Ergo builds advanced cryptographic features and radically new DeFi functionality on the rock-solid foundations laid by a decade of blockchain theory and development.
Telegram Group — Discord — Twitter — Website — Sigmaverse — Reddit
Founded by Charles Hoskinson’s “favorite technologist” Alex Chepurnoy who contributed to the development of Cardano and started smartcontract.com (Chainlink). In a interview Hoskinson described Ergo as;
“one of the most revolutionary cryptocurrencies ever built. Got so many crazy ideas like non-outsourceable puzzles and sigma protocols and pruning the blockchain and roller chains. All this crazy stuff. Even has a proof of no premine.”
— Charles Hoskinson
Hoskinson holds only 3 cryptocurrencies {$BTC — $ ADA — $ERG}
We could write another full article on all the cool shit ERG are doing — but these are the headliners.
- AgeUSD —StableCoin (Similar to $XRP+$DAI) (launching next week)
- ErgoSwap —Decentralised Exchange using Atomic swaps (Similar to $UNI — Completed its first transaction yesterday)
- ErgoAuction — Ergo Auction House is a decentralized auction house, secure and easy to use. A simple way to sell or buy Ergo’s tokens, artworks, NFTs, etc.
- Oracle Pools, Emurgo partnership and Cardano interoperability. Ergo has already developed 2 public Oracle Pools, ADA/USD and Erg/USD.
Erg has a strong technical core with pages of features and an active development. These are some of the most notable.
- NiPoPoWs — Which allow for efficient, light wallets (Yoroi)
- Headless dApps — providing on-chain smart-contract protocols.
- Wrapper of other cryptos like cBTC (Cardano BTC), cETH (Cardano ETH), etc.
- Compound-like solution
- The ‘Hardening’ hard-fork which gave miners a 200–300% boost (yesterday)
Two new exchanges are being added this month. (Currently available on Hotbit and Coinex)
Ergo is a unique PoW cryptocurrency and DeFi platform, building on the first principles of Bitcoin. With a research-driven but practical development model, Ergo has prioritized useful features without compromising on security. The platform’s smart contracts are built on the extended UTXO model with a unique concept of data inputs, offering a radically different approach to other implementations, and provide powerful, flexible cryptography and easy, safe scripting based on privacy-centric Sigma Protocols(non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs). Additional features include storage rent for long-term survivability, ultra-efficient light clients, and NiPoPoW technology for interoperability.
Ergo Platform’s native token, ERG, is used to pay all transaction fees for transfers and smart contract execution. Storage fees are also charged on dormant accounts, providing ongoing incentives for miners even after block rewards end. This new economic model ensures a sustainable network. ERG functions as the core token and will be used for different dApps collateral like stablecoin and many other applications. Off-the-peg use of ring and threshold signatures powers non-custodial and non-interactive dApps like ErgoMixer for both ERG and custom tokens.
Custom tokens are first-class citizen tokens in Ergo, there is also atomic exchange built for them in the core. Custom tokens can be distributed to miners and other ecosystem stakeholders additionally using logic defined by smart contracts, including built-in PoW-style emission schedules.
Ergo is designed from scratch, including its POW algorithm, Autolykos v2, which is memory-hard, GPU friendly, and based on fairness. Ergo team believes that network should adapt to changing environment without the intervention of trusted parties so it has an on-chain miner voting protocol that allows gradual changes in a large number of parameters including maximum block size, storage fee factor, and more, for more fundamental changes Ergo is trying to follow a soft-fork ability approach if an overwhelming majority of the network accepts a new feature, it is then activated, however, old nodes which do not upgrade continue to operate normally and just skip over this feature validation.
Ergo is designed to be a self-amendable protocol that reportedly allows to absorb new ideas and improve itself in a decentralized manner.
StableCoin
The economic model of AgeUSD was designed by IOHK, Ergo, and Emurgo. Its economic model maintains the conservative settings for collateral reserves and avoids the need for liquidations. Along with that, it supports a fully decentralized stablecoin emission setup. Thus, AgeUSD will offer the world a stable, simple, and decentralized stablecoin.
