Dear Aergo community,

There seems to be a number of questions related to Aergo and Blocko — specifically about their relationship. These questions have been answered (and in various ways) a number of times, so I am surprised that members of our community may still be confused.

Additionally, as a bonus, I would also like to directly answer another question that keeps coming up (and that like the relationship between Aergo and Blocko has been answered before in a variety of ways): how the Aergo token gains value.

Understanding the relationship between Blocko & Aergo

Aergo and Blocko are closely linked and their success is intricately connected.

Let me provide once again some further clarity and use some simple examples to make my point. Sorry for the long reply (the team will package this up into an article soon).

As before I will use Linux (and Red Hat that fully commercialises Linux) as a parallel between what we are trying to achieve with Aergo and Blocko.

Just like Linux, Aergo is a comprehensive and complex operating technology platform — it is also open source. Like Linux it can be used for free. Linux now powers over 80% of the public internet services we and commercial firms use. It also powers around 40% of the private data centres run by many businesses across the world. It took 10 years before Linux and Red Hat’s implementations became widely adopted; Aergo coupled with Blocko is currently in year 5 of a similar 10 year journey. Just like in London today (renowned Linux marathon) we are also in a marathon. Not a 100 metre dash.

Whilst Linux (and Aergo) are free, when businesses deploy these to help them to drive new products and services, they need to partner with a firm that can help them to integrate these technologies with their existing IT systems and complex business logic. They also want assurances — that if anything goes wrong (eg a software bug is found or a security issue emerges) — they can get immediate support. Development tools also need to be made available, so that developers can program these platforms.

These services are collectively called “subscription services”. Almost no business deploys Linux in their operations without this form of subscription service. It’s simply too risky to do so (it’s like driving a car without a seat belt, or having no health insurance). How would we all feel if the internet “was unavailable” for any length of time because there was a problem with Linux and the developers who could fix this were asleep! Subscription support services are absolutely needed. They are typically paid monthly or more typically annually by the companies that use Linux (or very soon Aergo). These services are not provided by Linux (as it’s simply a technology platform).

These services are provided by commercially and for-profit companies like Red Hat.

Linux and Red hat are in effect two sides of the same “coin”.

Aergo is like Linux — and Blocko is like Red Hat. Blocko is the firm that is very closely linked to Aergo; as it created the genesis technology, developer tools, IT deployment blueprints and libraries that are being made available (again for free) to developers and businesses who want to use Aergo.

Blocko is an amplifier for Aergo — it not only helps Aergo to build the technology, deployment libraries — it helps companies to integrate and adopt Aergo in their businesses. Blocko is actively working with its 23 enterprise clients to migrate them to an improved architecture based on Aergo. In fact it has recently decided to adopt and only support Aergo for all its business lines from hereon. This is amazing news for Aergo and all of our stakeholders.

The first example Blocko deal on Aergo is Hyundai that was announced last week.

Again using the marathon example, migrating to a new platform like Aergo can take between 3–18 months for many complex businesses. Me and my business development team experienced and saw this with Linux (whilst working at Red Hat and Suse Linux) between 2000–2010. Don’t expect press releases like Hyundai every week. This is where Aergo is different from 99% of other crypto projects.

We are not a dApp, we are not a single purpose platform. We are like Linux: a truly disruptive and very comprehensive enterprise scale platform.

In simple terms, most crypto projects are like iphone or Android phone “covers”. They are often “covers” that run on another baseline platform (like Ethereum or a variant of Ethereum they have simply “tweaked”). Like your own phone cover (if you indeed have one) — you replace them with very little consideration. Aergo is more like iOS or Android — it IS the platform. It is not a copy — it’s one of the few true “clean-room” hybrid blockchain platforms (in other words Aergo is built from the ground up — just like iOS and Android). Platforms are fundamental to a business and take time to switch to and to adopt/deploy.

Just like Linux, our long term objective is to make Aergo an alternative platform to help millions of business across the world that want to use blockchain to create value and expand their customer and business ecosystems.

Red Hat does this for Linux — Blocko enables these businesses for Aergo.

In short

Aergo = Linux (for blockchain technology)