Today, Ontology celebrates the first anniversary of its MainNet launch. This project has been ongoing for around two years, during which many significant achievements were made in various fields. I would like to pay my respects and special gratitude to our core team, our partners, our developer community and the general community for their contribution.

During this period, Ontology has actively engaged in technology, ecosystem and cutting-edge research and other aspects and has achieved great results.

A Global View: Participating in the International Standards Formulation

In frontier research and standard construction, Ontology has carried out in-depth research in the threshold signature application, zero-knowledge proof, trusted secure computing, multi-party secure computing, etc., and has achieved a number of integrations.

Ontology has participated simultaneously in formulating the standards of the three major international standardization organizations (IEEE, ISO, ITU-T), which is no mean achievement for a public blockchain project.

On June 13th, we participated in the Second Board Meeting of the IEEE Standards Association in Panama this year. The two standards for P2140.4 and P2140.5 for DEX Framework using DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) and Custodian Framework of Cryptocurrency, proposed by Ontology, were approved unanimously at the meeting. On May 27th, at the 5th plenary meeting of the ISO/TC 307 Blockchain and DLT in Dublin, Ireland, three Ontology use case proposals for pharmaceutical management, lifetime recruitment management and health care data management have all been accepted into the ISO Use Case Repository, showing how ONT ID and blockchain technology can empower real businesses. On April 9th, we, as the only public chain to attend and submit proposals in the 6th ITU-T FG Distributed Ledger Technology Meeting in Madrid with Huawei and Tencent, together with dozens of representatives from around the world to complete the mapping amongst the architecture templates and a number of world-class blockchain systems including Ontology, which verifies the accuracy of the technical reference architecture, providing multi-dimensional and high-value information for different blockchains and distributed ledger platforms.

In the future, we will continue to participate in the formulation of international standards for blockchain in a prudent and rigorous manner.

Technology-oriented: Leading the World in Major Technological Breakthroughs

In terms of the blockchain infrastructure, the Ontology MainNet has been running consistently for the past year and has become one of the most robust and stable blockchain systems. As for the research and development of blockchain infrastructure:

Ontology has completed the sharding design at the end of last year, supporting three dimensions: network, transaction and state sharding. It adopts a hierarchical network to achieve ultra-large-scale network expansion through multi-layer network sharding. On January 11th, the Ontology sharding was unveiled for the first time at the global blockchain summit Blockchain Connect in San Francisco. Its TestNet is now online and developers are welcome to use and experience it.

Amongst all the general and basic public chains, Ontology is the first to launch a Cross-Chain TestNet and has prepared complete technical documentation and video tutorials for developers. Our development platform ont_dev_platform has been added to Google, Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, providing a one-click deployment environment for developers around the world.

At the same time, tools such as multi-VM smart contract platform Wasm, smart contract formal verification platform VaaS-ONT, Ontology Oracle and Python smart contract compiler have been released, and important progress has been made in the fields of trusted secure computing integration, all ranking at the top of the list amongst global public chains, together with a world-class overall infrastructure system.

Trust First: Establishing a Trust Collaboration Platform that Supports a Wide Range of Business Scenarios

In terms of blockchain technologies that support real businesses, Ontology has completed the framework of a distributed ID System (DID) — ONT ID, connecting diversified data sources globally, fully upgraded the Distributed Data Exchange Protocol (DDXF) , which has become one of the most complete distributed data exchange protocols and designs, and has been submitted to be accepted as international standards. In addition, Ontology has been expanding important infrastructure modules such as distributed reputation systems in different business scenarios and has built a more complete distributed collaboration platform that supports various business scenarios.

In the past year, the Ontology team has established partnerships with teams and companies at home and abroad in various industries, especially in the fields of finance, payment, and gaming. We not only help blockchain start-ups to build a trust ecosystem but also have deep cooperation with industry giants to help traditional industries break into the blockchain world. In the meantime, our strategies for digital identity, content copyright, and data exchange have also been recognized by our ecosystem partners.

The Ontology ecosystem has also taken shape. The Ontology node incentive model and stake authorization incentive model have brought new motivation and ideas to Ontology, while the dApp incentive scheme has stimulated the growth of the partnered teams.

Global Vision: Ecosystem Construction in all Regions Advancing Steadily

As a distributed open platform project, Ontology has continuously expanded its global community.

Communities covering 17 languages have been opened, allowing fans around the world to find the base of Ontology in any corner. In the United States, Europe, and South Korea, we have set up local full-time teams. The next step will be to further expand markets in Southeast Asia, South America, and other regions, and expand the globalization system and ecosystem of Ontology.

In the past year, we have traveled all over the world. In Asia, we have held meetups, industry summits with local partners and hosted joint hackathon with Microsoft in cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Jakarta, while in Europe, our journey covers cities like London, Amsterdam, Dublin, Madrid, and in North America, we have also seen footprints of Ontology developers in cities such as Toronto, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Boston, and Washington.

Moving Forward: Fulfilling all our Commitments, and Continue to Advance Ahead

Over the past two years, we have been proud to have accomplished our commitments to the co-builders and the public in various aspects, which also has proved the Ontology ecosystem’s capability in technology, execution, and expansion, and has established an accountable, solid, credible project image. From core teams to community members, from co-builders to ecosystem partners, everyone’s persistence and efforts have enabled Ontology to create value for more distributed applications in a new phase. The core vision of Ontology is to create a“distributed trust collaboration platform” for all scenarios. During the two-year research and development, one-year steady MainNet operation and continuous technology development, we have already established a basic trust collaboration platform and achieved the first step of our vision: Ready for all businesses. We will continue to adhere to the real business strategy, taking every step in a solid manner, break the game with technology. We look forward to seeing more changes happen.

“Trust” has been the biggest challenge of collaboration since human history. After generations of technology and system development, from tribe to country, from the industrial revolution to information interconnection, the human “trust” collaboration mechanism has been continuously improved, but also constantly challenged. Today, privacy protection, personal information ownership, data collaboration, and data authenticity are still plaguing us in collaboration. So far, in the current technology system, blockchain is the most promising technology to overcome these challenges and bring “trust collaboration” to a new level. Ontology is willing to work with all partners with the same goal to redefine trust.

Ontology — Trust Redefined

Founder of Ontology Li Jun

June 30th, 2019