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Introduction

Think about it. The internet opened the doors of opportunities, easing processes. A product of collaboration, the internet is a work of art by itself. If anything, there are some similarities between the early days of the internet and that of blockchain. Those who tried to centralized the technology, with hindsight of how powerful it would become, as AON, faded into obscurity, never to recover.

Creating the bare bones of the internet required grit, a thick skin and above all, unwavering dedication. However, times are changing, and although we cannot conclusively say that the internet is legally centralized per say, there are some elements of the web that make it a weapon for repressive regimes or even corporations keen on advancing their objectives.

From throttling and harvesting of data-the new oil, to monetizing them at the expense of the generator to downed or hacked servers, there should be an option. A decentralized internet seems to be the solution and many startups want to build this modern internet on top of Web 3.0, that is, the blockchain.

What is Elastos?

Spearheading this drive is Elastos. By definition, the network foundation says they are a safe and completely decentralized infrastructure for the internet. However, in summary, Elastos is an operating system and a Runtime for dApps, providing the infrastructure required for a decentralized internet.

Forging ahead with their goal is this inane mission of being a truly secure internet with high latency and reliability that shields users against digital rights violation and protecting transactions from third party intrusion or tracking.

To that end, Elastos will continue using existing internet infrastructure but with one key distinction. The creators are keen on zoning application computing from general network communication. As such, apps cannot directly access the network successfully preventing attacks.

Besides, they take advantage of the security of Bitcoin, a network touted to be the most secure in the network thanks to complete decentralization and the magnitude of dedicated computing power, and the token is actually merged mined with BTC. Additionally, as an extra security measure, the network has side chain capabilities meaning the setup is inherently scalable and reliable.

Features of Elastos (ELA)

Combined, Elastos is a complete network, an ecosystem made up of Elastos BizFramework (DMA), Elastos Hive (IPFS) and Elastos Decentralized Identity (DID), creating this one maze representative of a true and modern internet that is scalable, robust because of Bitcoin’s security, private and secure for all set of users. Thus far, there are 290K Carrier Active Node and 1.1 million DIDs. Users are varied and from within the IoT, Identity, Media, Security and Real Estate industries.

Team

Unlike most blockchain startups, the Elastos team is structured in teams or “companies.” As such, they are interdependent and one member can work in several departments. The directors of the Elastos Foundation are Rong Chen, Feng Han and Ben Lee.

Complementing the Foundation’s activities is the Elastos Cyber Republic Council Preparatory Committee. Members include Yipeng Su, Kevin Zhang and Feng Zhang.

Meanwhile, the Elastos Blockchain Team is led by Shunan Yu and has 28 engineers handling development of the mainnet, the side chain, cross-chain asset transfers, Blockchain explorer, Wallet, on-chain services and more.

Jingyu Niu and Zhilong Tang lead the Carrier Team responsible for DHT, P2P communication protocol, Carrier SDK for multiple platforms, Authorized user connection via DID and more.

Further, the Runtime Team is under the guidance of Jingyu Niu and Zhiming Rao. Primarily, their task is to check and develop the Elastos dApp browser framework, Elastos dApp full cycle toolchain support and other activities.

Besides this, there is the Consulting Team, a Communication Team, Operations Team, Storage (Hive) Team, BizFramework (DMA) Team, Developer Experience (DX) Team, DevStudio Team and lastly the Consulting Team. In total, there are over 70 engineers contributing towards the success of Elastos.

Roadmap

Launched in 2017, the Elastos mainnet is up and running. In 2019, they plan to launch a scalable sidechain. Its whitepaper is available for review and as evidence of development, there are over 100 GitHub commits and development is open source.

In March of 2019, the dPoS and sidechains code was availed at GitHub for the public in readiness for unit testing, regression testing and integration. Then in April, the dPoS Supernodes Voting Started and the following month, Elastos Carrier 5.2 went live. In Q2, the community elected 36 dPoS Supernodes and another 72 on standby as dPoS consensus demands.

Additionally, the quarter saw the activation of the Token sidechain, Elastos Browser (Trinity), Ethereum Smart-Contract Compatible as well as NEO Smart-Contract Compatible Sidechain. Q2 also saw the activation of 12 CRC dPoS Supernodes and merged mining which was open to the public.

In Q3 2019, supporters expect the Cyber Republic to be released and handed over to the community. To explain, the Cyber Republic is a “is a diverse democratic group of leaders, developers, organizers, designers and council members formed to promote Elastos.” Key is that membership is free and contributors can earn ELA.

Partnership

Weatherblock has a partnership with Elastos. Notifying the community, the weather data exchange platform, they will use Elastos’ Runtime, Carrier, dApp framework, and browser in their ecosystem.

Overly, given Weatherblock need of IoT weather data which requires incentivizing people or entities using their physical sensors for the platform to draw timely and useful ground data information, then this partnership is huge.

