4: @iracundito
I read in an article that the blockchain Bridge Champ application will be implemented at Ignis, Ardor’s main child-chain. How do you expect to help drive the development of this project? What can Ardor offer that company from the point of view of scalability?
Alber,
The new Ardor and Ignis project — Bridge Champ, the first blockchain version of the strategy card game Bridge, in partnership with Bridge Online Academy — experts in Bridge online training.
The gaming industry is booming and the lack of white-label solutions for online bridge opens a unique opportunity for Jelurida’s Bridge Champ as a groundbreaking play engine to be offered to millions of players worldwide. Bridge Champ provides a purpose-built and customizable environment, and combines a state-of-the-art gaming engine with open APIs for competition organization and implementation. Its user interface will include social elements such as video and audio sharing, gamification, and tokenization. The benefits of the on-chain version are new competition features, tamper-proof achievements registration, proven randomization, and cheat prevention. The plan is to develop an ecosystem around game tokens, which will be available for use in other casual gaming platforms too.
From the point of view of scalability as a company, we are aiming to an industry of millions of dollars that can bringe revenue to secure our operations even more. From the point of view of scalability as a blockchain, we are ready to have millions of users and prepared for that when it happened
Q5: @cauvova1
I read that ARDOR version v2.3.3 is already available. What innovative feature does it have in relation to the previous version, and is it the last update for this year or do you plan to release one more before 2021?
Alber,
The new Ardor version 2.3.3 has been released with several optimizations and updated features. The new release includes various bugfixes and performance improvements for bundlers UI, light client, contract runner fee calculation, node process UI, asset and coin exchange transactions, added scripts to simplify running the tax reporting tool, filter selector to list standby shufflers, account ledger fee source distinction, fixed UI for setting account control with zero maximum fee, and exchange UI improvements. This stable release is an optional upgrade but highly recommended for all Ardor users. Installation packages are available from the dedicated Ardor downloads page.
We plan to release the new 3.0.0e very soon, as mentioned in the other questions above
TELEGRAM QUESTIONS
Q1. @Winterkom
- To be able to use Ardor is it necessary to download the whole blockchain on my PC? Do you have a solution for people who do not have a high-end PC?
Alber,
You do not have to download the whole blockchain on your PC unless you want to be an archival node. The current database size is small enough to run on an Android device.
You can also connect to a remote wallet that you trust, and even use your ledger directly in your browser without risking your private key exposure.
Finally, the 3.0.0e release will activate the pruning and snapshotting feature that will decrease even more the database size
Q2. @JoanaZ
🟩The Ardor child chains allows the creation of a token for every single chain only? Or also can be implemented 2 tokens in just one child chain? Do you support the creation of Stablecoins?
Alber,
Within a child chain can be created more tokens such as assets and coins. This tokens have their own DEX embedded the Ardor platform and can be interoperable between child chains.
We do support the creation of stable coins and we do have stable coins such as the BETH and BBTC (https://bitswift.cash/) We are expecting to have again FIAT based stable coins of EUR.
With regards with collaterized stable coins, it is feasible to develop such stable coins as long as the liquidity is big enough
Q3. @jampai
Tell us a little bit about security? Have you done an audit of the platform? Are the smart contracts error-free? What are the test results?
Alber,
The best audit is to have a public blockchain with millions of tokens with value that are exposed to the internet. We have had attacks of all colors, and none of them has been successful since 2013.
The smart contracts are error free in the pre-defined smart transactions as well as the lightweight contracts are not dangerous for the whole network because they are executed outside the consensus algorith. The lightweight contracts can be audited as they are totally free to be developed, so they can contain errors. Good thing is that these contracts can be updated in case a flaw is found
Q4. @asalas95
Is Ardor currently focused on the development of your project in a specific market? Which regions of the world do you think have the greatest potential for the adoption of the multichain blockchain platform you propose?
Alber,
we are not focused on the development of our project in a specific market. We are aiming markets that are open to blockchain and crypto in general and the regulation is fair (this is the reason why the headquarters of Jelurida are in Switzerland).
We can say that we are strong in Europe, Africa and we are expanding this year a lot our operations in Asia (South Korea, China and Japan mainly).
The greatest potential for the adoption are in some regions of Europe as well as the markets that I mentioned
Q5. @alice_wonderland12
❤️❤️❤️Ignis has 3 different DEX, why are 3 necessary, why not to have all those features in just one?
Alber,
It is necessary to have 3 of them:
- Coin exchange is needed to exchange Ignis for other child chain tokens such as ARDR, GPS, MPG…
- Asset exchange is needed to exchange assets for Ignis (or Ignis for assets). Be aware that these assets can be NFT as well
- Monetary system is needed to exchange and operate with tokens (coins) that have an advanced functionality.
So, each DEX has its purpose and internally they have their own engine that matches bids with offers in a very decentralized way. Does it sound familiar? Similar to uniswap but better functionality🔥
Alber,
I thank you very much for your interest and invite you to test our web wallet at https://testardor.jelurida.com/index.html
There you can play with the blockchain using testnet tokens, so completely free. To get those testnet tokens please use the faucet at https://www.ardor.world/en/faucet_ardor/
You will discover a very powerful and easy to use blockchain, so do not stay only in the speculative side, dedicate some time to learn the technology, maybe your professional future is there, you just need to study a little bit, you can start here: https://ardordocs.jelurida.com/Getting_started
- Telegram : http://t.me/ardorplatform
- Twitter : http://twitter.com/ardorplatform
- Website : https://www.jelurida.com/ardor
- Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/Ardor/
- Discord : https://discordapp.com/invite/wkcmqff
Thank you for trusting Infinity Chain Club as the organizer of the event today, hopefully everyone can understand about Ardor.
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