The Past few months was hard for cryptomarkets, particularly for the ICO scene. Majority of ICO’s that came with a lot of fanfare and hype, was struggling even to cross the 50% of set capital targets. Private funding almost dried up.Even in these dark days, One ICO, Ultrain surprised everyone by skipping the Public sale, went ahead with raising of $20 Million in Private funding from Draper Capital.
In addition to Draper Capital, additional funds were also raised from a basket of Investors including FBG Capital, DanHua VC, Arrington XRP Capital, Bixin, Morningside Capital etc.
I thought it will be interesting to review and discover what promises Ultrain hold, which attracted a large amount of VC Funding.
Blockchain Technology has undergone a huge transformation in the past few years. Old Granddaddy Bitcoin which was based on PoW, was termed to be “Blockchain 1.0”.
Next came Ethereum with the revolutionary smart contracts( exchange anything of value in a transparent, conflict-free way) and dApps , set the next stage of evolution Blockchain 2.0, which opened a new set of markets and changed the landscape significantly.
Blockchain 3.0 expected to remove all the drawbacks of previous blockchain platforms namely:
In order for blockchain to go mainstream, the first step will be to resolve all the above bottlenecks. Blockchain 3.0 is expected to offer better capabilities, as well as opening a sea of new opportunities for the next-gen projects.
Source: Ultrain website
Ultrain, along with other blockchain projects like EOS, Dfinity etc are working hard to lead this change.
Ultrain has coined their Vision as “to advance the realization of a programmable business society”. Before we move ahead, Lets first try to understand more about Programmable Business Society.
In the current era of Globalization, business does not stand as a single entity neither it can distance itself from the interaction of the outer world. In this new world, all information is increasingly visible, interconnected and exchanged. This is called as “programmable business society”, with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) as its three pillars.
In this new society, Trillions of business transactions will migrate from traditional to smart business contracts, which are automatically executed and realized by through the control and delegation of resources in the Internet of Things (IoT) by blockchain. Decision-making during the automatic execution process will be driven by decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) that operates on the blockchain.
For realising the dream of building Programmable Business Society, It's important to have a better technological advancement with Blockchain, AI, as well as IoT technologies. Blockchain has the capacity to introduce trust, AI will deliver fair and efficient smart decision making which will improve productivity, while IoT will reform the means of production with the help of advanced automation.
This is what Ultrain is planning to achieve.
In the beginning, we have discussed various bottlenecks faced by the current Blockchains. Keeping those bottlenecks in mind, Ultrain has developed its own architecture, which is expected to give a solution to all the drawbacks which will enable Ultrain to be the frontrunner for new Blockchain 3.0. (For a detailed tech report, you can refer to the Whitepaper and Yellowpaper)
Ultrain has developed a new consensus framework which is termed as “Random trusted consensus framework”. With the help of this new framework, Ultrain can achieve a 1,000-times increase in performance with only 1% of the computing power requirements of the traditional POW network maintaining the same security levels.The notable feature of the consensus framework includes
If you are having any past experience in Bitcoin mining, you will be aware of the sheer computing power as well as heavy investments needed ( more expensive, non-environmental friendly). Making a breakthrough, Ultrain has developed an innovative cryptography whereby only 1% of the network’s computing power is required to implement mintage. When a consensus is formed, remaining 99% of the computing power can be provided as trusted computing to manage services, such as CPU computing, GPU computing and so on, for external parties.
Similar to Neo and VChain, Ultrain has adopted the dual-layer token architecture system of UToken and UGas. In Ultrain, Each dApp can issue its own tokens based on Ultrain and also design its own token system as per its business model. Also, the dApp can choose different consensus mechanisms, including PoW, PoS, DPoS, PoA and RPoS or even establish its own consensus mechanism if needed.UGas will be used as a charging and settlement tool in Ultrain Ecosystem similar to the “Gas” of Ethereum as well as for voting purpose.
Ultrain has developed a mutually confirmed consensus building mechanism (A hybrid of POS+VRF+BFT consensus). It's basically a Network governance mechanism based on democratic voting, where all participants can contribute to building a better future together without requiring a full consensus. An individual voting weight will be depended upon UGAS that he/she holds. The more resources you hold, the more will be voting weight. This approach helps to reach consensus faster without the sheer wastage of resources compared to another consensus mechanism.With the help of this innovative approach, Ultrain can process transactions in Mainchain up to 20,000 TPS, with a 15 second confirmation time, while the side chains can process 4000 to 5000 TPS, with a confirmation time of 1 second.
