Aeternity (AE) is an off-chain smart contracts focused platform that was launched in November 2018 by founder Yanislav Mahalov. 

Raising roughly $24.5 million with its ICO, the team is comprised of a diverse range of individuals who are working to create a general purpose blockchain platform that is attempting to overcome many of the major problems plaguing the blockchain industry, including scaling, privacy, better consensus algorithms and user-friendliness.

Aeternity does not intend for its Aeon token to be used as a general digital currency. Instead, there are 3 major problems that it is tackling: off-chain solutions, a system that handles and integrates real-world data for common daily use cases well, and the formation of a new, improved consensus algorithm. The team has proposed a hybrid Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm that established true democracy.

Aeternity is currently focusing on its Fast æternity Transaction Engine (FATE), a customized virtual machine that is claimed to be faster and easier to use than other virtual machines currently used. The team has even gone so far as to state that Aeternity is aiming to become “the WhatsApp of Blockchain”, an ambitious goal no doubt. A hard fork is scheduled to introduce this feature, expected sometime in September. A new mobile app that enables state channel payments is also expected around this time.