Today, ARK speaks with a unified voice with the release of an all-new ARK Ecosystem whitepaper. The whitepaper represents months of team-wide collaboration and years of achievement and progress. With this new whitepaper, the ARK community can rally around the vision of ARK, moving forward with deploying and using ARK technology with confidence.

Our whitepaper is well outlined and brings all of the aspects of the ARK Ecosystem into one document. It acts as a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ where you can skim or skip portions you are already familiar with and dive deeper into never-before-released concepts and strategies. At nearly four dozen pages and over 15,000 words, there is plenty of content for everyone to explore.

With all that said, here is the much anticipated link to the new ARK whitepaper: https://whitepaper.ark.io | https://ark.io/Whitepaper.pdf

Whitepaper Goals

When we set out to tackle such a behemoth as the whitepaper, the team came together to identify specific goals for the document:

Use a writing style that is less technically inclined so people can also understand, detailing not only specifications, but also benefits.

Explore the current issues with blockchain technology.

Officially identify the core values of ARK.

Show the benefits of ARK-based governance.

Educate readers on the purpose of the ARK Public Network.

Highlight the advantages of open source software.

Give a full breakdown of the recently redesigned ARK Core.

Highlight ARK peripherals like the Wallets, Explorer, and Deployer.

Identify the drawbacks of existing decentralized computing and Smart Contract technology and unveil ARK’s all-new solution for decentralized business applications.

Provide more clarity on ARK SmartBridge Technology.

Give new details on the strategy of the ARK business entity and show how it will achieve sustainability as well as grow the Ecosystem.

Identify and describe new programs planned for 2019 to stimulate community involvement.

What’s Next for Whitepaper

Aside from enabling the crypto and blockchain community to grasp what the ARK Ecosystem is all about, the whitepaper also acts as an internal reference for the ARK team-namely, the ARK communications team. The whitepaper will be used as a basis to create a host of resources that will be easier for people to digest, such as a lightpaper, podcasts, and videos. Communications and media strategy are now laser-focused due to the solid foundation of the ARK whitepaper.

This is the initial release of the all-new whitepaper to first receive community-wide feedback on the content. Once we get some of the initial commentary we’ll also start to integrate images and other eye-candy touches we have prepped for better understanding and visualization of the data, and make it more appealing for print format.

There are also plans to transform the whitepaper into something more interactive (like docs.ark.io for instance). This will allow readers to access the specific information they need more quickly, access live resources when they want to learn more, and make edits made by the team much easier. The ARK whitepaper is a living document which will evolve as community feedback starts to roll in.

Lastly, ARK will be running a community-wide contest surrounding the whitepaper soon, with Ledger hardware wallet prizes provided by ARK, and delegate-sponsored prizes as well. Stay tuned in with blog.ark.io for more details. Delegates who wish to add prizes to the pool may reach out to me (Justin) on Slack.

Thanks to the Community

The ARK community played a large role in the creation and release of this new whitepaper. Over the last 2+ years, your questions on reddit.ark.io, discussions with us on slack.ark.io, and unique perspectives are the driving force behind everything that we do. For this, everyone in the ARK crew would like to give you our greatest thanks.

Hey, what about the other Q1 items?

ARK set out to tackle three key items in Q1 2019: a new whitepaper, a new website, and the ARK Deployer GUI. All the heavy lifting for these three items has been completed as expected during Q1. However, these are all large leaps forward for ARK. To give each item the attention it deserves, ARK will be releasing them in stages in the coming weeks. Each item goes through final reviews and checks by the board prior to release. Be sure to stay tuned for our next major roadmap item release, coming Soon™.