Ardor brings innovation to the world of multi-blockchain platforms with its unique architecture and aims to provide “Blockchain-as-a-Service” to businesses. It evolved from NXT, which is a time-tested and successful blockchain.

The Ardor parent chain is made up of the network security and processing chain, while the child chains are the transactional chains. Because the child chains have their own coins, users don’t need to own any coins associated with the parent chain to use the platform.

What Is NXT?

NXT already has four years of experience in production and is another technology from Jelurida, the team behind Ardor. NXT was produced back in 2013 in the form of a second-generation cryptocurrency. It was the first blockchain protocol that used a fully proof-of-stake consensus mechanism instead of a proof-of-work one, lowering power consumption and hardware requirements. Since the launch, the NXT platform has had 100 percent uptime without any systematic failure. It is implemented in Java and open source, meaning it has undergone numerous reviews and allows for quick prototyping.

How Did Jelurida Get from NXT to Ardor?

Even with the development of NXT, Jelurida recognized limitations, such as the fact that using any platform features required NXT. This seemed unfair and an unnecessary hurdle for users. Jelurida also wanted to take care of blockchain bloat and needed to address customization issues. The team was able to do this with Ardor by separating the transactional tokens and network security tokens in a way that has not been done before. Ardor maintains all the existing functions of NXT while addressing those issues via the unique structure.

What Benefits Do Child Chains Get from Being Built on the NXT Blockchain?

Every child chain is built on the NXT blockchain, meaning it automatically comes with those features and benefits. The first child chain is known as Ignis. It will have every single feature of NXT, although those who create future child chains can restrict the features if they do not want them. This means that users can use child chains to trade assets, issue assets, set conditional transactions, run private or public polls, utilize multi-sig security, and send encrypted messages. Even with these benefits, each transaction is processed and receives security from the parent chain.

How Does Ardor Address Blockchain Bloat?

Blockchain bloat is a common issue on blockchain platforms, but Ardor takes care of it with its unique architecture. For those unfamiliar with the term, blockchain bloat refers to the increasing size of the blockchain as it is used. That larger size means that more resources are needed to run the blockchain’s full nodes or to join the network.

Jelurida takes care of this issue with full node pruning. On a regular basis, this involves the removal of transactional data associated with child chains from the parent chain. This is done after the system takes a snapshot of the blockchain’s most recent state. This allows for a reduction in the size of the blockchain without any negative effects, including to the transactions, balances, or security. Full nodes also have the option to become archival nodes for the child chains. In this case, they store the chain’s historical data.

What Is the Bundling System?

The bundling system allows Ardor to maintain its unique architecture of separating parent and child chains. With the bundling system, you can set up accounts to collect child chain coins and transaction fees even as you pay the transaction fee to the parent chain using its own coin. This bundling lets child and parent chains interact, which in turn provides interoperability between various child chains.

What Is Forging?

The forging chain is the main chain of the Ardor platform, and it supports limited types of transactions. These include transferring ARDR between accounts, trading ARDR to and from child chains, leasing ARDR balances for forging, and “ChildChainBlock” transactions. Each account’s forging power is dependent on the ARDR balance. Plus, every transaction that results in a change to the ARDR balance gets recorded on the forging chain. However, the forging chain does not record transactions that only modify the token balances of child chains, as only the child chain in question records it.

How Does Ardor Make Money?

Ardor and NXT make money by offering organizations the ability to license the platforms for private chain solutions. Although the platform is open source, making any changes that are closed source requires a license. Ardor will make money via licensing. There is also secondary revenue from white-label wallet creation, archival node services, bundler services, and custom plugin development. Although any user can become a bundler with a child chain, those who want to outsource this process will provide a source of income for Ardor.

The team is also looking into additional ways to make money. The options include paid premium services, such as charging to promote child chain services within the wallet itself or in-wallet ads. The team might also offer an integration option for those who provide exchanges and payments. This will let child chains be converted to other types of cryptocurrencies.

How to Buy Ardor ARDR



You are not able to purchase ARDR with “Fiat” currency so you will need to first purchase another currency – the easiest to buy are Bitcoin or Ethereum which you can do at Coinbase using a bank transfer or debit / credit card purchase and then trade that for ARDR at an exchange such as Bittrex or Poloniex.

Register at Coinbase

For first time buyers of crypto currency, we recommend that you use Coinbase to make your first purchase – its easy to use, fully regulated by the US government so you know it is one of the safest and most reputable places to purchase cryptocurrency from. Coinbase offers the ability to purchase Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum with a credit or debit card or by sending a bank transfer. The fees are higher for cards but you will receive your currency instantly.

You will have to carry out some identity verification when signing up as they have to adhere to strict financial guidelines.

Make sure you use our link to signup you will be credited with $10 in free bitcoin when you make your first purchase of $100.

To get started, click the “Sign up” button where you will be taken to a registration form where you will need to enter your name, email and choose a password.

Purchase Ethereum

For this guide, we will be purchasing Ethereum to swap for our target cryptocurrency. The reason for this is that it has far cheaper fees than bitcoin for sending and the transaction also happens a lot faster. So in Coinbase, visit the “Buy / Sell” tab at the top, select “Ethereum”, choose your payment method and enter the amount you wish to purchase – you can either enter a US Dollar amount or a number of Ether.

You will then be asked to confirm your transaction, if paying with a card you might have to complete a verification with your card provider. Once that’s complete, your Ethereum will be added to your account.

Purchase Ardor at Bittrex



You can now send your Ether over to Bittrex to make your purchase of ARDR, take a look at our review of Bittrex here to see how to signup and purchase on their exchange.

What Does the Roadmap Look Like?

The roadmap of the transition from NXT to Ardor is extensive, charting the process from the initial release of NXT in 2013. Along the way, some key points include Ardor snapshot logic and the research phase of Ardor in Q2 of 2016, the NXT Mobile application release in Q4 of that year, and launching the Ardor public testnet in Q1 of 2017. The Ignis ICO infrastructure on NXT took place in Q3 of 2017. Next, the smart phasing on Ardor with the Ardor mainnet launch took place in Q4.

In the current Q1 of 2018, Jelurida aims to resolve issues found post-launch and works to ensure stability. In Q2, the team will activate the pruning feature on the testnet. Then, in Q3, this feature will be implemented on the mainnet.

Conclusion

While there are numerous platforms available for using the blockchain, Ardor takes a unique approach with its use of separate parent and child chains. Based on the whitepaper, it seems that this should address the major concerns with current blockchain technology, meaning that Ardor has a great potential.