We have been asked by this question since the beginning. We believe it is necessary to present a straightforward answer: no, Polkadot and aelf are two different ideas.

First and foremost, we are different in visions and purpose. Polkadot envisions a Web where everyone’s identity and data is safely secured from any central authority. Their aim is to reshape the existing internet structure into a completely decentralized web. Plainly speaking, they want to build a internet-native international law. Governed by this law, independent blockchains can exchange information and conduct trust-free transactions. aelf, however, aims to develop a blockchain technology into the real practice. The focus is not on chain-to-chain interactions, but on solving scalability challenge for existing blockchain system to tackle practical problems in every industry.

With different purposes, Polkadot and aelf certainly adopt different approaches. Polkadot creates an inter-chain protocol that enforces the order and the validity of the messages between chains. This interoperability will allow a general environment for multiple state machines. aelf provides a “Main Chain + Side Chains” architecture that coordinate homogeneous chains hosting different Smart Contracts. It provides a joint security and data processing efficiency for all chains while still maintaining resource segregation with one chain to handle one business scenario though aelf OS.

YES, both Polkadot and aelf are multi-chain system, and NO, they are different in overall structure. In Polkadot’s whitepaper, it mentions, “Polkadot links a set of independent chains.” It provides bridges between heterogeneous multi-chain. aelf presents the same multi-chain structure but in a homogene, where multi-layer chains are built on a parallel processing model. So the focus here is not bridging chains but building a framework for practical operation using Blockchain technologies.

YES, both Polkadot and aelf provide possibilities for scaling, and NO, they are different in the path. Polkadot is designed to be a blockchain development, deployment and interaction test bed that realizes scaling and extensity. Its extensibility enables the assimilation of new blockchain technology without the help of over-complicated decentralised coordination on hard forks. aelf, however, enhance the scalability by empowering the nodes. Parallel processing is a pretty mature technology. We will utilize this technology to expand the processing speed on each node, and extend it to a cloud-based service.

YES, Polkadot and aelf stress a good governance, and NO, we follow different ideology. Polkadot has a bicameral aspect similar to the Yellow Paper Council, where the underlying stake-able token holders would have “referendum” control. The direction for the ecosystem development is driven by two chambers from a “user” committee and a “technical” committee, while the body of token holders would maintain the ultimate legitimacy and form a supermajority to augment, reparameterize, replace or dissolve this structure. This is an ideal governance structure that would bring democracy, yet has not gone through comprehensive review. Correspondingly, aelf will adopt the mature DPoS consensus protocol to adjust the dynamism. Those mining nodes who provide standard services on clusters work through DPoS to reach consensus of the Main Chain. DPoS mining nodes are elected in a way that resembles representative democracy. The elected nodes decide how to hand out the bonus to the other mining nodes and stakeholders, thus forming a virtuous cycle in governance.

The best part of Polkadot is the original design of a heterogeneous multi-chain structure, which improves interoperability and extensibility to the largest extent.

The most exciting part of aelf is the ingenious framework that leverages parallel computing to fulfill business needs.

In short, while aelf and Polkadot seems to share some similarities at the first glance, we believe our end goal is substantially different from Polkadot. Rather than competing, the two projects are likely to co-exist under a mutually beneficial relationship.

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