ARK: Ecosystem of Linked Chains

#ARK Highlights*

Started: November 7th, 2016
Market cap: $211,222,173
Price per coin: $2.16
Reddit subscribers: 8,968
Twitter followers: 22,490
Facebook likes: 5,173
Slack members: 8,678
Circulating supply: 97,981,284
Max supply: 125,000,000 (will inflate over time)
Consensus method: DPOS
Whitepaper: https://ark.io/Whitepaper.pdf

What is ARK?

ARK is an ambitious crypto project aiming to create a user-friendly platform for mass consumer adoption via an ecosystem of linked chains. Essentially the ambition here is to become the "All-in-One Blockchain Solution."** To give a rough idea of what this means, think of Google; yes, it's the world's leading search engine but it's also developed and integrated maps, productivity tools (sheets, docs, calendar, etc.), file storage (Google Drive), social media platforms (Google+), media platforms (YouTube, Google Music) and more.

Of course ARK is very different from Google. It started as a fork of Crypti (Lisk, which most of the ARK team worked on, also forked from Crypti) and is based on a decentralized delegated proof of stake (DPOS) consenus method. All of the products and services that ARK will offer won't necessarily be owned by ARK but will be a collaboration of side chains - in fact, that's one of the things that really makes ARK stand out from other platform concepts. Other blockchains can communicate with the ARK ecosystem, thus contributing their own technology to improve the platform while benefiting from the capabilities of other linked chains within the ecosystem.

There are an endless number of blockchain solutions out there and with ARK, all of these technologies could co-exist in the same ecosystem of linked chains creating an endless number of real world use-cases. Some early use cases in the gaming industry are outlined in the whitepaper:

• Gaming service tokens;
• Streaming platform for live gaming;
• Group sales (ie: Groupon); and
• Physical card printing.

The most promising thing about ARK is the idea of the push button block chain, which is yet to be released but is progressing (see the roadmap here). This would allow others (companies, communities) to clone the ARK chain with built-in SmartBridge integration. Rather than building an entire blockchain from scratch they can simply use the existing capabilities in the ARK ecosystem with their own set of delegates for their own purposes - all in the click of a button. This is huge for consumer adoption and the advancement of blockchain technology as it eliminates two major obstacles - developer knowledge and starting a chain from scratch.

How does it all work?

Other blockchains are able to connect with the ARK ecosystem by adding a code snippet. Now, at first glance this seems like a major hurdle as existing chains would need to modify their code which would likely lead to a hard fork. However, ARK has developed a brilliant solution - if the other chains can't add a code snippet then they can make use of SmartBridge technology.

SmartBridge, which acts as an encoded listener between two chains, is one of the major advantages of ARK as it allows almost any entity (including centralized ones!) to interact with the ARK ecosystem. Not only that, but SmartBridge allows these functions to live on a side chain therefore not burdening the main ARK blockchain.

A basic example - John wants to send 2 ETH to Jim but only holds ARK tokens. Typically, John would have to exchange ARK to ETH using something like Shapeshift, receive the funds in an ETH wallet and then send an ETH transaction from that wallet to Jim's address. Well, with the ARK ecosystem John could send ARK straight to Jim's wallet and have it arrive in ETH as desired. How?

A transaction to send 2 ETH from an ARK wallet is created and the encoded listener realizes that the output needs to be 2 ETH but the input is in ARK, so a currency conversion needs to take place. Making use of SmartBridge, Shapeshift can then convert the ARK into ETH, verify the data and complete the transaction (sending 2 ETH to Jim's wallet). Under the hood, multiple interactions with more than one technology have happened but all John did was send a transaction from his ARK wallet.

For more info (and a better explanation) of how smart bridges work, read the official blog post - What is the ARK SmartBridge, and How Does It Work?

Delegated Proof of Stake***

ARK uses delegated proof of stake (DPOS) with 51 forging delegates who are voted in by token holders. Delegates are responsible for verifying transactions and generally supporting the ARK ecosystem; as a reward there is a constant (will not change over time) reward of 2 ARK per block. Block times are extremely quick at only 8 seconds, with each block holding 25 transactions.

