A Deep Dive into the Ontology Network

Ontology Network is a relatively new public blockchain created in 2017 by a Chinese company called OnChain. The Ontology Network is designed to help companies with little or no knowledge of cryptocurrencies to integrate blockchain into their business. It allows users to customize public blockchains for different types of applications. The approach helps businesses to make the most out of blockchain technology.

For supporting decentralized applications, Onology platforms are seen as direct competition to Ethereum blockchain. The Ontology Network features two coins; the Ontology coin called ONT and the Ontology Gas token known as ONG. Ontology Gas token was released alongside the Ontology MainNet in 2018. The Ontology Gas token serves as a form of compensation for users that contributes to the platform.

Ontology platform is designed to allow companies to install blockchain technology without altering their internal systems. The goal of the founders is to simplify the process of integrating blockchain technologies. They also hope to make the use of blockchain possible for everyone.

Since it was the same parent company that founded both the Ontology Network and NEO blockchain, it was smart to connect the two. They leveraged the NEO community to help boost the popularity of the Ontology platform.

What is the main coin on the Ontology Platform?

We cited earlier that there are two distinct coins available on the Ontology Network. However, the main coin is the Ontology Token (ONT); and it officially went on sale in March 2018. There is a belief in the blockchain space that ONT was invented for private needs.

Meanwhile, after Ontology's MainNet launch, a new type of coin was introduced to the network. It was the Ontology Gas token (ONG), unique to the Ontology blockchain. The purpose of creating the ONG coin was to use it as a reward for people that contributed to the platform. Users can earn transaction fees in the form of ONG. It encourages users to remain active within the Ontology network.

How does the Ontology Platform function?

The ontology platform's major reason is gaining wide attention because it allows businesses to use private and public blockchains. Since it is not a single blockchain, the Ontology platform will enable users to control how they share data using blockchain. This makes ONT so attractive because it permits separate chains and also has multiple purposes.

Ontology network employs a unique consensus mechanism known as VBFT. The VBFT consensus mechanism combines three different consensus models. These models include the Proof-of-Stake consensus (PoS), the Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT), and the Verifiable Random Function (VRF). The developers of the Ontology Network claim that it will able to execute thousands of transactions per second. Their reason is that the VBFT consensus mechanism allows cheaper and faster transactions.

Read about Filecoin Netowork

The Use Cases of the Ontology Network

There are lots of use cases of the Ontology platform. So it can be applied in the automotive industry, serve as a data marketplace, digital finance, and data attestation. It can also be used to support decentralized exchanges. ONT ID serves as a decentralized identity framework that helps users manage their own data. It also permits blockchain-based authentification offered by global verifies. ONT ID is the key product of ONTology and has great potential for an individual’s identity management. There is also an ONTO wallet that helps to manage users' digital identities, data, and assets.

Let us consider some of the top decentralized exchanges built on the Ontology Network.

Top Decentralized Exchanges supported by the Ontology Platform.

The rise in decentralized finance (DeFi) projects has taken up most of the transaction capacity of the Ethereum network. This has led to much traffic and costly gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain; thus making it hard for users to transact on it. The congestion has had a negative impact on the broader DeFi space and hindering its adoption. Some DeFi platforms have tapped on to the Ontology network to get around this concern. Below are some of the decentralized platforms built on the Ontology network:

1. Chocoswap

Chocoswap is one of the top cross-chain decentralized exchange that is supported by the Ontology platform. It is the first cross-chain decentralized exchange that is built on Ontology. The team recently announced a strategic cooperation with ONTO, Ontology's self-sovereign wallet. Through this strategic partnership, users can gain access to Chocoswap through their mobile devices. The partnership also allows both companies to offer comprehensive asset management to their customers. Also, users of both Chocoswap and Ontology now have access to cross-chain swap services. Such accessibility reduces the threshold of user participation.

Shawn You, the co-founder of Chocoswap, revealed that ONTO's large user base would serve as the foundation of Chocoswap's further development. Shawn also said that users should expect to enjoy safer and more user-friendly decentralized exchange services. Chocoswap indicated that it would share its profits with ecosystem members. They hope to sustain such a feat by not only buying back Choco from the secondary market. Chocoswap will also share dividends with all Choco holders.

