Aion is an open blockchain protocol designed to solve scalability and interoperability problems between different distributed ledger systems. In April, Aion launched the first blockchain interoperability network to allow for the transfer of value and data between different blockchains.
At Consensus 2018, I sat down with Matt Spoke, a former Blockchain Specialist at Deloitte and the CEO of Nuco, the company behind Aion, to discuss his vision for a decentralized internet.
Spoke told me, “The problems that we are identifying in our experience with the internet can mostly be boiled down to challenges of centralization, challenges of trust, and challenges of data ownership and privacy. And it’s such a normal part of lives now that we’ve never really gone back to the drawing board and questioned whether there was a better way to architect the fundamental infrastructure of the internet.”
He hopes that Aion will provide the decentralized platform necessary to end the corporate data oligopoly and ensure that control over the internet is maintained by its users.
“What’s so exciting about this industry is this vision and design for a decentralized internet. What that looks like is leveling the playing field of access. We’ve reinforced a dozen or so massive monopolies around the world that are essentially the gatekeepers of [the internet]. What we’re proposing is that there is a way to architect the system in a more fair, accessible, and democratic way.”
Spoke also acknowledged some of the drawbacks of distributed systems.
“Decentralization as an ethos is really exciting but it’s also extremely inefficient, both in how you organize people as well as how you organize technology. Finding the balance between maintaining fairness and accessibility and reducing the tradeoff of inefficiency is a challenge.”
When asked about how Aion differs from the Ethereum platform, given that