Then there is their partnership with Alibaba’s Security Department, Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), Tencent, Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, SAIC Motor, Foxconn Group, Top Network, WeFilmchain, Origin Agritech Ltd, HashFuture, Titan, ioeX of Taiwan, ELA Chat, DMA(Digital Distribution Marketing Platform), Bit.Game and GAEX, Viewchain, Bitmain and Shijiu TV.



Token Distribution

Through the ELA utility coin, the native currency of the Elastos Ecosystem, the project raised 94,070,000 or 6,500 BTC. Like every other utility, the ELA can be used for trading, paying fees and even as investment. Its annual inflation was set at four percent and for every minted coin, produced every two minutes-mining is merged with Bitcoin, 30 percent will be allocated to the Elastos Foundation and the remainder will go to miners.

In total, there were 33 million coins but only six percent were set aside for the public sale where Bitcoin (BTC) and NEO were the only accepted coin. 50 percent of the total coins in circulation would be set aside for ecosystem development, 15 percent set apart for Angel Investors, 24 percent for Private and Public investors and the 11 percent was channeled to the Elastos Foundation.

During the crowd funding period from Jan 2, 2018 to Jan 23, 2018, investors from China were barred and those trying to circumvent this rule were curtailed because of a stringent KYC filter in place. Each ELA token sold at 18.09 USD (0.00125000 BTC). The maximum one would contribute was 0.1 BTC and maximum, 0.30691 BTC. All purchased coins were then distributed before Feb 1, 2018.

At the time of press, Elastos (ELA) has a market cap of $46,277,121 from a $46,277,121 or 2,001,831 ELA daily trading volume. There are 14,269,791 ELA coins in circulation from a total supply of 33,592,252. In the past year, ELA is down 74 percent in USD terms, 80 percent against BTC and 49 percent relative to ETH.

Chiefly, because of last year’s free fall, dubbed the “cryptocurrency winter”, ELA’s ROI is below average and under-performing more so against the USD. For example, investors registered x0.17 return against the USD, x0.90 relative to ETH and x0.25 vis-a-vis the BTC.

Short Term Catalysts

The Elastos decentralized internet architecture ensures that the end user is the center of attention. It is user-focused with apps revolving around users and not the other way around. Of note is Elastos’ Spotlight Series 4 which focus on identity and the solution it presents, breaking down the “walled” ID systems in existence today. As already evidenced, data is huge and Elastos is at the forefront securing that end.

Working towards scalability, Elastos has announced that the NEO and Ethereum sidechains are now open for whitelisted developers and partners. On the same day, the Ethereum Sidechain Blockchain Browser will also be released but NEO’s will be on a tentative date.

The deployment of these two sidechains will be on August 5, marking the end of a project conceived and subsequently implemented to scale and improve the network’s throughput. Good news is that during this activation, Elastos Supernodes, applications, wallets and even mining pools will operate and not affected by this upgrade.

Impressive, the Elastos hash rate now stands at 57.53 percent that of Bitcoin. This is a feat possible thanks to their merged Bitcoin mining and their reliance of the Bitcoin network for security. Making this possible is Elastos hybrid consensus algorithm combining Auxiliary Proof of Work (AuxPOW) and Delegated Proof of Stake dPoS).

Elastos blocks are packaged by miners solving the SHA256 hash functions, who are predominantly Bitcoin miners. All merged blocks are then signed and validated by Elastos Supernodes. Theoretically, this gives Elastos massive hash rate and thus security. It is this reliability and robustness it receives from Bitcoin that its mainnet can act as a backbone for its core activities-that of decentralizing the web, while the sidechains are where dApps powered by smart contracts can be successfully deployed. Given this arrangement, Elastos is infinitely scalable with no congestion on the mainnet.



Long-Term Catalysts

Overly, it is Elastos value proposition that is piquing interest not only from investors but from corporations as well. The aim here is to build a modern internet that is backward compatible, effectively assigning value to users while offering an infrastructural remedy resolving existing privacy ills. Experienced, their competent team were successful in the recent Hackathon course while beating competitors.

Elastos expertly does that via their Smartweb. The product is built on-top of the existing internet but instead of using URL to store data, the same URL will be centered on applications thereby shielding users against possible scrapping and data harvesting from unscrupulous elements. Whenever called, these URL summon applications and not data. Consequently, the architect here ensures that there are secure dApps and the implementation of a DID (Decentralized Identifier) builds an automatic authentication mechanism validating users’ identity.

On top of this is the Elastos Run Time, one of the core components of the blockchain startup, with its own repository. Because of RunTime, all Elastos-built dApps–seven are part of the network as I write this, are operating system agnostic.

That means, irrespective of the enabling environment, all dApp can operate in alternative OS without a hitch fast-tracking developer adoption. Elastos is ahead of competition, providing options that are better that those offered by Blockstack and BAT. If anything, Elastos is a combination of Ethereum and Bitcoin but adds monetization of dApps and data.

Enjoy #DeFi with the Best Prices across Exchanges

Peer to Peer, No KYC, Audited and Insured Smart Contracts