Chocoswap runs on the Ontology Network to provide better-decentralized exchange services to users. Users enjoy lower fees, better user experience, and cross-chain asset management. One of the key features of the Chocoswap partnership with the Ontology platform is the fact that ONTO will help aggregate the decentralized finance mining feature of Chocoswap.

2. Oin Finance

Oin Finance is another one of the thriving decentralized exchanges supported on the Ontology Network. It is the perfect gateway to having a greater decentralized finance ecosystem. Oin Finance is specifically a DeFi company that develops a liquidity lending platform. It is built on the Ontology blockchain with cross-chain functionality.

Oin Finance aims to become the first DeFi platform to offer liquidity mining and loans on the Ontology platform. The ecosystem of OIN Finance functions through its native applications like OINSwap, OINLend, OINWallet, and USDO stable coin. Once OIN Finance deploys its bridge technology, the applications can start working cross-chain. Like other Defi platforms, OIN Finance also offers yield farming opportunities through its services like OINLend. With Finland, users can borrow assets to earn from interest fees or to leverage their funds.

Conclusion

The Ontology network has a variety of use cases and can be applied in different sectors and fields. Decentralized exchanges have been gaining momentum as they provide efficient services to users. Leveraging the Ontology platform to provide quality service to users further is a great move. There is no doubt about the future applications of Ontology; it is currently making waves already.

Also read Flash Ecosystem: An In-depth Explanation

A Deep Dive Into Ethereum 2.0: The Potential And Prospects.

Ethereum blockchain has been working on an upgrade of its Ethereum network to Ethereum 2.0. In this article, we will provide you with comprehensive information about the significance of this upgrade by Ethereum. The Ethereum upgrade will soon be released to the public, but what are the advantages of this new mainnet? How does Ethereum 2.0 work, and how will it inspire the blockchain revolution.

There have been raging debates within the technology circles on which cryptocurrency and blockchain pair will dominate the rest and rule the market. Since the onset of the cryptocurrency wave, Bitcoin has remained the clear consensus choice. BTC has remained on top of the market capitalization chart for day one. Meanwhile, most experts have said they don’t expect Bitcoin to maintain that position forever. Although several blockchain implementations have tried to solve some of the inherent problems associated with Bitcoin’s blockchain, none have been able to successfully capture a significant part of the market.

Ethereum has been the lone and large-scale competitor to the Bitcoin blockchain. To establish its dominance, Ethereum will have to overcome some issues too. The founders of Ethereum hope to achieve this through this upcoming Ethereum blockchain upgrade. You will learn about all these and more as we go through this article together. Therefore, let’s ride along as it promises to be engaging and undoubtedly informative.

What is Ethereum 2.0?

Although the Ethereum blockchain processes about three times as many transactions as Bitcoin, it is still not enough. Therefore, in the bid to meet the increasing user demand for the cryptocurrency and mitigate network congestion, the team initiated a software upgrade. This software upgrade is Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2). According to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum; Ethereum 2.0 will boost the speed of the Ethereum network

The long-planned upgrade to the Ethereum network will give it the scalability and security required to serve the booming market. Phase 0 of Eth2 is scheduled to launch before the end of 2020. The upgrade will have an enormous impact on how Ethereum works, and the prospects are promising. This new Eth2 upgrade will only impact the Ethereum infrastructure. If you are an ETH holder, a dapp user, or a developer, you have nothing to worry about. The new upgrade will remain compatible with the main Ethereum network that you already use today.

Vitalik Buterin disclosed that the roadmap of Ethereum 2.0 provides scalability. However, base-layer scalability applications will come as the last major phase of Eth2 that is still a couple of years away. Vitalik further went ahead to disclose that the usability of Eth2 as a data availability layer or roll ups is available in phase 1. However, that will be long before Eth2 becomes usable or “traditional” layer-1-applications.

Changes That Will Come With Ethereum 2.0 Upgrade

There will be many changes that will come with the Eth2 upgrade, but we will highlight the major ones.

