Okay, so first things first. I have never heard of Aelf until very recently, but since there's a reward on Publish0x involved in the mix, naturally, I am going to go balls deep into researching it.

On the other hand, if you have in fact heard about AELF, what it is and what is the purpose of this technology before, well just now, I applaud you, brave crypto adventurer, for you have seen lands that I am just starting to discover. But honestly, you don't have to be so smug about it.

Now, on a serious note,

What the hell is AELF?

Well, according to their very eloquent explanation on their very own website, aelf 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, aelf provides a highly efficient multi-chain parallel-processing system with cross-chain communication and self-evolving governance.

Simply put, aelf is a blockchain oriented operating system. According to Coincentral's Steven Buchko, Aelf is a customizable operating system (OS) specifically for blockchains. Apparently, the team is aiming for it to be the “Linux system” of the blockchain community.

The idea

The idea of this blockchain community linux system, I have to admit, sounds very interesting to me. When you take a look at the actual possibility of mainstream adoption, the aelf systems seems really promising. Especially if you, like me, believe that blockchain tech adoption will be as common as a kitchen knife in the kitchen in near future. In fact, I believe this is just around the corner, with maybe 5 to maximum 10 years between us and mass adoption. This would mean that the average user would need things simplified, and aelf can do that, at least in theory. Of course, this is just the beginning, the aelf network will probably develop just as everything around it does, and it time who knows where the functionality features of it will take us.

The team

Aelf seems to have an interesting and experienced team behind it. It was initially founded by Ma Haobo. He is joined in the advisory board by J. Michael Arrington and Zhou Shouji, All three of them have extensive portfolios, Ma has been the founder and CEO of Hoopox as well as the CTO of GemPay and AllCoin, while Michael Arrington is the founder and CEO of TechCrunch and Zhou being one of the founding partners of FGB Capital. They do have notable and relevant experience in the sector, as well as the connections to powerful people and venture capitalists that can make all of the difference in the business. As far as the team goes, there isn't really a reason why aelf wouldn't be the next big thing in the cryptosphere.

The benefits and the features

Now, according to them there are 4 core innovations the network prides on, namely:

1. Scalable nodes on cluster of computers

2. Parallel processing for maximum utilization of processing power

3. Resource isolation for smart contracts via independent and specialized side chains

4. Interoperability to run on and flexibility to choose from different consensus protocols (DPoS — native, PoW, PoS) and private / public chain

These aren't that rare of features on today's cryptocurrency/blockchain market. But, they are fairly unique of a combination of features that are being brought in a way that coordinates them subtly and conflict freely, while keeping and maximizing the effectiveness of the application that the network is meant for. It seems like the aelf system is (or at least has the) potential to bring forth something that is greater than the simple sum of its parts, bringing together a unique mix of features and benefits, going beyond their original goal in mind.

The price

The aelf network's native token is known as ELF. It has a maximum fixed supply of 1,000,000,000 ELF. It has a genesis date of September 13th, 2017, and the first token sale for private investors happened in December 2017. Since then it has had its ups and downs and is at the moment of writing (17.05.2019), occupying the position number 120 by market cap ranking with a €30,370,450 ($32,961,935). Since 2017, it has had a ATH of €2.18 ($2.60) on January 9th, 2018 and ATL of €0.03172012 ($0.03545756) on March 13th, 2020, earlier this year. (We all know what happened then). Since then, the value of ELF has more than doubled, with the price at the moment of writing being €0.065929 ($0.071421). Of course, the project is still in its infancy, so the value of the token is expected to even surpass the previous ATH in the upcoming years, as the potential of the network is only starting to be realized by everyone around it.

The Future

The adoption of a system like aelf seems inevitable. Blockchain based networks and systems need this kind of a platform if we want it to be massively used and adopted. This means that someone is going to bring this functionality to the market, be it the aelf team or someone else. But at the moment there are only a handful of projects and teams that are working on something that would offer the same or similar functionality and looking at them, I would say aelf has a pretty good chance of succeeding in being the leader in this area. So I believe the future is looking bright for aelf and ELF, and sooner than not it will gain really fast traction and popularity.

I urge you to check out their site here and get acquainted with the principles, whitepaper and general news around the project.

You can find it here: https://aelf.io/