æternity is a blockchain

Scalable smart contracts interfacing with real world data.

æternity is a new blockchain - designed for fast and secure smart contracts interfacing with real-world data via a decentralized
oracle.

Scalability is achieved by using (trustless) Turing-complete state channels, a major difference to Ethereum. This way the
smart contracts also become easier to analyze and more secure.

The interface to real-world data is done via an innovative oracle design, which is based on prediction markets.

State channels increase scalability since all transactions become independent and can thus be processed in parallel. Additionally,
this means that contracts never write to shared state, greatly simplifying their testing and verification.

æternity will be powered by the æternity token (AE symbol, also 'æon').

æternity tokens are used as payment for any resources one consumes on the platform, as well as the basis for applications implemented
on the platform.
The distribution of æternity token [AE] in the genesis block will be determined by a smart contract hosted on Ethereum.

æternity tokens will be managed by accounts which will have an address and balance, implemented alongside a alias (naming) system
which will support human-friendly names mapped to an aeternity address.

We believe in relentless evolution of systems and societies. æternity will push the boundaries of innovation and make blockchain technology ready for mass adoption.

CONSENSUS AND GOVERNANCE

• Hybrid Proof-of-Work Proof-of-Stake blockchain
• Consensus achieved by PoW mining
  • Algo: 'Cuckoo Cycle' by Tromp: GITHUB WHITEPAPER BLOG
  • Minable with even with smart phones achieving highest possible decentralization
• Governance via PoS prediction markets
  • Prediction markets are proven to very good tools to destill information out of a crowd of people. Better then simple voting!

TRANSACTION SPEED ESTIMATES
• Trustless off-chain transaction speed: infinite and only limited by the speed of light as these transactions are
inside state channels

• On-chain transaction speed: We define following variables for the following calculations:

B = block size in bytes
F = blocks till finality
R = time till finality in seconds
T = transaction size in bytes

The variables that define the protocol are all constantly being updated by the consensus/governance. From their initial default
values, we can calculate the initial default rate of transactions per second.

Transactions per second = B F / (T R)

B = 1000000 bytes = 1 megabyte per block
R / F = 30 seconds per block
R = 243600 seconds per day
F = 2460*2 blocks per day
T = 1000 bytes per transaction

1000000 ∗ 24 ∗ 60 ∗ 2/1000/24 ∗ 3600 = 1000000 / 1000 / 30 = about 32 on-chain transactions per second, which would be
fast enough to sign up every human with state channel technology within 8 years.

These variables will be determined by token holders (PoS Governance).

For further details read the æternity blockchain whitepaper: Sec. E(4): Transactions per second at a given memory requirements

SMART CONTRACTS

æternity uses a Turing-complete (new) virtual machine with MAST (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees) to process smart contracts.
Within æternity, smart contracts are pure functions in the form of financial agreements that distribute funds according to
predetermined rules. MAST enables that, in case a smart contract needs to be enforced by the blockchain, only the relevant part
of the smart contract needs to be published, achieving again higher scalability and confidentiality.

Only the involved parties know about the contract
Only parties that have an open state channel can create a valid contract
Every state change or code update gets signed by both counterparties of the contract
It is only submitted to the blockchain if its outcome is disputed, in which case the code is only ever stored as part of
the submitted transaction, never in any other state.
If this happens, the blockchain distributes the tokens according to the contract and closes the channel.

IMPLEMENTATION

æternity core blockchain code is written in Erlang, which makes it easy to write distributed,
fault-tolerant, soft real-time, highly available, non-stop applications. Erlang is the perfect language to write a blockchain
from scratch and by using it, we achieve a superior operational stability and performance.

WEB AND MOBILE INTEGRATION

æternity is 'mobile first', which is true because of the convergence of mobile and web
technologies and new mining algo which is even efficiently minable on smart phones.

A Javascript library and REST APIs for engaging with the core blockchain will make the integration into existing web/mobile apps
or services easier.

ReactJS will be the framework of choice two write reusable modules in, for the UI. These modules can easily be reused on the web,
as well as on mobile, and even compile down to native apps on mobile, becoming more snappy.

Also an Ethereum and Bitcoin bridge via Cosmos/Polkadot is planned.