Glossary

Aeternity Blockchain

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A blockchain network that works on a hybrid consensus approach; both Proof of Work and Proof of Stake.

What Is the Aeternity Blockchain?

Aeternity blockchain is a hybrid PoW/PoS protocol that aims at providing excellent efficiency, transparent governance, and solution to scalability issues. The system will enable millions of users to leverage the best features of decentralized architectures, including the security of public blockchains and the efficiency of private blockchains.
The Aeternity blockchain is in fact a hybrid between Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanisms. 

Aeternity's hybrid approach allows smart contracts and oracles to process information off-chain for increased privacy, faster transactions, and lower fees.

One of the major aims of Aeternity is to address some of the blockchain scalability and privacy issues. It is being built by a team led by Yanislav Malahov, who has been involved in blockchain technology since the early days and was one of the original contributors to Ethereum.

Aeternity is designed to improve on some of the limitations in existing blockchains, particularly related to scalability. To do this, it uses a hybrid approach that combines features from both on-chain and off-chain solutions. The team behind the project also plans to implement new features that will improve scalability, privacy, and governance.
Aeternity is one of the blockchain networks that use Decentralized Oracle Machine. A decentralized oracle is a piece of software that acts as an interface between the blockchain and the world outside it. Oracles are needed for smart contracts to interact with other networks, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Because of the nature of blockchains, smart contracts typically cannot access data from sources outside the blockchain.

Oracles are used to retrieve real-world data and feed it directly into smart contracts on the blockchain (e.g., information about weather conditions, flight times, sporting event results). They retrieve external data and submit it to a smart contract in the form of a transaction. In this way, they act as a bridge between off-chain data and on-chain applications.

For example, if you were to bet on a sporting event using a smart contract, you can use the oracle to automatically trigger payment when that event is over. The oracle would then go out into the real world, get the result of the game, and feed that information back into the contract so that it can release funds accordingly.

Aeternity’s rapid popularity is mostly due to its mobile-first design approach. Since it is using cutting-edge solutions to deal with blockchain scalability issues, it is becoming an aspiring network for dApps developers.