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.
Loopring is an open protocol for building decentralized exchanges. Loopring has quickly gained visibility as one of the decentralized exchange options that’s making progress on trading across multiple blockchains. Loopring’s solution utilizes ring transactions and order matching to facilitate asset exchanges. Essentially, it aggregates the order books of other exchanges. This allows any exchange, decentralized or centralized, to utilize Loopring’s protocol to match orders. Part of providing an open protocol is remaining blockchain agnostic. Hence, the first Loopring token (LRC) was launched on Ethereum, but it also plans to launch Loopring NEO (LRN) and Loopring QTUM (LRQ). The plans to launch Loopring NEO are coming along. The distribution of the new tokens, LRN, has already begun. Essentially, the token distribution involves two phases: an investor sale and an airdrop. This guide will look at both phases, how to buy LRN, and what to expect from Loopring NEO. The big selling point of Loopring’s exchange solution is you never have to deposit funds to Loopring. With most exchanges, even other decentralized exchanges, you still have to transfer funds to their wallets. On Loopring, you can keep your funds in your own private wallet when trading. Of course, that creates a challenge for Loopring because the exchange no longer controls the wallet and that means smart contracts need to do the work of verifying that transactions are legitimate and confirmed. When a trade occurs, it happens user to user, with no middleman. Loopring finds the match and coordinates the terms of the trade, but it never controls the assets. Loopring is one of the first projects to attempt launching across multiple blockchain ecosystems. This experiment is interesting and exciting. It also has the potential to be lucrative if Loopring continues to increase in value.