It's been nearly a month since the Ardor blockchain launched, and I'm sad to say that I just don't get it.
Years ago I was very interested in Nxt, which was one of the very first pure Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies and at the time had one of the better distributed asset exchanges. It was created in early 2014 around the same time as Counterparty and several months before the very earliest versions of Bitshares, and it was a vastly superior product in many respects. Fast confirmation times (compared to Counterparty), usable desktop client (compared to Bitshares). Unfortunately my enthusiasm for their products has waned considerably since then as it seems they've lost a good deal of momentum, despite raising millions in the Ignis ICO.
Then Ardor came along. I figured it would be a really revolutionary new platform that would let developers and businesses take their stuff to a whole new level! Unfortunately, now I'm wondering if my hopes were unfounded.
What does Ardor do?
The big selling point is Child Chains. I found this comment on Reddit:
Taken from this thread.
That redditor is claiming that the main reason we should like Ardor is it lets you run your very own blockchain without having to worry about security. Sound familiar? I feel like an Ethereum fan might say that Ethereum lets you do the same thing. The real question is this:
What can a child chain do?
In a very limited sense, DEX platforms like Bitshares and Nxt also let you create something that looks like a cryptocurrency without worrying about blockchain security. In Bitshares, for example, you can pay a small fee and create a User-Issued Asset (UIA), a token that you can then sell, trade, send, burn, whatever you want. There isn't very much you can do with that token, but it's a legitimate and secure cryptocurrency nonetheless.
Here is a screenshot I took of a bit of marketing material that tells us what Ardor child chains can do:
Source
The Nxt people (they call themselves Jelurida now for some reason) absolutely love their opaque names for things. But all of these things they're saying that child chains can do are things that Nxt (and Ignis) can already do. In fact, they very clearly state that Ignis will have all of these (apparently hard-coded) features enabled. So... Why go create our own child chain if Ignis already does it all?
(Maybe because we're ICO maniacs and our business model involves raising funds by selling an extraneous utility token?)
What if I wanted to create a clone of Cryptokitties as a child chain on Ardor?
Screenshot from cryptokitties.co
Cryptokitties is a proof-of-concept blockchain application that runs on Ethereum, where you can go buy these unique collectible digital cats, trade them, and breed them. It's a very cute system of digital toys, and I find that it serves as a useful example of a distributed application that needs weird special features. There are essentially two special functionalities that cryptokitties needs:
- An algorithm that creates and sells, at specific intervals, unique digital assets (kitties).
- A mechanism for "breeding": take a pair of compatible kitties and create a new kitty from them.
It's hard for me to see how those two functions are likely to be special cases of some more-general system, including the hard-coded features that an Ardor child chain is allowed to have. Cryptokitties feels to me like it's a great example of a very simple application that can't be replicated on a blockchain unless the blockchain has some kind of advanced (probably Turing-complete) scripting system.
In principle, I suppose we could create an Ardor child chain that just has "Asset Exchange" enabled, and then start pumping out digital cat assets using some opaque centralized algorithm. We could then use a second centralized algorithm to do the breeding part of it. But unless Ardor has some advanced scripting capabilities that they're not telling us about, I doubt you could do Cryptokitties on-chain on an Ardor child chain.
Parting thoughts
My article is fairly critical of the Ardor platform due to the limited use-cases I see for child chains. However, it's very possible that I've fundamentally missed something important about how child chains actually work. If so, I hope people can point out my error in the comments. I also may post a link to my article over on Nxtforum.org, and if I get good responses I'll plan to write a follow-up article here with some of the feedback I receive.
I certainly don't mean to disparage anybody with all of this; I just fear that Ardor is an advanced Blockchain 2.0 project in a 3.0 world.
Bubble economics produce bubble tech. Remember pets.com sold for couple of billions. Now it seems funny and dump, it wasn't so in the middle of tech bubble.
Same thing here.
Please elaborate about this.
I could not use bitshares myself.
Could not get help either.
The modern Bitshares client is much better than the one I was talking about, but it can still have issues. In particular it doesn't work very well on older computers, I've found.
My PC is from 2010.
Blocktrades let me register and lets me sign in, only to immediately find myself not signed in.
My browsers allow cookies, and the problem is not due to clock either.
Unlike you, blocktrades' technical support did not mention PC age.