Discarding proof-of-Our Work

Early blockchain implementations like Bitcoin and Ethereum suffered performance issues because they mostly relied on the processing-power intensive process called proof-of-work to record and validate transactions. In the proof-of-work system, participating computer nodes compete to generate cryptographic hashes that satisfy the network’s determined level of complexity. For security to be maintained, the complexity level is kept high enough to deter anyone from attacking the network. It will be too costly to operate the required hardware for such an attack.

The major problem with the proof-of-work concept is that it is grossly inefficient.

Proof of work requires that all miners attempt to solve its complex mathematical problems. The winner is often always the person with the most powerful hardware, hence the high energy consumption. On the contrary, proof of stake consensus protocol randomly chooses the winner based on the amount they have staked.

The inefficiency of proof of work lies majorly in its energy consumption. The Bitcoin network uses about 0.14% of global energy consumption and consumes more power than several developing countries. With such power consumption, the proof of work protocol can only verify ten transactions per second while new blocks can be added to the blockchain every 10 minutes.

To solve this problem, Ethereum 2.0 will transition its blockchain to a more efficient proof-of-stake system. In the proof-of-stake system, the algorithm selects the node that records each transaction. The chances of selection increases with the amount of the currency the node’s owner holds.

This approach dramatically decreases the complexity of the cryptographic work, hence leading to enormous throughput for the entire network. Each node stakes its currency before it can participate, hence making it expensive for anyone to attack the Eth2 network.

It will introduce sharding

To improve Ethereum’s efficiency and scalability, Eth2 will introduce a processing technique called sharding. The current version of the Ethereum blockchain ensures that all data added to the chain undergoes verification by all participating nodes. Therefore, this means that the processing speed of the whole system is dependent on the speed of its slowest participant. This creates a hitch that increases transaction costs and also decreases throughput.

Ethereum 2.0 uses sharding to increase efficiency. Firstly, let's get to understand sharing.

Sharding is the process of breaking up large amounts of data into smaller chunks. These chunks are "shards". These shards are spread across multiple servers and they serve a portion of the overall workload of the total data set.

In this case, applying sharding helps to break data verification among sets of nodes, and each node is only responsible for the verification of the data received. This way, the whole blockchain uses parallel processing which in turn increases the overall capacity of the network. With the combination of sharding and proof-of-stake, the Eth2 upgrade will make the Ethereum blockchain more efficient and faster than its predecessor.

The use of eWASM

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is one of the many features that made Ethereum a worthy challenger of Bitcoin. Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is an execution environment that runs on all network nodes that facilitates the use of smart contracts. It is these smart contracts that made the Ethereum blockchain a globally renowned computational device, and not just a mere financial system. The smart contracts on EVM have the ability to run games, execute complex financial transactions, or operate social networks.

Although the usage of EVM is on a large scale, to people with programming skills it is still a mystery. Therefore, in a bid to address this, Ethereum 2.0 will launch the use of web assembly language. This web assembly language will be in a system they are calling eWASM. eWASM will make it possible to execute the Ethereum app code in today’s web browsers. This is a massive improvement over the initial EVM. It will also enable programmers to choose from different languages like Rust, C, and C++ to write code to run on the blockchain. This will increase the number of potential programmers for the ecosystem because it opens the door to users who don’t need to learn a native Ethereum-only language.

It Is A New Dawn For Ethereum Blockchain

This is undoubtedly a new dawn for Ethereum, although the process won’t be a quick one. The Eth2 upgrade is expected to be put in place via three stages and would take place within a space of at least three years. These stages are outlined below:

Stage 1

The Beacon chain is launched and it will run a simplified proof-of-stake blockchain in parallel with the existing system. This will help to facilitate the transition between the two types of validation concepts.

Stage 2

Sharding is introduced at the second stage and it will initiate the first divisions of processing, thereby enabling parallel transaction validation.

Stage 3

The replacement of EVM with eWASM.

At each of these stages, the developers perform a thorough test to ensure the system is both secure and stable. It will give users the needed time to adjust to the sacrifices of the new blockchain implementation. If these three stages go over without any hitch, the new Ethereum 2.0 should emerge in a great position to lead the cryptocurrency market. It will be a trusted system with little or no scalability issues with better features.

