Hello to everyone and I welcome you to my very first Medium story. My name is Ian Holtz and I am the founder of Aphelion. Aphelion is a revolutionary peer-to-peer decentralized application (DApp), built on the NEO blockchain, that will solve the for the inherent issues plaguing the centralized exchanges today.

Before I get into detail about the project and tackle the few unsubstantiated claims swirling around the web, let me provide some background and detail on the industry, the space we are operating in and why I have chosen to take on such a momentous task.

I believe in blockchain. I believe that blockchain has the potential to enormously disrupt the way information is stored, exchanged, analyzed and most importantly: the way data is used to impact everything from healthcare, environmental projection, economics, education, energy consumption and everything in between. By decentralizing data we take an exponential leap in progress as a species and I am fully committed to contributing as best I can.

Although I am fairly new to working in blockchain, I have been following it with amazement for years. As I have charted its progress, not only do I continue to believe in its enormous potential, I see the momentum growing like nothing I have ever witnessed in my professional career. If you couldn’t already tell, I have a passion for blockchain technology and moving full speed into Aphelion has allowed me to focus and break into the industry where I can make a meaningful contribution.

Now onto Aphelion.

Here is a short intro demo reel:

Aphelion lives in the subset of blockchain technology called cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency is defined by the Oxford English dictionary as:

“A digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank.”

Aphelion is a digital currency with a utility. It will be traded, scaled, built upon, stored and spent.

So why does Aphelion exist and what is the purpose, utility and value?

Let me explain. As I began to experiment in cryptocurrency trading, I was met with enormous limitations, barriers, problems and security concerns. Those challenges still exist. As incredible as it sounds, security breaches resulting in the loss of millions of USD equivalent are not uncommon. Participating in an exchange is often controlled by a users citizenship, residency and ability to jump through a series of hoops and delays and ultimately your account and funds can be frozen at any time for any reason without explanation.

This defeats the purpose and promise of decentralization. As a US citizen living abroad with foreign accounts, I have experienced many of these challenges first hand, multiple times, across multiple exchanges. In fact, as I am writing this very article I am communicating with a popular exchange because I made a large transfer and the transaction shows complete but I can’t see the balance in my wallet. Support ticket says the transaction is complete but I still can’t see the balance in my wallet. I still don’t know where those funds are located. It’s these ongoing frustrations that revealed the opportunity for a decentralized exchange (DEX).

Aphelion was born.

Aphelion is a DEX owned/controlled by no entity or organization. It lives on the blockchain in total transparency as a distributed ledger protocol. The rules are set forth by the users who interact through a front end user interface but the transfer/exchange happens on-chain or cross-chain locked into a smart contract stored within the Aphelion token.

Here is a visual of a sample Aphelion user journey:

Everything happens on-chain and that means the challenges I outlined above are eliminated as a direct result of the DApp. In essence, the centralized exchanges and the problems they pose are circumvented for these peer-to-peer exchanges.

This begs the question: Is there still a need for centralized exchanges? Sure, not all currencies will be available for trade on the Aphelion DEX is one reason. Also, Aphelion can’t be bought through fiat currency (at least not yet). Exchanges still serve a purpose and different exchanges have different tools that also make them relevant. We see an integration between the exchanges and upcoming DEX in order to give users choices and allowing fair competition is in the best interest of the community. It brings progress.

The vision for Aphelion is to start with a few trade scenarios on NEO. For example, an APH to NEO on-chain, peer-to-peer trade or vice versa. Then an RPX (RedPulse) to NEO or any combination of those three confirmed NEO on-chain tokens.

Next we move into cross-chain…ie BTC to LTC or ETH to NEO and all of the possibilities that exist in the different ecosystems. How do we get there? What is the technology that allows for this revolutionary application? The answer is Atomic Swaps and Superconducting Transactions. Besides sounding amazingly cool, these technologies are at the forefront of Aphelion. We are investing heavily in bringing these exciting new technologies to market as the central component of the Aphelion DApp exchange. I encourage everyone to investigate the tech further, here are a few articles to get your started:

Let us move on to a few important updates. We are in full ICO swing right now and our community of contributors and followers is growing quickly. We are excited to announce we closed the presale early with 140 contributors buying up the allotted 20M Aphelion tokens. Also, excited to announce the ICO is happening exclusively on the blockchain, only the second ICO to have ever been successfully conducted on NEO. We encourage other projects to take a good look at NEO as an option for your project for the reasons we’ve outlined in our white paper found here:

Aphelion tokens are being distributed to our custom Aphelion NEON wallet and all presale contributors have also already been distributed their presale tokens.

