'Free Transactions Cleared in Five Seconds': Platform to Help Businesses Use Blockchain

A startup is aiming to attract social networks, gaming companies and mobile payment providers through a "Full-service platform" that eliminates the headaches associated with using blockchain technology to reach customers.

Aerum says its offering is geared towards entrepreneurs and businesses that create DApps based on the Ethereum protocol.

Through its platform, Aerum claims it can offer transactions that are free for customers and cleared in as little as five seconds.

Over time, it has the ambition of becoming the number one platform based on Ethereum, with its lite paper stating: "Aerum's goal is not competing with Ethereum but supplementing it as a high-performance smart contract protocol with decentralized governance."

Aerum warns it is unlikely that businesses or consumers will ever fully embrace the opportunities that blockchain brings unless the infrastructure is simplified, as well as the technical hurdles that it takes to get a project off the ground.

What a viable blockchain looks likeAerum argues there are several boxes that a blockchain platform needs to tick if it is going to have any chance of effectively challenging current payment processing companies: reliability when it comes to network availability, inexpensive rates for merchants, a practical governance model and an easy way to transfer value to and from the world's biggest cryptocurrencies.

"Easy, intuitive token transfers" between Aerum's native token and Ethereum are achieved through "Powerful cross-chain atomic swaps" which take place directly in a user's wallet.

Aerum's offering is open source and will be available for free use under an MIT license.

Winning recognitionIn a blog post, Aerum revealed that it was recognized as one of the top three ICOs during a privately held event featuring a total of nine participants at the Blockchain Solutions World Congress in Barcelona.

"The P2P economy has always been around, but with such a dramatic increase in capability and efficiency that blockchain provides, we can expect to see a significant reconfiguration in the economy as we know it," Aerum's white paper adds.