Unlike other complex smart contracts which are written with C++, Ultrain makes use of user-friendly smart contracts based in Go and JavaScript language, giving developers an opportunity to create complex smart contracts in a limitless environment, which is needed for developing industrial level applications. You can read more about Ultrain smart contracts in the yellow paper.
Ultrain has designed a reinforcement Learning Platform on the Chain Based on idle computing power, which includes not only multiple master AIs indispensable for the operation of Ultrain but also AIs deployed by third parties that provide various service capabilities.The AIs running in Ultrain has features like
Ultrain Github is fairly active with 10 Repositories which are getting updated on a daily basis which shows good activity in development. As per the product roadmap, the Current stage is Supernova where the Public Testnet will be launched( I love the way they have termed the milestones). Recently they have announced the Public test net launch on Oct 8th, which means the team is on schedule.
Ultrain is based out of Singapore and is lead by 3 co-founders.Ray Guo, who is the CEO, is an Ex Alibaba, Director of data security. He got more than 10 years of experience in various leadership roles which includes Technical director as well as Head of the Innovation Development Center of the IBM Global Consulting Service. He was also associated with top rated organizations like China Mobile and State Grid.The CTO is William Li, who was Head of Technology at AliPay Blockchain team. He got a rich experience of more than 11 years in high-performance computing, operating system core components, operating system resource scheduling and many other fields. His past roles include Tech Director of Blockchain at Ant Financial.The CSO is Emma Liao, who is the founder of Pioneer Capital, a leading boutique investment bank in China. She was the Managing Director of Golden Brick Capital TMT, founding CEO of Kunlun Redstar (the first professional ice hockey club in China). She also headed the IOT investment for QIHU 360. Her expertise includes investment banking, corporate operation, Overseas cooperation and IoT technology.The other members of the team consist of highly experienced individuals who have worked with strong brands like Nokia, Motorola, Alibaba, Huawei, Google etc. Overall a star team.You can read more about Ultrain team here
The token of Ultrain ecosystem is termed as UGAS. Currently, UGAS is an ERC-20 based token but as laid out in the roadmap, the mainnet is expected to be launched in Q2-2019.The total number of tokens to be issued is capped around 1 Billion with no pre-mined tokens.There was no Public Sale of tokens only private sales of 10% of Token was conducted to Private Investors which have raised $20 million in funding.(1 UGAS was valued @ $0.20).Below given is the distribution plan of Ultrain
Ultrain is an ambitious project, aiming to remove all the bottlenecks current blockchain is facing. It will be facing tough competition from established players like EOS, Zilliqa, Cardano, Aion etc. Ultrain has just started its journey, whereas other projects are way ahead in their roadmap, which includes mainnet and testnet launch( EOS, Aion, Zil, Aelf etc).All said, none of the projects has efficiently resolved all the drawbacks and most of the projects are struggling with bugs(EOS), Scalability issues (ETH, BTC)as well as internal issues. This gives Ultrain, a golden chance to take the pole position for Blockchain 3.0, with the various innovate approaches and solutions it’s planning to bring to the blockchain world.
One more noticeable factor is the strong presence of Alibaba name all over the project. Two co-founders have worked past for Alibaba group in high profiles. It’s an Open secret that Alibaba is actively looking for Blockchain partners in IoT space. Ultrain perfectly fits the bill.
From my perspective, apart from being technologically successful, the project has to provide a good ROI to the investors as well. Majority of the ICO’s that has launched in the past 6 months has tanked hopelessly( 90% down from the ico value) and are struggling with providing liquidity.With just 10% of the total volume available for circulation, No public sales and presence of Private Investors like Kucoin Exchange as well as Genesis mining announcement with Bgogo, Ultrain has the right reasons to provide a good ROI in short team as well as long-term Hold.
For more details.Ultrain Twitter: @UltrainBUltrain
Telegram: 
LinkedIn: @ultrainUltrain Facebook: @UltraincommunityUltrain
Medium: @UltrainCommunityUltrain
Website: ultrain.io
Disclaimer: This article is not intended as investment advice. You should always do your own research and invest your capital wisely. I don't own the token, neither I will be rewarded for writing this article.