Ideas about causes and solutions?
Blocktrades? Like Blocktrades.us?
Yes.
Is there another blocktrades?
No, I was just wanting to confirm that you're talking about Blocktrades, not bitshares. They're different things.
From my Laptop which I use almost always, I could not use neither of them.
Bitshares I could not even register to, while blocktrades I could register and sign in, but not stay signed in nor commit a trade.
From another PC, not my own, I could get to registration process in bitshares.
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@biophil i found a great priviledge to comment on your post...looking forward to you visiting my post..thank you boss..ill need your vote and comment ...thanks a lot
https://steemit.com/life/@hopsy/fact-about-life
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Hello biophil
I would like to discuss about pocket.
Ok! What do you want to know?
I have an idea. It will be better to use pocket as a upvote token instead of giving away like this.
Let's say 1 pocket worths 0.01 STU(Steem token unit that shown in payout). So everyone who who upvote your post will get token that equivalent to their upvote value. In this way pocket token is useful somehow. Currently pocket token is using only for comment. I would like to extend its functionality to upvote. How do you think?
I originally thought about doing that with pocket. The trouble is that doing this would require putting inflation into pocket, and I wanted to avoid that and I have publicly committed not to add inflation to pocket in the future.
It would not be all that hard to create a new token that did act like an upvote token. Are you interested in helping create such a thing?
My answer is Yes. Because other whale like officalfuzzy already did like this. But we need to buy their token.
pocketsend:101@ptcmyanmar
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Hello, I read all your article, and I'm really interested, could you advise me to get the kittens? Well, I would like my daughter to start playing with it while doing cryptocurrencies, and that way she gets involved in this new world.
and vote for you, stop by my blog and vote. Regards!
I've never actually done anything with the kittens, so I can't give you much advice there. But you can follow the link in my post for more info!
Thank you very much, can you go through and read my publication?
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@genesisrugeles/aumenta-el-uso-del-bitcoin
Still don't understand child chains, so unless one becomes relevant, we agree Ardor just isn't that interesting. Furthermore, there are WAY too many cryptos who claim to be a platform for other cryptos. There can't possibly be more then 3 of these that succeed, and two of those by geographic dispersion reasons only.
When does Ethereum switch to dPoS?
You are very good genius post you can be a good example for other steem users. thanks for sharing post ..
Great article. I didn't expect to understand this kind of topic until you write it into a simple yet informative article. Thank you for this.
pocketsend:101@biophil, that helped a little on my somewhat clueless knowledge of blockchains thanks.
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What the difference between child chains and sidechains.
I think sidechains don't interact natively with their main chains, whereas the whole idea of child chains (at least in the Ardor lingo) is that they're completely native to the main chain. So you can trustlessly trade on-chain between Ignis and Ardor tokens, for example.
No just read on it: side chains interact nativity only if the main chain agrees to interact with it nativity ie...core adding decentralized two way pegs for rsk.co
By the looks of article i read child chains are decentralized sidechains removing the peg idea with letting trading idea.
up to you
?
wooow child chain is really tired. I wish I had regretted it now. It's not too late for anything, but we still have a great chance. We can invest. :)))
Please @biophil how do I earn up votes from @gentlebot ?
I may be wrong, and biophil knows more about me about how his bots work, but I noticed his bots have a tendency to gravitate towards rewarding comments to the heavier users here.
I also remember they do not upvote a post once it was upvoted by its own author, which does not prevent the author from upvoting it once it was upvoted by them.
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You got a 2.63% upvote from @upyou courtesy of @stimialiti!
I have read your article about "Is Ardor really all that great?". But I still do not understand what is meant by Child Chains, how the mechanism of work. Please explain in more detail. thanks @biophil. Greetings.
this post is really interesting! thanks for this :D
nice information, thanks to you.
Nice man, i vote you
Excellent information, which is important to consider when investing
Thanks for the update @biophil, I will find time to explore this later.
I have a very small investment in Ardor, I´m not realy into the project, but for what I been reading and considering your post, looks like they want to be competitors of the platforms you mentioned (Bitshares and Nxt, ...).
Ardor is an upgrade of Nxt.
nice...
I hope you will follow me again
this post is really interesting!
@Biophil
Good post
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Nice @biophil
Very Nice post. Thank you @biophil, you are really very kind and the great.