Since the birth of Bitcoin, there have been many new digital currencies that have attempted to improve on its functionality. Bitcoin was a revolutionary technology, but it is considered to be the “dial up” of the cryptocurrency and blockchain revolution. Newer platforms have invented new functions, such as smart contracts, used differing versions of code, and have even attempted to invent new forms of governance and blockchain usage.
The cryptocurrency NXT was the only platform that developed its own unique code using Java in the early days. At the time, all of the other newcomers to the space were merely changing small details of Bitcoin’s original code that was created by Satoshi Nakamoto. NXT was created by an anonymous developer with a completely unique form of code. The NXT platform’s unique nature are what make it such an intriguing and potentially revolutionary digital currency.
Bitcoin has encountered some significant scaling issues, as its original mining and transactional organization could never support the amount of traffic that larger groups, such as a country, would cause. The fault comes from the lack of an ability to verify transactions into the blockchain quickly. The current time it takes to verify a Bitcoin transaction is about 80 minutes, and this number could be larger if the network is experiencing a lot of traffic. It seemed that the Bitcoin blockchain could not support the amount of people that competitors such as Visa can handle, so other digital currencies have aimed to remedy this problem.
NXT is one of these platforms. It improves upon the basic functionality of Bitcoin by attempting to be a faster and more versatile form of digital currency. NXT is similar to the Ethereum platform, in the sense that it offers users an asset exchange, cloud storage for data, voting governance, and a toolkit for blockchain developers to utilize. NXT claims to have a more secure, less “buggy” infrastructure than its bigger rivals.
NXT and another cryptocurrency, Ardor, have been confused as completely separate entities recently. The fact is that Ardor is merely the brainchild of the NXT team. This has led to a lot of confusion among those who are new to the cryptocurrency market. In the following sections, we’ll explain what NXT and ARDR are and how they are different from one another.
History of NXT
NXT was created in November of 2013 by an anonymous organization as a result of a need for improved digital currency scaling protocols. The platform was formed by an anonymous organization called BCNext. They aimed to provide a platform similar to Ethereum which remedied the scaling and speed issues that all of the other major digital currency platforms at the time were experiencing. If you have been following cryptocurrency trends, you may have heard the recent hype about proof of stake compared to the original proof of work protocols that Bitcoin used.
The proof of work system was inefficient because it took an enormous amount of power to complete transactions, and it also causes a lot of strain on the blockchain it is based on. NXT was actually the first platform to use the much more energy and network efficient proof of stake protocol. Rather than have miners compete for a proof of work to verify transactions, anyone with a stake in NXT (token holders) could verify a block and be rewarded.
NXT has always been a sleeper pick in the cryptocurrency space, having been building towards more efficiency and scalability since its birth in 2013. Their innovations have led them to their biggest and most exciting innovation yet; Ardor.
What is Ardor?
Ardor is the child of NXT. It is sometimes called NXT 2.0, and is the first platform to utilize the concept of “child chains”. The protocols used in Ardor would have been a massive change to the infrastructure of NXT, so the developers decided to create a new currency all-together, for a fresh start. The concept can be simply described as side chains, where the platform is able to scale and handle a significantly larger amount of traffic off of the main network.
Currently, most blockchain platforms that are similar to NXT handle transactions, verifications, and all developmental activity on the same chain. Ardor can be thought of as the Squarespace of blockchain tech, giving templates to businesses to build their own child chains that provide them with the many benefits blockchain offers, but will not cause strain to the mainnet.
Contrary to all of these child chains that are built have their own native token, but these side chains will still be synced to the global architecture through Ardor. Strain to the network and a lack of an ability to handle a massive amount of transactions has been a hot issue in the cryptocurrency space, as Ethereum and Bitcoin have continuously struggled to improve speed and efficiency as their user base has grown.
Ethereum uses ERC-20 tokens for all of the dApps that are developed on its network, and many believe that the lack of a disconnect in this aspect is going to make it much harder for Ethereum to scale to the level they need to reach. For platforms like Ethereum that do not use side or child chains, each node must hold the data stored from the entire network, which can be as large as 38 GB. As you could guess, this amount of data per node requires a ton of processing power and causes major network bloating.
With Ardor, the ability to give each child chain its own token can possibly allow its scale to reach massive proportions.
Ignis: The First Child Chain
While not much is known of Ignis; the first ever child chain on the Ardor protocol, it is expected to be used in order to test the efficacy of this new design. Many have speculated that it will be used to prove how it will run quickly and not clog the parent (Ardor) network. Rather than horizontally partitioning the data like Ethereum, Ardor aims to vertically distribute the data in the network. This would remove all of that data from each node and the possibility of the network reaching a limit due to increased usage.
At this time, scaling is one of the main issue preventing mainstream adoption of digital currencies. This is what makes the NXT and Ardor projects, along with lightning network side chain innovations that Bitcoin and Ethereum have rolled out recently, so exciting and enticing to investors. If digital currencies are ever going to be able to handle the stresses brought on by mass adoption, they need to be able to easily handle millions of daily transactions. Side chains and child chains are an important step in the right direction, and are helping push the technology to the next level in its evolution.
Many experts are excited about the Ardor project because of its uniquely developed nature and its independently developed code. It is poised to provide scalability to businesses across the globe, and this prospect makes it a leading player in the space. The development team is continually improving their protocol, making Ardor one of the main projects you should be following in 2018.