Ardor is the latest in the growing field of contenders for blockchain as a service (BaaS) providers. Ardor provides the blockchain infrastructure for businesses and institutions to leverage the strengths of blockchain technology without having to invest in developing custom blockchain solutions. Instead, Ardor offers a main chain that handles blockchain security and decentralization plus customizable child chains that come ready to use, right out of the box, for various business applications. The developers of Ardor are the same company behind the open source Ethereum’s ERC20 protocol to build on top of the Ethereum blockchain. They pay fees in Ether. To test Ardor’s capabilities and serve as an example of an operating child chain, the Ardor developers have created Ignis. Ignis will implement all of the customizable features that come from the Nxt code base. Essentially, Ignis will be a proof of concept and could be the first of many more child chains on the Ardor platform. The Ignis ICO recently raised $15 million in funding for development. In the future, Ardor child chains could be used to create equity trading platforms, digital file transfer services, private enterprise blockchain applications, and many more use cases. Ardor’s strengths are quick time to setup and wide customizability, making it a great option for companies looking to leverage blockchain without the resources to dedicate to custom development. Ardor has many architectural advantages. One of them and perhaps the most influential one is that it has been created using Java; one of the most widespread programming languages in the world today. This is definitely a step in the right direction seeing as it becomes ten times easier for a commercial application to succeed if the development language is one which most programmers can relate to.
Hydro enables new and existing private systems to seamlessly integrate and leverage the immutable & transparent dynamics of a public blockchain to enhance application and document security, identity management, transactions, and artificial intelligence. Hydro enables developers to seamlessly deploy blockchain in their existing applications, without the need to create expensive infrastructure. If you are building a fintech app in investing, savings, or insurance, Hydrogen is already leveraging the Hydro blockchain technology. Through the Hydrogen API, you can build a blockchain application without being a blockchain developer. The proposed technology is called “Raindrop” - a transaction performed through a smart contract that validates private system access publicly, and can complement existing private authentication methods. The technology is intended to provide additional security for sensitive financial data that is increasingly at risk from hacking and breaches. Initial implementation of the Hydro Raindrop is performed on the Hydrogen API Platform. This modular set of APIs is available to enterprises and developers globally to prototype, build, test, and deploy sophisticated financial technology platforms and products. The Hydro Raindrop will be made available to the world developer community as open source software, to allow developers to integrate the Hydro Raindrop with any REST API.