We are currently in ICO round 2 and contributors continue grow as does our community. We’ve amassed 1200+ members on our telegram, 7k+ on Facebook, 3800+ Twitter followers and growing. I invite you all to follow us and help drive the direction of the program forward, we are always very active across all channels and encourage community interaction and recommendations. As part of our four pillars of transparency, decentralization, open source and community driven we’ve recently made a first of its kind “token equalizing” announcement to protect of all our valued contributors from recent massive market fluctuations.

Read about it here:

With all the excitement, success and attention we have received, unfortunately, a very small minority has chosen to spread false information. I won’t spend a lot of time on this because its so absurd and such a limited part of the news and progress that is happening right now. The good news is the data speaks for itself and we are prepared to continually battle against these shady individuals and unsavory trolls that often times move in the shadows with clear agendas far beyond a valued and independent criticism. I challenge you to show yourselves (I have, watch my AMA), provide supporting data or better yet offer constructive criticism otherwise go back to your hole and allow us to continue building things.

On that note, allow me to set the record straight and can unequivocally deny any allegations of a so-called scam or money dump. Myself and team have put our blood sweat and tears into Aphelion at the sacrifice of our time, families and bank accounts and we are wholeheartedly committed to seeing it through. The obvious evidence to combat these ridiculous claims is the fact that we’ve successfully deployed our ICO in smart contracts on the NEO blockchain mainnet.

We faced some last minute curve balls that our development team was able to overcome and our tokens are real and are already in our contributors custom NEON Aphelion wallets. The wallet itself (available on Windows, Mac and Linux) provided some solid upgrades and we are proud of all the work, testing, updates and integrations to date. Hats off to the Aphelion development team.

If the development to date, NEO blockchain based ICO, wallet, token distribution etc isn’t enough to put the naysayers to rest, let’s talk about the team, the road map and the path towards our ultimate goal: a completed working version of the Aphelion decentralized exchange launching Q1 2018.

I personally assembled the team with a strategic mix of contacts I have worked directly with over the years and some additional vetted industry leads and advisers. I am proud of the team that we’ve assembled and looking forward to continuing to grow our team, advisory panel and community moving forward. These are not fictitious people, they are all very real and their successful professional careers are available for all to view via the LinkedIn links directly on our site’s homepage. I encourage everyone to take a good look at the initial talent that has led to this groundbreaking project, it truly is an exceptional team. We will continue to grow this team into a world’s best mix of talent.

Moving onto our road map. We have stayed true to every component of the detailed map and achieved every milestone to date. That is not a cornerstone of a “scam” its a cornerstone of a committed project. We will continue to meet our milestones and push to market as fast as we possibly can while listening to our members and the community to adjust and add to it as needed.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer in a healthy dose of skepticism, but there is a clear difference between skepticism and complete ignorance, slander and FUD. Our project is open source, our code is available on our whitepaper and public GitHub and we will continue to be as transparent as we can be towards that end. But we wont jump through hoops to appease a small minority who’s bent on spreading baseless claims and FUD. We are better than that and we have bigger goals to achieve. We will join as a community and rise above, its who we are and its our promise to those that supported and believed in us since the beginning.

In closing, we believe in the industry and its promise and stand by our project, its community and vision. Aphelion is alive and well, on track and pushing full speed ahead towards developing our revolutionary decentralized exchange. I urge the public at large to do your homework, analyze projects for what they are, not what other say they might be. We stand by our code and challenge anybody claiming we are a scam to provide any evidence to that effect. Crowdfunding is an important part of advancement and it would be a shame for legitimate projects with legitimate teams and visions to suffer at the hands of a few trying to tear them down on unsubstantiated claims because of hidden agendas.

Let’s join together in these exciting times, share what we’ve learned, focus on what is important and drive humanity forward with great vision and purpose. I believe in blockchain. I believe in the community. And I am committed to building technology that moves us forward.

From all of us at Aphelion: we wish you all a prosperous future.