Altcoin Explorer: Ontology, the Enterprise-Grade Blockchain to Protect Data and System

Ontology is a new generation public blockchain project and a collaborative platform based on distributed trust. Built by the parent company of NEO, OnChain, Ontology focuses on solving issues related to identity security and data integrity. Ontology was built to allow companies of any size and sector to be able to integrate blockchain into their system, making usability its strong point.

The Ontology ecosystem was born from Onchain, a Chinese IT company dedicated to the research and development of blockchain-based systems. Onchain was born in 2014 with the vision of promoting the adoption of large-scale ledger distributed in the business sector and is supported by the Chinese conglomerate Fosun Group. Ontology is not the first project launched by the Chinese company. Initially, Co-founders CEO From HongFei and CTO Erik Zhang created the NEO / GAS blockchain (originally called Antshares) in April 2016 and later in 2017, they created Ontology.

As a consequence, Ontology Coin originally started out as a NEP-5 token (NEP-5 is a type of NEO token) on the NEO blockchain. However, on June 30th, 2018, the Ontology mainnet was launched and NEP-5 ONT was swapped for native mainnet ONT. After migration, the Ontology platform introduced a two-coin system (ONT and ONG) as it is the case with the NEO blockchain. Ontology did not start an ICO like all other projects at the time of launch but opted for a series of airdrops on the NEO blockchain in February 2018. The most advantageous one was the airdrop towards the newsletter subscribers who received 1000 ONTs. Another 500 ONTs were distributed to NEO DevCon attendees and NEO holders, the latter with a ratio of 2 ONT for every 10 NEOs. 

Ontology Ecosystem

Although it is a public blockchain, Ontology was created to meet the needs of companies, large or small, who wanted to integrate distributed systems within their business model while keeping their data private. Among the applications that can be built, we find ID management, smart contracts, decentralized data exchange, and the creation of digital assets and applications. Something very similar to other smart contract platforms. One difference though is that Ontology is not really a single blockchain, but a blockchain network. The companies that exploit Ontology in fact create private spaces that depend however on the main Ontology blockchain. Ontology seems very similar to Plasma for Ethereum in this sense. 

The blockchain Ontology Network can ideally be divided into three main parts:

– Ontology Infrastructure.

– Ontology Module and protocols.

– Ontology Common applications.

The Ontology Infrastructure or basic level is composed of ONT blockchains (an ecosystem of private and non-private blockchains), the ONT blockchain Framework and the Interaction Protocol, a function that allows it to be compatible with other blockchains.

The second level, or Ontology Module and Protocols, consists of some frameworks such as ONT ID, ONT Data, and ONT Scores, respectively a standard for distributed identity, for cooperation and data exchange, and a framework that allows the establishment of a credit score logic for businesses. 

Finally the third level, the Ontology Common Applications includes applications used by users such as ONTO, ONT Trust Search, and ONT DDFX. ONTO is a completely decentralized client product, offering users sovereignty over their digital identities, digital assets and more. ONT Trust search is an engine that authenticates, connects services for individuals, assets, objects, etc. DDFX is the Distributed data exchange framework. It allows customizing the data trading marketplaces (data exchange markets) with guaranteed data and financial security.

ONT Role

The role of ONT within this ecosystem is to guarantee governance rights to token holders who are remunerated through Ontology Gas (ONG), a double token system similar to that implemented on NEO. ONGs are consumed when doing things like executing smart contracts. The rewards are also distributed for those who do not participate in governance but simply decide to hold ONT. You can calculate your ROI on the ontcalc.com website. The price of ONT is around $ 0.38 and is available on various platforms such as MXC, Binance, OKEx, DigiFinex and many others. The easiest way to store the token is through the official OWallet (desktop) wallet, or the ONTO mobile version.

Conclusions

Ontology has gained some notoriety in China thanks to its relationship with NEO and has built a healthy community that has more than 100k members including twitter, telegram, and Discord. Given the project’s focus, which targets small or large companies (mostly Chinese), Ontology is facing other industry giants such as Alibaba and Tencent who are developing blockchain solutions. But what the project must focus on is their innovation capacity and the fact that they are a public blockchain. In fact, the team is working on solutions such as Sharding and Multi Cross-chain to allow the development of new useful services both for businesses and for the crypto community.