The Third Generation Blockchain Network

A multi-tier blockchain system designed to address unsolved questions of scalability, privacy, and interoperability in blockchain networks.

 

WHAT IS AION

 

INTRODUCTION

Mainstream adoption of blockchains has been limited because of scalability, privacy, and interoperability challenges. Aion is the first

multi-tier blockchain network designed to address these challenges.

Core to our hypothesis is the idea that many blockchains will be created to solve unique business challenges within unique industries.

As such, the Aion network is designed to support custom blockchain architectures while providing a trustless mechanism for cross-chain interoperability. 

At the root of the Aion network is the first dedicated, public, enterprise blockchain: 

Aion-1.

Aion-1 is a state-of-the-art, third-generation blockchain that introduces a new paradigm of security and fair, representative, cryptoeconomic

incentives.

This paper:

• Introduces and explains the Aion network—the next generation of blockchain technology and first multi-tier blockchain network—

and its necessary infrastructures and protocols.

• Details the vision and technical concepts of Aion-1, a purpose-built, public, third-generation blockchain and a component within

the Aion network.

• Provides a roadmap for future implementations of Aion-1 and the Aion network.

These concepts are a work in progress and this paper is intended to establish intent and be exploratory in nature, not declarative. Join

the Aion network mailing list to get alerts about more detailed white papers related to specific aspects of Aion as they become available.

 HISTORY

The landscape of digital currencies and related blockchain technologies has changed significantly since Bitcoin was first introduced in

2008.

First-generation blockchain

Bitcoin  led the way in the creation of numerous alternative currency platforms as the first generation of blockchain technology. These first-generation blockchains provided a solution to conventional transaction limitations by implementing cryptographically-secure, peerto-peer, digital transactions that are verified by a decentralized global network and recorded into an immutable public ledger. 

Resulting

in a platform that leverages the advantages of being digital, while preserving the economics of scarcity.

Second-generation blockchain

With the second generation of blockchain, Ethereum introduced the ability to build application-specific logic upon a blockchain network

Second-generation blockchain 

This enabled new capabilities beyond transactions to incorporate state, business logic, and multi-party contracts to be stored and executed on a blockchain and written to an immutable ledger. These concepts have been incorporated into other distributed ledger technologies and have led to the distinction of building a blockchain and building upon a blockchain.

The emersion of blockchain-based applications is positive for the industry. Applications with novel use cases further demonstrate, and validate, the technology’s ability to evolve beyond just a means of transferring value. However, these separate networks are becoming disparate as they are isolated and able only to transfer data off chain or transfer value through centralized exchanges. In a sense, tiny

kingdoms with borders between economies and industries are being cemented. As the number of networks grow, the more disconnected and sparse the industry becomes.

Just as in the early days of the internet, disparate blockchains networks have yet to truly realize the benefits of being connected. While specialized blockchain networks will and should be developed, being able to communicate on chain to other networks offers significant benefits, particularly if privacy and scalability can be maintained. A mechanism for joining disparate networks will unlock enormous value for every participating network.

 Aion: the third-generation blockchain

In the future, blockchains will federate data and value in a hub and spoke model similar to the internet. The future of mainstream blockchain adoption will be achieved by the development of a networked, federated blockchain to integrate these separate spokes. That integrated blockchain network is Aion.

Aion is a third-generation blockchain network that will enable any private or public sector organization to:

• Federate: Send data and value between any Aion-compliant blockchain and Ethereum.

• Scale: Provide fast transaction processing and increased data capacity to all Aion blockchains.

• Spoke: Allow the creation of customized public or private blockchains that maintain interoperability

 with other blockchains, but allow publishers to choose governance, consensus mechanisms, issuance, and participation.

At the root of the Aion network is a purpose-built, public, third-generation blockchain called Aion-1. Designed to connect other blockchains and manage its own robust applications, Aion-1 also provides the economic system that incentivizes interoperability in the ecosystem.

AION tokens are the fuel used to create new blockchains, monetize inter-chain bridges, and secure the overall network.

AION MULTI-TIER BLOCKCHAIN NETWORK

The Aion multi-tier blockchain network is like a computer network, providing a protocol and standard for dissimilar systems to communicate.

However, in addition to information, the Aion network will pass logic and value among participating blockchains to create a contiguous value chain where every transaction occurs on-chain, with logic and value passing among chains as freely as liquid assets.

 

These infrastructures, protocols, and concepts will work together to guarantee transmission from an origin to its destination through interchain communication. The value of these technologies is that they enable one blockchain to transact with another blockchain, aswell as one blockchain to transact with every connected blockchain.

 Connecting Networks

Connecting networks are networks that facilitate interchain communication and interchain transactions between multiple private or public blockchain networks. Connecting networks are defined by requirements that specify their role within the context of the Aion network. Connecting networks and interchain transactions provide a universal interface that enables blockchain developers and users to route messages from one network to another. Specifically, a connecting network should 

provide the following core functionalities:

• Route messages between different blockchain networks through a common bridging protocol that involves translation and propagation

of the message, which must be considered final.