Conclusion

The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade promises to be the solution to most of the challenges we face in the Crypto space especially scalability, cost, among others. At the moment, it is safe to say that the upgrade is another interesting development in the rapidly evolving blockchain space. With time, we will see where it leads and the level of impact. The broader blockchain ecosystem.

Also, Read Compound DeFi Protocol Explained .

Xord is a Blockchain development company providing Blockchain solutions to your business processes. Connect with us for your projects and free Blockchain consultation at https://blockapexlabs.com/contact/

Public Blockchain Platforms You Should Know About

Blockchain gained massive popularity after the invention of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a public Blockchain network that enables you to transfer your digital money to any users on the Bitcoin network. But are there any other public Blockchain platforms that we should be aware of? This article will guide you through what Blockchain is and different public Blockchain platforms.

What is Blockchain?

A Blockchain is a form of a decentralized, incorruptible digital ledger, that can be programmed to timestamp any kind of valuable peer to peer transactions, without the involvement of a third party. In other words, Blockchain is a chain-of-blocks connected with cryptographic hashes, and a slight change in data in one block can generate entirely new hashes rendering the entire chain invalid. These hash functions are impossible to solve, making Blockchain super secure consequently.

To make it easier, you can also take Blockchain as a list of records of transactions made by people, to people. Above all, these transactions are transparent, reliable, and immutable. To get a broader view of Blockchain, read Understanding Blockchain Essentials.

Types of Blockchain:

Blockchain networks can be public or private, depending on the needs of your project.

Public Blockchain:

Anyone can access a public Blockchain, meaning that anyone can read, write, and participate in the Blockchain network. But this does not mean the Public Blockchains aren't secure, neither does anyone governs a public Blockchain network.

In addition, public and Private Blockchains have various applications, check out Applications Of Blockchain Technology to get an overview of real-life use cases of Blockchain!

Different Public Blockchain Platforms:

Bitcoin:

A person or a group of people, Satoshi Nakamoto announced the launch of Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. To clarify, Satoshi wanted to give authority to the peers who want to exchange money, eliminate the intermediary, and bring transparency in transactions. Hence, they invented such a decentralized network that allowed the users to keep track of their cryptocurrency, without a middleman. Bitcoin runs on the PoW consensus algorithm and it records around 3-5 transactions in a second. People have developed hundreds of applications on Bitcoin, that allow the users to make secure transactions with other users through the Bitcoin network. Decentralized peer-to-peer online marketplaces, financial, and content sharing platforms, are some of the examples of DAPPS on the Blockchain network just to begin with. Arcade City is a decentralized application built on Bitcoin, that connects drivers and riders through Facebook, and riders can pay them directly with Bitcoins.

Ethereum:

Vitalik Buterin founded Ethereum, an open-source, Blockchain platform that provides a language, and tools for developers to build and deploy decentralized Blockchain applications and smart contracts. Solidity is a Turing complete language of the Ethereum platform that enables you to create smart contracts, with a lot fewer restrictions compared to Bitcoin, which comes with a more restricted scripting language. Moreover, Ethereum uses ‘Ethers’ as a cryptocurrency, to run different applications, monetize work and smart contracts. Ethereum is capable of making 15 transactions in a second.
Mist browser is used to plug into Ethereum, which enables you to store and trade Ethers. It is just like a usual internet browser; however, it lets you browse through different decentralized applications deployed on the Ethereum network only. An example of an application built on Ethereum is Ethereum Blockchain as a Service (EBaaS) on Microsoft Azure.

EOS:

Block.one developed EOS, a Blockchain platform built for the development of industrial-scale decentralized applications (DAPPS). It aims to be a free and open-source Blockchain platform, easy to use, and massively scalable. EOS can also be described as an operating system for DAPPS. It provides developers the basic tools and functionalities of an actual operating system, to help them develop industrial-scale DAPPS. EOS isn't completely a decentralized platform yet, but the EOS community is working hard to make it one. Its goal is to do millions of transactions in a second, all without any transaction fees. Currently, it can do 3,996 transactions in a second.

