What's good crypto fam. Let's not mess around and get right into this article shall we.
First Impression
Aelf is a rather funny name for a blockchain project. We have things called Bitcoin, Ethereum, Basic Attention Token, Chainlink, Dash, and Maker. All of these names make sense in a nice and simple logical manner. But Aelf??
When I first heard about this project and read the name, I will admit I was a little bit confused. No lie, aelf was definitely not what I originally thought it was.
Aelf has absolutely no relation to the Christmas film Elf. Like, no relation whatsoever. There is no mention of Christmas in the whitepaper. Not one of their office's are located at the North Pole (or so they say). And Goddammit I hate to admit this, but Santa is not involved at all with their team, their advisors, OR their list of lead investors on the aelf website.
And honestly if that wasn't enough, on their entire fucking website not one single thing comes even remotely close to falling under the category of "Christmas colours." Fucking blasphemy.
Second Impression
Luckily I'm a grown ass man so I was able to get passed my initial confusion with regards to the Aelf name. But you bet your ass that took me a day or two. With all of these corona beers recently, every day feels the same does it not?
So after I got over that little misunderstanding that I had with the aelf name... bam! It hit me so hard it reminded me of the time I ran out of vanilla ice cream.
I was instantly reminded of my childhood. And not just because my Dad used to run out of vanilla ice cream more times than I could count, but because I still have some childhood innocence in my bones.
Well to be entirely honest, I think I have mostly just marrow in my bones, I don't really know what else is in there and I wouldn't be able to prove the existence of my aforementioned childhood innocence so I figured I'd come clean right here before we get too far into things.
After getting passed the idea that the aelf blockchain network had nothing to do with Buddy the Elf or the girl played by Zooey Deschanel - which in my opinion should have taken home the Oscar for Best Actress as well as the Grammy for Best Acapella in a Feature Film - I was reminded of yet another one of the most unforgettable acting performances of all time.
When I realized that the aelf blockchain network had absolutely no relation to Alf, the space-being who was the original inspiration for Donald Trump's angelic hairstyle, well shit I really didn't know what to think.
Now I didn't watch Alf as a child because like I said, my Dad kept running out of vanilla ice cream = no time for TV. But due to the amount of influence that this beloved children's show had on society, it would impossible not to make the connection!
Third Impression
So after these two seemingly unrelated misinterpretations of what the aelf project might be all about, I had one more contender I had to fight with. One last fighting route in the bing. My dyslexia. God it's awful and I don't wish it on anyone!
I first realized I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat. Shoutout to the legendary Jimmy Carr for that joke.
So with my lysdexia on full throttle, unfortunately I was faced with another problem when I tried to get to the bottom of the whole decentralized aelf cloud rabbit-hole business.
At this point I really thought I had it all figured out. Let me explain my logic which was essentially just putting one and one together:
Aelf is a 'cloud computing blockchain network'. Cloud computing is something something grade nine science = precipitation. So rain falls from cloud, gets blocked by the earth's surface, goes through a chain reaction between different networks of soils, plants, and trees and finally we end up with leaf. Decentralized.
I thought I had finally cracked the code. I simply added one and one together and got 'oneandone'.
Well let me tell you something, my dear reader, you might want to take a brief pause at this point to prepare for what's about to come. Maybe grab a drink. Go to the bathroom. And you come back when you're ready.
Honestly watch that fucking movie, Poolhall Junkies. It's an underrated classic.
So what I found out after I did some more research on the aelf website was not good news. Again it seemed like aelf wasn't what I thought it was. There was absolutely no connection whatsoever to a leaf of any kind. You read that right. No blocks of soil chained with networks of plants to create or compute a leaf at all. Nothing.
So in an unexpected twist of fate I found myself in the same shoes as the tree who was cut down because that leaf only existed hypothetically; I was stumped.
That last sentence/pun literally took me close to ten minutes and I'm still not satisfied with it. All of the pieces are there, but it seems all chopped up. Like a piece of fucking wood I might add.
At this point I am wondering to myself if I should also share the other dyslexic misinterpretation of the name 'aelf'. That word is 'flea'. But that would just be ridiculous. Because fleas have no connection to clouds, blocks, chains, or networks. But wait just one second here. What's the best way to catch a flea? A net works. Boom. I'd like to thank the academy.
So What Is Aelf Really?
Well by now we sure as hell know what aelf isn't so that's definitely a step in the right direction. Aelf is not Buddy the Elf from the movie Elf. Aelf is not Alf from the TV show Alf. Aelf is not a leaf on a tree. And Aelf is not a flea in the clouds spelled backwards.
Given the fact that this entire article has been a satirical collage of ways to misinterpret the aelf project based solely on its name, I think I will leave the proper explanations to people who aren't me. This is taken directly from the aelf Medium blog post titled 'Introduction to aelf':
ælf is a decentralized self-evolving cloud computing blockchain network that aims to provide a high performance platform for commercial adoption of blockchain. In order to establish a blockchain infrastructure for various commercial requirements, ælf provides a highly efficient multi-chain parallel-processing system with cross-chain communication and self-evolving governance.
So that right there is exactly what aelf is. I'm sure by now that you've come to the conclusion that I'm a rather simple man. And as much as I'd like to say that I understand blockchain, cryptocurrency, and why Zooey Deschanel married Buddy the Elf and not me, I probably couldn't explain either of those things to people under ten years of age and have them understand what I'm talking about.
Reverse engineering what blockchain actually is eventually leads to questioning the very fabric and definition of what reality actually is. And in all honesty, as much as I can sit beside a campfire and prattle on about how we're all vibrational frequencies and nothing is just one thing and everything is everything, I just don't think I'm up for the task of explaining what a "self-evolving cloud computing blockchain network" actually is at the end of the day.
So after everything is said and done, this final picture perfectly summarizes my own personal comprehension of the question: what is aelf?
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Check out my latest crypto related article:
This Is Why The Crypto Life Chose Me... Part 1 (18+)
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