• Provide decentralized accountability.

• Provide a bridging protocol.

Aion network protocols specify standards for the external components. While the actual functionality and internal components of each connecting network might vary by vendor and intended purpose, these core functionalities should be implemented.

Point-to-point connections such as inter-blockchain relays or purpose-specific networks such as BTC Relay exist as central hubs. Such protocols, while simple and efficient, often result in complicated state channels that can give rise to contentious situations and are often at the mercy of one or a select group of individuals that run the relaying networks.

A connecting network instead uses bridges and a trust-free blockchain network to validate and ensure the correctness of flowing transactions. By introducing a third party that routes messages from point A to point B, the networks themselves do not have to manage difficult or unclear situations.

Interchain transaction

An interchain transaction is a trust-free message between blockchain networks, a critical infrastructure component powering interchain communication. Interchain transactions allow any connected blockchain networks to exchange information, like computers on the internet.

Interchain transactions are initially created on a source blockchain and then processed and forwarded by bridges and connecting networks before finally reaching the target blockchain. As stated previously, the creator of an interchain transaction must pay a transaction fee for the communication cost using AION tokens, thereby incentivizing all the participants in each junction of the route.

Interchain transactions are designed to be somewhat analogous to packets by specifying the hops they should perform from the source to target network, which potentially means passing through numerous connecting networks.

 Format

Ideally, the interchain transaction format would include three parts:

• Payload data that is specific to the creator and is typically regular transaction data, but potentially could be extended to arbitrary

data, at the discretion of the creator and the source network.

• Metadata about the interchain transaction that contains routing information and fees.

• Merkle proof that is only used when the sender wants to bypass the bridge.

The bridge and connecting network validators shall not interpret the data, but do check the integrity of the transaction as a whole. Privacysensitive information applications could choose to encrypt the data if necessary.

AION Compliant Blockchains

Aion-compliant blockchains refer to the participating blockchains that comply with the Aion protocol and on which bridges can be established easily to forward interchain transactions through Aion-1.

To be Aion-compliant, a blockchain must meet certain requirements including:

• Be decentralized in some fashion and support procedures commonly found in blockchains such as atomic broadcast and transactions.

The exact implementation is left to the discretion of the bridging protocol and the network itself.

• Be able to recognize interchain transactions as distinct from regular transactions.

• Be aware of the consensus protocol used by the bridge and store a transaction deemed valid.

• Implement locktime or a similar feature that allows tokens to be held by the network for a period of time.

Blockchain vendors will be able to adapt their offerings to be Aion-compliant. The Nuco blockchain infrastructure will be among the first Aion-compliant networks. More specific details on the requirements will be published as the project progresses.

Existing network compatibility

Unlike Aion-compliant blockchains, existing blockchains are not designed to be interoperable. To enable interchain transaction routing between the Aion network and existing blockchains, additional assumptions and/or compromises are required. In this section, we discuss the possibility of connecting the Ethereum blockchain to the Aion network.

 AION to Ethereum

As part of the bridge protocol, a lightweight BFT-based consensus algorithm is used by the bridge validators. In Aion connecting networks, these BFT votes are natively aggregated and processed by the blockchain validators. The Ethereum blockchain does not have this built-in functionality, so it needs an interchain transaction contract.

In this model, the interchain transaction contract will synchronize the public keys of bridge validators periodically, depending on the Aion network specification. When an interchain transaction is requested, the bridge validators sign for it with their private key and send the signature to the interchain transaction contract. The interchain transaction contract will collect all the votes (signatures) and provide a provable record of the event that contains the interchain transaction data and voting information. If at least two thirds of votes have been received, the bridge validators will use the record as evidence when confirming the interchain transaction.

Because the computation cost of multi-signature verification is high in the Ethereum blockchain (3,000 gas for a single ECDSA), a higher bridge fee is expected. To reduce this cost, a blockchain with full BFT functionality may be used in the bridge and only the outcome of voting will be stored on the Ethereum blockchain.

Ethereum to AION

Sending interchain transactions from the Ethereum blockchain to the Aion network is easier because of Ethereum’s programmable transaction size. Transactions intended for other blockchains will need to incorporate routing information in the data field.

There are two possible scenarios that can occur from an Ethereum interchain transaction (interchain transaction from the Ethereum blockchain to the Aion network), depending on the receiving address. If the transaction is sent to an externally-owned account, the data field can be used without modification. If the transaction is sent to a contract account, a workaround will be needed as the data is also interpreted by the Ethereum VM. One approach for this would be appending the interchain transaction magic tag and routing information to original call data, as long as the contract logic does not rely on the CALLDATASIZE op code.

To ensure transaction finality, the bridge may require additional block confirmations; typically major exchanges use 120 (half an hour) for transaction confidence.

