Ergo mainnet was launched by leading blockchain researchers in 2019 and is a deep rework of Bitcoin blockchain. It uses powerful scripting to unlock the full potential of Bitcoin and solve the security and scalability challenges. Moreover, its mainnet provided users a truly decentralized, efficient, secure, and easy platform. Here the implementation of decentralized applications (dApps), off-chain protocols, and smart contracts is possible.
According to Alexander Chepurnoy, core-developer Ergo, the platform is based on many observations from Bitcoin and brings with it the latest research and technology in the blockchain space. Ergo is a technically and economically advanced version of existing blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Moreover, it takes a radically different approach to become a DeFi and crypto contracts platform. Such advancements make Ergo a suitable platform to build use cases that if built on other platforms sound unrealistic, risky, and expensive.
On 23 January 2021, Ergo is coming up with the online Ergo Summit 2021. According to the official announcement, this will mark a new era of the Ergo blockchain. That’s because the team will unveil the details of its revolutionary stablecoin protocol AgeUSD and Hardening upgrade. The stablecoin is a combined development effort of IOHK, Emurgo, and Ergo Foundation.
https://t.co/dbS6TSUlnS pic.twitter.com/dK6F6HQd6K
— Ergo (@ergoplatformorg) December 22, 2020
Going beyond Bitcoin fundamentals
Interestingly, Ergo uses Bitcoin fundamentals wherever possible. That’s because these fundamentals are most rigorously well-tested. For example, it uses Proof-of-Work (PoW) instead of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) because PoW is well-studied and offers high-security guarantees. However, Ergo does attempt to solve the mining resources centralization issue of PoW. It has developed a solution that enforces solo mining. Furthermore, the miner must hold the private keys to the mining node address. Effectively, Ergo is able to enhance the decentralization of the network.
Even when it is not a privacy coin, it does support extremely powerful privacy solutions. For Example, it supports an on-chain mixer. This mixer combines CoinJoin with zk-SNARKs and creates ZeroJoin, a powerful privacy-enhancing protocol.
Furthermore, we are all haunted by the question that what happens to the Bitcoin economy when all the coins are mined. Well, Ergo has a solution for that too. Interestingly, for the coins not moved in over four years, Ergo charges a fee to store these coins on the network. This makes Ergo mining far more stable than Bitcoin and other PoW networks.
Impressively, Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson is an Ergo fan.
@cryptomanran asked Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson other than $ADA what other coins would he invest in. No surprise that $ERG @ergoplatformorg was one of the three projects named. Learn from Charles and find out what makes $ERG one of the most exciting projects in crypto. pic.twitter.com/DTT5EDuEtD
— ergo101 Ʃ (@ERGO_101) December 29, 2020
Ergo Summit and the Simplified New Stablecoin Design
Ergo Summit, a one-day blockchain summit will bring some of the biggest thought leaders and innovators of the blockchain industry to the stage. The primary objective of the summit is to explore key aspects of the DeFi space and unveil the stablecoin AgeUSD.
The speaker list is jam-packed with blockchain researchers like Alexander Chepurnoy ( Ergo Foundation Member), Robert Kornacki(Head Of Research at EMURGO), Sebastien Guillemot (Co-VP of Eng. & Cardano PM), Nicolas Arqueros CTO in EMURGO, Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo ( Technical Project Director in IOHK) and more.
What problems will AgeUSD solve?
There exist over 200 privately-developed stablecoins. However, most of them do not meet all the characteristics of an ideal decentralized stablecoin. By definition, a stablecoin emission should be decentralized, it must exhibit price stability, and must be simple.
Problems with existing stablecoins
Stablecoins | Levels of Decentralization | Challenges |
Tether (USDT) | Highly Centralized | Centralized minting |
USDC | Highly Centralized | Banking Partner risk |
MakerDAO | Semi-decentralized | Highly complex |
Gemini Dollar | Highly-centralized | Banking Partner risk |
Most of the existing stablecoins have a centralized issuer. Thus, there always exists a single point of failure or manipulation. For example, Tether has been time and again questioned whether each USDT floating in the market has a US dollar collateral in their bank account or not.
AgeUSD approach
According to the details shared with Altcoin Buzz, StatiCoin inspires the AgeUSD design. StatiCoin is a stablecoin protocol that uses two types of ERC20 tokens, a StatiCoin and a Riskcoin. The volatility transfers to RiskCoin and that provides stability to the StatiCoin.
Furthermore, the economic model of AgeUSD was designed by IOHK, Ergo, and Emurgo. Its economic model maintains the conservative settings for collateral reserves and avoids the need for liquidations. Along with that, it supports a fully decentralized stablecoin emission setup. Thus, AgeUSD will offer the world a stable, simple, and decentralized stablecoin.
The team will reveal more technical details of AgeUSD at Ergo Summit on 23 January 2021.
ERG Price
ERG, the native Ergo token has jumped by over 77% in the last 14 days. At the time of press, the ERG token is trading close to $0.739.