Ardor is an open source multichain platform launched on 01.01.2018. Its unique architecture was designed from the beginning to overcome existing blockchain technology problems and ensure scalability. Ardor’s advanced design introduces a parent - child chain system where the network security and transaction processing for the entire platform is provided by the Ardor main "parent" chain while all the business-ready functionality is present on the permissionless and permissioned child chains.

This architecture has three fundamental advantages:

All child chains have their own native tokens, used as a unit of value and for paying transaction fees, and a variety of ready to use features

Scalability is achieved by pruning of the unnecessary child chain data once they are included in the permissionless Ardor parent chain, preventing the "bloat" of the network

All child chains are connected and share the same source code, ensuring ecosystem interoperability that allows child chain token trading to one another in a fully decentralized way and transactions on one child chain to access data or entities on another

All transactions of the child chains are included in the parent Ardor chain thanks to the bundling system - a process that groups several child chain transactions into parent chain blocks and enables application owners to sponsor transaction fees for their end users.

Ardor uses a 100% pure proof-of-stake consensus algorithm which makes it energy efficient - significantly reducing the hardware requirements for securing the network. The Ardor parent chain token, ARDR, is used for forging - the generation of new blocks and network consensus. ARDR forgers receive the transaction fees from the blocks they forged but no new ARDR coins are created.