Everyone struggles to get their head around this concept — so here’s an ELI5 version without the checks-and-balances to start you off.
You take 100 ERG worth $1 each and mint them into either StableCoins or ReserveCoins
If you mint ReserveCoin, and the price goes up 10% — you get back 110 ERG when you cash out.
If you mint into the StableCoin, and the price goes up 10% — you still get $100 out, but because its went up 10% you get 90ERG
This provides individuals with the ability to choose to either go “long” Ergs (via minting ReserveCoins), or to choose stability (via minting AgeUSD).
Additionally the coin you’re minting (BaseCoin) doesn’t need to be Erg — with ADA support soon to follow.
Quoted is a slightly more detailed explanation, or you can read the documentation directly if you’re brave enough.
Reserve Providers submit Ergs (the native currency of Ergo) to the dApp’s reserves and by doing so mint “ReserveCoins”. Each of these ReserveCoins represent a portion of the underlying Erg reserves held in the dApp.
AgeUSD Users also submit Ergs to the dApp reserves however in their case they mint AgeUSD instead. This is only allowed by the protocol if there are sufficient reserves within the dApp (reserves are above the minimum reserve ratio). At any given moment an AgeUSD user can redeem their AgeUSD in exchange for an amount of Ergs from the reserves equal to the current exchange rate as sourced by the Erg-USD oracle pool.
Reserve Providers can only redeem their ReserveCoins for Ergs if the price of Ergs goes up (or a substantial amount of protocol fees are collected) and thus cover the value of all existing minted AgeUSD plus an extra margin. By redeeming their ReserveCoins, they profit as they receive more underlying reserve cryptocurrency compared to when they minted their ReserveCoins (the increased amount coming from users who minted AgeUSD).
As such Reserve Providers allow AgeUSD users to enjoy stability of value. On their end, the Reserve Providers absorb the potential upside (if the value of the reserves goes up via the price of Ergs increasing compared to USD) but also absorb the potential downside (if the underlying cryptocurrency in the reserve goes down in price).
Unlike Ethereum-based crypto-backed stablecoins, such as DAI, Emurgo introduces a Staticoin protocol-inspired design that does not rely on CDPs (Collateralized Debt Positions). The reason for this is the vulnerability of CDP-based protocols in terms of high volatility and blockchain congestion.As Emurgo states, “Black Thursday,” when MakerDAO CDPs were triggered for liquidation due to volatility and then sold for $0 due to blockchain congestion that prevented others from bidding, demonstrated that a new design is needed. For AgeUSD, this scenario is not possible.
As community is going straight to AgeUSD-based stablecoin launch, we recommend again this impressive presentation by Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo “An IOHK Perspective: Designing The AgeUSD Stablecoin Protocol — An Economic Analysis” from the ErgoSummit (timestamped)
ErgoSwap
ErgoSwap is a Uniswap-like AMM-based Decentralised Exchange (DEX). DEXs are a type of cryptocurrency exchange which allows for direct peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions, reducing the need for centralised exchanges.
Headless dApps
Headless dApps are a brand new technical and business model for developing dApps that is just beginning to take hold in the wider Blockchain sphere. In short, headless dApps are the pure and portable self-contained logic for reading and participating in on-chain smart contract protocols.
Emurgo last year spoke about a headless dapp concept. Create smart contracts with a fee hook for front end GUI developers to make a GUI and get encouraged by a fee. At the time people didn’t understand how that was useful as someone could just copy the smart contract and remove the fee. But if you create contracts that make something like a stable coin you cannot just copy the contract and steal the environment because there are backend users of the contract providing something that cannot be copied (in this case taking on the risk if the assets in exchange for providing stable coins).