The EOS community innovated a new consensus algorithm, DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake). DPoS is more efficient in comparison with the good old PoS/PoW, as it uses a realtime voting system to achieve consensus. EOS is way more scalable and secure than Ethereum, only because of the consensus algorithm it uses. The EOS community members give votes to super representatives and the representatives are rewarded by validating transactions. In DPoS, community members have more governance rights in the network.

TRON:

Tron was founded by a nonprofit organization, with the goal of eliminating intermediaries from entertainment platforms, so that people can share content, pay for it and enjoy. This is a public Blockchain platform, a free and digital content entertainment system that enables users to share content effectively. The TRON code-base was originally a copy of Ethereum. TRON uses a fork of Solidity, which makes Ethereum smart contracts compatible with the TRON ecosystem. TRON's goal was to overcome the scalability issues in Ethereum. TRON uses the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism as its consensus algorithm, which marks the biggest difference in Ethereum and TRON. In DPoS, 27 Super Representatives are elected to produce blocks for the network, unlike PoW. TRON has its own cryptocurrency Tronix (TRX), that can be used by the users to pay for the content they consume. It can only be exchanged with other cryptocurrencies, like BTC.

Stellar:

Mr. Gox and Joyce Kim founded Stellar, a Blockchain-based payment technology that aims to provide more attainable financial services to people around the world. In other words, the goal of Stellar is to bring about financial inclusion by, easy-to-use global payment systems in the unbanked developing countries. Stellar has a native cryptocurrency, named Lumens (XLM). It has its own consensus algorithm, named Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) which allows faster transaction processing. Stellar provides you with developer tools to build applications like LOBSTER - 'Lumens to any email address', which allows you to send Lumens to any email addresses you want to. An email is sent to the recipient who doesn't have a Stellar account to notify him about his account and has Lumens for him to use anytime!

Ripple and Stellar are two very different platforms. While Ripple is for-profit, Stellar covers it's functioning costs by putting aside 5% of the total Lumens available, and they accept donations. Ripple is in connection with the bank industry, Stellar runs after financial inclusion in unbanked countries. Stellar also differs from Ripple in terms of money exchange.

Zilliqa:

Zilliqa is a scalable, secure Blockchain platform that is popular for its implementation of 'sharding'. Sharding is a scaling method that breaks transaction validating nodes in an ever-growing Blockchain network into shards. These 'shards' validate micro-blocks with other shards and these are combined to create a single block on the Blockchain. Zilliqa can process tens of thousands of transactions per second. Zilliqa uses PoW to verify miners to prevent Sybil attacks and pBFT for its consensus. pBFT is the feature of a decentralized network to hold consensus, even after some of the nodes in the network respond with wrong information. One of the advantages of the pBFT model is its capacity to finalize a transaction without the need for confirmations and energy as in PoW. Zilliqa comes with a number of developer tools, like Explorer, that helps you to explore Zilliqa Blockchain for transactions, tokens, and other statistics.

Blockstack:

Blockstack is a decentralized computing network or an app ecosystem that allows developers and users to connect safely. Stacks is the native cryptocurrency of Blockstack. Blockstack uses Blockchain technology to build developer tools that give access to users to an open internet that lets them own their data and digital identity. A developer can build a DAPP in just 60 minutes! Application Mining program on Blockstack network funds DAPP developers every month when they build apps the community wants, with the provided Blockstack developer tools, like Blockstack Auth. Many useful applications have been built without any capability of smart contracts, but Clarity; a Turing complete smart contract language, was introduced for Blockstack to enable smart contract functionality for Blockstack apps. For more information about Blockstack read Why Blockstack Is The Future Of Internet.

How to select a platform?

To sum up, here are some basis for selecting a Blockchain platform:
1) Scalability of the platform
2) Transaction fees on the platform
3) Type of consensus algorithm of the platform
4) Popularity on GitHub
5) Security of the network

Still unsure about which public blockchain platform to choose for your business needs? Talk to a Blockchain expert from Xord here and get FREE consultation.