Q&A: Can blockchain’s biggest challenges be overcome?

The issues that are holding the blockchain industry back have been well-documented, with slow transaction speeds making these networks unsuitable for use on a mass scale. A requirement to code in niche programming languages has also prevented a sizable number of developers from building on these platforms.

We spoke to Professor Ken Huang, who recently became a key business advisor to the ABEY Foundation, to discuss how the organization’s blockchain aims to offer innovative solutions for consumers and developers alike.

1. What are the origins of the ABEY blockchain?

Well, ABEY stands for Advanced Blockchain for Enhanced Yields, and the project came about in 2018.

The main reason for ABEY’s existence is to fundamentally improve blockchain’s efficiency, so it’s capable of being adopted by the mainstream world.

As we know, the biggest bottleneck of blockchain has always been slow transaction speeds.

Bitcoin only processes seven transactions per second, and Ethereum processes up to 20 transactions per second.

The processing speed deficit is why, after more than 10 years of Bitcoin's success, most people still cannot define the term “blockchain” — and rarely encounter them.

ABEY exists to solve this challenge. It is an individual platform blockchain — not an ERC-20 project. ABEY adopts a unique blockchain setup with on-chain governance, and ABEY only uses 50 active blocks in the chain. When a new block is created, the oldest block is removed from the tail of the chain, with that data being retained and archived. This keeps the chain short, light and responsive.

ABEY requires an average of two minutes to create a new block, a time that has been proven to be as close to optimal as possible through multiple reputable research studies. That’s much faster than traditional chains.

2. What's the highest level of efficiency that ABEY can achieve?

The ABEY blockchain, theoretically speaking, can scale continuously according to user demands.

For example, the first use case built upon the core fundamentals of the ABEY blockchain is the aPay Systems payment services platform. It is much quicker to process transactions and can handle more throughput than the Visa/Mastercard system.

APay supports the conversion of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin into a proprietary token called ACASH, or ACT. This cryptocurrency can be used to send funds to other users, purchase goods and services, and soon it will be possible to load ACT on to a debit card. From here, the tokens can be exchanged for fiat at any ATM worldwide, and spent at any vendor that accepts Visa or Mastercard.

The platform’s aim is to bridge the gap between cryptocurrency and the real world, and it does so with underlying core technology of transaction efficiency coming from the same team that created ABEY.

3. Are there any other features in the pipeline for ABEY?

At this very moment, we are testing whether smart contracts can be executed on top of the ABEY blockchain. This is a huge milestone and undertaking, because we are doing it in a completely different way than Ethereum and other blockchains.

ABEY’s R&D team has designed and built a loosely coupled smart contract execution architecture. This means that smart contracts can be developed in any programming language, with any compiler, and not face the type of limitations seen on Ethereum.

We intend to announce several world-first features that no other smart contract platform has ever brought to the table. I’m confident that ABEY will soon reshape the way smart contracts are built and run in blockchains.

4. Can you tell us more about this smart contract functionality?

Initially, ABEY’s first smart contracts will be written in the C programming language. This — along with other common programming languages — will help increase awareness of the ABEY blockchain, its ease of use, and adoption rates among developers.

We are offering the developer community an easy on-ramp to smart contracts, rather than asking them to learn a new programming language, such as Solidity or Vyper.

C ranks in the three most common programming languages. There are more than 5.4 million C and C++ developers in the world — but less than 10,000 developers who know Solidity, which is required for the Ethereum blockchain. Over the past five years, we’ve found that adoption of Ethereum among the developer community has been very slow.

We aim to resolve this by allowing smart contracts to be developed in the most popular programming languages on the planet, meaning millions of developers can use their existing skills.

Another important breakthrough has been how ABEY has managed to reduce the bandwidth required to produce smart contracts by an average of 50% when compared with Ethereum.

The first smart contracts on the ABEY blockchain will showcase similar functionality as the ERC-20 smart-contracts on Ethereum — a mechanism that allows anyone to build and run an initial coin offering on top of the ABEY blockchain itself.

5. Where can Cointelegraph readers go to learn more about ABEY?

ABEY’s homepage is abey.com, and you can find the initial white paper, download links for the wallet and other information there.