Oracle Pools
Developers may now build and run Oracle Pools on the Ergo blockchain with the joint release of our smart contracts & off-chain “Oracle Core”
Releasing the “Oracle Core” to the public provides all the code/tooling/smart contracts for developers to build and run one. Oracles are an integral part of allowing data outside the blockchain (off-chain) to interact and be used on the blockchain inside of smart contracts.
Ergo has already developed 2 public Oracle Pools, #Cardano ADA/USD and #Ergo Erg/USD. Check out the pools on Ergo’s explorer here: https://explorer.ergoplatform.com/en/oracle-pools-list
Now that we have released our “Oracle Core,” we cannot wait to see how Oracle Pools continue to develop on Cardano during #Gogeun’s smart contracts era — the bridge for Cardano (ADA) supported #DeFi products and services.
Read the full announcement here
NiPoPoWs
Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work (NIPoPoWs) are short stand-alone strings that a computer program can inspect to verify that an event happened without downloading all block headers. This allows for efficient, light wallets (Like Yoroi — which now supports $ERG)
Desktop only for now
Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work
Non-Interactive Proofs of Proof-of-Work (NIPoPoWs) are short stand-alone strings that a computer program can inspect to…nipopows.com
Emurgo & Cardano Partnership
There are a lot of smart contracts platforms out there, most of them are Ethereum style (account based). Cardano’s smart contract platform is UTXO based.
Ergo is one of the few that is also UTXO based which leads to interoperability
Having said that and that, we also have a really similar smart contract platform, we are going to be building some DeFi solutions in Ergo, that could also be exported to the Cardano ecosystem — both platforms use UTXO based SC as I mentioned.
By doing this, we will be able to launch already tested DeFi products into the Cardano chain as soon as is available.
There is another article here with a more technical overview of what Ergo brings to ADA.
- Ergo will bring all the advantages of Proof of Work to users of the Cardano ecosystem.
- Ergo is the first blockchain to adopt smart contract language on the same UTxO model as Cardano, bringing compatibility with Proof of Work to a whole new level.
- Long-term scalability of dApps with the ability of parallelization of dApps.
- More advanced cryptography with sigma protocols: highly flexible and composable cryptographic signatures.
- The Ergo headless dApps framework.
- Oracle pools — layered pools of pools of oracles with deviation checking consensus opening a whole new world of applications.
- Local Exchange Trading System on top of Ergo.
See the bottom of the page for timestamped links of Charles Hoskinson talking about Ergo
Exchanges
Ergo can currently be purchased a few small exchanges. Hotbit or CoinEx have the best liquidity.
(I found the easiest/cheapest way to be: Deposit Fiat -> buy ADA -> transfer ADA -> ADA/BTC -> BTC/ERG -> withdraw to Yoroi)
I wouldn’t be dissuaded by this — Ergo is cheap because it’s hard to buy. Currently it’s been moving between $0.8–1 but I’d expect that to spike when it gets added to “2 new exchanges soon” (Which and when is still unclear). Ergo is a PoW coin — so you need to think in terms of Bitcoin, not Cardano. This image shows the price of various coins if they were at Bitcoins market-cap.
https://www.ifxflippedbitcoin.com/
Sigmaverse
Check out the Sigmaverse — the beginnings of a flourishing on-chain ‘app store’
SIGMAVERSE
Oracle Pools are a decentralized approach to the Oracle problem with game theoretic incentives baked in to ensure…sigmaverse.io
A tutorial for using the ErgoMixer dApp
Basics | Ergo
Ergo DApps and offchain protocols may be implemented in a truly decentralized way due to light clients, however, they…ergoplatform.org
ergo101
Whether you're new to ERGO, already a passionate ERGOnaut or just want to find out more about ERGO (ERG) and its…ergo101.org
ergoplatform/awesome-ergo
A curated list of awesome and useful Ergo resources. If you think your project should be listed here, please make a…github.com
Videos — ergo101
Every week this page is updated to include links to all the latest videos about ERGO (ERG) and its connection with…ergo101.org
Timeline
Disclaimer
Not financial advice, no affiliation with Ergo. I just like the coin.