AION-1 BLOCKCHAIN

The Aion-1 blockchain is the genesis implementation of the connecting network. It is designed to be a fair, distributed, open blockchain architecture

that is capable of fulfilling the requirements specified in the multi-tier blockchain network architecture. As an open blockchain,

Aion-1 was designed with the following goals:

• Connecting blockchains and external services (e.g., oracles and databases) together through the contiguous network and providing

accountable communication maintained through a decentralized network.

• Providing the necessary infrastructure to develop high-performance, decentralized, inter-blockchain applications.

• Creating a maintainable network through a robust and sustainable economic model.

Users will be able to deploy adjacent participating networks suitable for their own use cases and communicate with other networks through an accountable routing architecture. Users ranging from large enterprises hosting consortium networks to community-oriented open networks are all welcome to participate. In the future, decentralized applications could sit on top of the connecting network with logic driven by integrating data from a multitude of blockchain networks.

In addition, the Aion-1 blockchain is equipped with a full-functioning economic system intended to drive the continued maintenance and integrity of the network.

High-level overview

In this proposal, Aion-1 refers to the genesis, or first, implementation of a connecting network. The Aion-1 implementation also serves as a fully-functioning blockchain architecture, comparable to state-of-the-art implementations found in today’s market. We envision Aion-1 to be a standardized template that provides building blocks for future network implementations.

 Key components of the Aion-1 blockchain include:

• Consensus will be used to implement the proposed architecture of connecting two or more blockchains. Two variations of the BFT

protocol will be designed to reach consensus on the bridge and the connecting network:

– Bridge consensus is a lightweight variation to reach consensus quickly on the bridge.

– Connecting Network Consensus is a consensus protocol focused on providing stability at scale.

• Aion virtual machine (AVM) is a custom-built, lightweight, performant, and stable VM that leverages key characteristics of the

Java Virtual Machine (JVM), providing concurrency and robustness within a blockchain-specific context. The AVM is responsible for

running applications on top of Aion-1. The AVM will include its own scripting language (further described below)

Consensus

We first explore the consensus algorithm featured in Aion-1 to solve the requirements introduced by the connecting network concept. The consensus algorithm selected needs to maintain consensus of the blockchain for both on-chain transactions, and interchain transactions.

To fulfill these requirements in an efficient and immutable manner, Aion-1 uses a consensus algorithm based on a Byzantine Fault Tolerant

The Protocol

The Aion protocol enables the development of a federated blockchain network, making it possible to seamlessly integrate dissimilar blockchain systems in a multi-tier hub-and-spoke model, similar to the internet.

AION ENABLES USERS TO:

FEDERATE

Aion facilitates inter-blockchain communication via a high-performance bridging mechanism. Multiple bridges between pairs of chains allow both data and value to transfer between chains.

 

SCALE

Aion addresses the issues of scalability and performance by introducing a new high-performance virtual machine, and by enabling applications to operate across multiple chains.

SPOKE

Aion allows custom blockchain design, including different consensus algorithms and virtual machines, without sacrificing interoperability with other blockchains.

The Network

The Aion blockchain network is like a computer network that makes it possible for dissimilar systems to communicate. 

The Aion network will pass logic and value among participating blockchains as freely as liquid assets, where every transaction occurs without centralized intermediaries. 

The Aion network will be centered on a public, purpose-built third-generation blockchain called Aion-1. Designed to connect other blockchains and manage its own robust applications, Aion-1 also provides the crypto-economic system that incentivizes interoperability in the ecosystem.

The First Cross Blockchain Token

The AION token is initially being offered on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token. As soon as the Aion network is operational, these ERC-20 tokens can be seamlessly converted to AION network tokens, and will continue to be able to flow freely back and forth between these two blockchains.

The Power and Utility of AION Token

The AION token is the fundamental method of interaction within the Aion network and its primary currency, powering:

AION-1 OPERATIONS

Mechanics of the Aion-1 blockchain are powered by the AION token, including the ability for users to stake tokens to back validators of Aion’s consensus process.

BLOCKCHAIN SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS

Developing applications on Aion-1 requires the use of AION tokens to access the resources of Aion Virtual Machine. Based on the complexity of the application, the AVM consumes tokens as fuel.

INTER-CHAIN BRIDGES

In order to instantiate a bridge from Aion-1 to any participating blockchain, AION tokens must be staked into a bridge registry contract. Once built, other nodes can join the bridge by also staking AION tokens. Fees for inter-chain transactions are set by bridges, and distributed to the validators on those bridges.

PARTICIPATING BLOCKCHAINS

AION tokens can be used to access and create customized Aion-compatible participating blockchains.

ROADMAP

• The scripting language introduces precondition, postcondition, and assertion to help programmers clearly organize their thoughts

into a defensive pattern.

• Try/catch exceptions are fully supported by chain logic, emphasizing the handling of application state post exception rather than

state rollbacks

• Bounds of array access are checked at runtime.

The addition of tooling provides the means of guiding the developer towards these mindsets, perhaps adding warnings and best practices

in areas where unprotected code is found. Other features will also be considered in the future.

MEET THE TEAM

 

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Writter By : yuni52

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