æternity is a public, open-source blockchain protocol that enables a platform for next-generation decentralized applications with high scalability. Its core components are written in the functional programming language Erlang and its smart contract language - Sophia - is also functional. æternity has a stellar team of developers including Robert Virding - co-creator of Erlang, John Hughes - co-designer of Haskell, and Ulf Norell - co-designer of the Agda programming language for formal verification. Unlike other blockchain platforms, the æternity protocol itself incorporates a number of essential technological features. State channels for off-chain scaling, oracles for real-world information, and a naming system for increased user-friendliness are all implemented on Layer 1. æternity also features SDKs in Javascript, GO, Phyton, Java, as well as a middleware and a development suite that streamline smart contract development. æternity incorporates the Bitcoin-NG consensus algorithm developed by academics from Cornell University and uses the Cuckoo Cycle mining algorithm for Sybil attack protection. AE tokens, the native cryptocurrency of the æternity platform, is used for both - an economic unit of account and as ballots in the community-driven on-chain governance votes.
Clams were initially distributed to 3,208,032 BTC, LTC and DOGE addresses based on the 12 May 2014 snapshot of these blockchains. Each of these address received 4.60545574 CLAMs. 63,381 addresses have been dug comprising 291,898.39 CLAMs. If all the distributed CLAMs were dug up, the total money supply would be 15,009,015.13. There is no Proof-of-Work stage for Clams and the network is now secured by Proof-of-Stake.