SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Robert Mao, former researcher with Microsoft Research, serial entrepreneur, and technology innovator, together with Flavien Charlon, the creator of Colored Coins, Open Assets Protocol, and Openchain, today announced the launch of ArcBlock, the world’s first blockchain ecosystem for building and deploying decentralized applications. ArcBlock is aiming to seamlessly connect between the existing system and services, and blockchain networks, throughout dynamic industries.
Looking back on 2017, Bitcoin and the I.C.O. (Initial Coin Offering), which have been considered as "killer applications" separately in both Blockchain 1.0 as well as Blockchain 2.0 generations, have ushered in explosive growth. The price of Bitcoin surged 20 times, from $1,000 at the beginning of the year to $20,000 at its highest point. The total market value of the top 100 cryptocurrencies have exceeded $600 billion, with I.C.O.s raising more than $6.133 billion in the past 11 months, accounting for 96 percent of total financing over the past four years.
The sizzling Bitcoin and I.C.O. markets caused a surge in attention within the global community about blockchain technology, as it is now widely believed to be a game changer. However, this also brings certain uncertainties when upgrading to Blockchain 3.0, because it lacks the power of penetration into the real business world; numerous difficulties and obstacles prevent its real-world application; and its "infancy" stage on the development of decentralized application.
The birth of ArcBlock is exactly the right time to further empower the blockchain technology to be implemented into the real world, and has an extraordinary epoch-making significance in the long run.
Revolutionary New Design Is Leading the Blockchain 3.0 Trend
“ArcBlock is a comprehensive solution that combines blockchain technology with cloud computing, rather than a standalone software package or set of A.P.I.s,” Mao says. “In addition, it’s a marketplace driven by token economy. ArcBlock’s “miners” will contribute not only computing resources to the system, but also reusable components, new services, or ready-to-deploy applications to get token rewards. This is a Blockchain 3.0 application ecosystem developed by the entire ArcBlock community—we’re just jump-starting the project.”
ArcBlock’s Open Chain Access Protocol enables the application to adapt to a variety of blockchain protocols including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger, and more. It eliminates the platform lock-in issue and enables applications to run on multiple blockchain fabrics, vastly improving the developer and user experiences. Blocklet is another revolutionary component that takes advantage of the latest micro-service architecture and server-less computing technology. Blocklet is a high-level application protocol that can be implemented with any platform or language. It leverages the full capacity of the native platform and offers the same level of performance, rather than running on a low-performing virtual machine.
Blocklet does more than access blockchains. It connects to any existing data source, and performs both on-chain and off-chain computing. Its unique design aims to provide a high-performance, user-friendly, cost-efficient, and protocol-agnostic platform.
“We believe that ArcBlock represents a major technological advance that will usher in the 3.0 generation of blockchain applications,” Charlon says.
Building and deploying decentralized blockchain applications with ArcBlock has significant advantages over the vendor-specific frameworks available in today’s market, including:
1. Built for the New Token Economy
ArcBlock is a self-evolving ecosystem—it’s not just a software platform built by one centralized organization. ArcBlock, Inc. and the ArcBlock Foundation are igniting the project; the platform is driven by the token economy and will continue to develop and grow on its own.
2. Optimized for the Best Experience
The ArcBlock platform is using a “top-down” strategy that centers on the user experience. Applications built with ArcBlock offer reactive, real-time experiences. Users can simply access them from a web browser (no additional plugins required), or download a mobile app directly from an app store. Either way, the process is familiar.
3. Built for the Cloud
ArcBlock is designed to run natively in the cloud. Initially we will build on top of Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure, then expand to support Google Compute Engine, major cloud-computing players in China, and other platforms.
4. Built with an Open Standard
In addition to open sourcing their core components, ArcBlock will contribute actively to a variety of blockchain communities. ArcBlock’s team members are involved actively with a range of standards organizations, non-profit foundations, and committees. These currently include the W3C Blockchain Community Group Community Group (CG), IEEE Blockchain Special Interest Group (SIG), Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Linux Foundation, and Hyperledger Foundation.
Following Cryptocurrency and I.C.O., Decentralized Apps Are the Future
ArcBlock set out to design and develop its revolutionary platform at the beginning of 2017. 80 percent of the first-stage system’s development has already been completed. ArcBlock has also achieved initial intent of cooperation with many businesses, platforms, and institutions in the fields of I.T., education, publishing, culture and tourism, health, and smart cities. At the end of November 2017, ArcBlock successfully raised angel-round funding. The investor is a leading capital institution that is repositioning its all-out investment effort in the blockchain industry. They certainly recognize the promise of ArcBlock.
“When people talk about blockchain today, they only see crypto currencies represented by Bitcoin,” Mao explains. “Now blockchain is evolving to a stage with decentralized applications at the core. In the future, the value decentralized apps create will exceed what cryptocurrencies create today. We founded ArcBlock and built a global team. The purpose is to create the next-generation blockchain ecosystem for building and deploying decentralized applications. We’re extremely excited about the bright future of blockchain.”
To learn more about ArcBlock, visit arcblock.io or join our Telegram community at t.me/ArcBlock.