DPOS is a great feature for ARK as it is inherently more decentralized than POW and encourages token holders to do exactly that - hold tokens. There is a major incentive to stake tokens and vote (at the cost of 1 ARK, will be less in future****) for a delegate and that is income sharing. Numbers will fluctuate over time but at the time of writing, voters can expect to receive up to 15% yearly ROI***** which makes it a solid investment to hold - the best part about it is that to receive the rewards your tokens just need to be in the ARK wallet, no need to run a node 24/7!

The team

ARK was originally built by a team of 30 people from all over the world, though currently the core team appears to be 13 people. There's not exactly any high profile members on the team, however as mentioned most of the team came from Crypti and Lisk so the experience is definitely there and they have made some great progress on the road map. For a practical example of what they're capable of and how they put consumer adoption first, check out the wallet - it's arguably the best crypto wallet out there and the mobile version is soon to come.

What makes ARK great

• Crosschain integration using SmartBridge;
• Accepts 9 coding languages, with a total of 15 planned for on roadmap;
• Push button cloning for consumer adoption;
• Decentralization through DPOS;
• Passive ROI (no need to run the wallet 24/7);
• Most of the core Crypti/Lisk team works on ARK;
• Fantastic wallet experience with Ledger integration; and
• Potential to be the all-in-one solution.

Concerns about ARK

• Unclear exactly what role the ARK token will play and what it will be worth;
• Limited SmartBridge partnerships at this time;
• Highly ambitious - can they deliver? A more focused product may be more likely to come to life; and
• Limited use at this time, in early stages.

Competitors

LISK. While not a direct competitor (both have their own unique approach and ultimate goals), LISK is another ambitious platform project that has some similarities and it was the platform the ARK team worked on for a long time. However, the fact that much of the team left to work on ARK and the SmartBridge/Push Button technology gives ARK the edge if stacking the two against each other.

Cosmos. Probably the most direct competitor as Cosmos is probably just as ambitious as ARK and the potential is huge. However, again ARK seems to have developed a better approach (at this time) and is really emphasizing consumer adoption.

There are a few others that are either less established, such as PolkaDot or that have similar platform capability but a different approach/function, such as Stratis.

Is ARK a good investment?

Coming up with a valuation for ARK is difficult because it is so ambitious and there's no real income-generating comparatives at this time. To add to this, the exact value of an ARK token is a bit of an unknown at this time - it's implied that it will be the intermediary fee between all of the cross-chain interactions but how much this fee will be and when it will be required is unclear.

That being said it's a safe bet that if ARK manages to become the go to solution for new blockchain applications, the value will be enormous. ARK's market cap peaked around $400M less than a year after launch so the speculative value is clearly there. Also, the max supply at this time is a reasonable 125,000,000 and the inflation rate is fairly low (6.31% in the first year, eventually dropping to 4.02%) relative to other POS cryptocurrencies:******

Overall, ARK scores well across a number of investment criteria - supply, speculative worth, potential and adoption likelihood - which makes it a great long term investment for almost any cryptocurrency portfolio.

Conclusion

ARK is one of the most ambitious projects in the crypto space but also one of the few really aiming to increase user adoption. Platform projects arguably have the highest potential of any blockchain application and ARK is a strong contender in this space, offering unique solutions such as SmartBridge and putting consumer adoption first. The team has done a lot of good work, the speculative value is there and it provides passive ROI which makes it a great long term investment.

If you have any comments, post below! If you enjoyed the article and found it informative, please consider leaving a small donation. You can make use of the awesome ARK wallet to let me know how much you appreciated it with a donation to the following address: AUMdGdUMm2YM9i4nf3WqmYhYLGChcV32bc

Alternatively if you don't have any ARK but still want to send a donation see below:

Bitcoin: 1NMsXX96CiMnS5WPy9KQbFJCbzqXPM2qbv
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References and Notes

This post originally appeared at https://www.cryptoadvocate.net/single-post/ark-ecosystem-of-linked-chains and was modified slightly for relevancy and for the steemit audience.

*Price, market cap and logo are taken from https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ark/. All other stats with exception of Slack members is taken from https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/ark/overview/BTC
***Most information about delegates is from ARK's blog post "What are Delegates?"
****https://steemit.com/ark/@arkecosystem/ark-improvement-proposal-aip-transaction-protocol-upgrade
*****Dafty's Profit Calculator
******Image taken from page 7 of the ARK whitepaper

All other information is either adapted from the whitepaper and other research or is personal opinion.

Crypto Advocate does have holdings in ARK.