02.02.2019
What does the company/project do?
Created by Chinese company Onchain in 2017, Ontology is a public platform for projects of all shapes and sizes and represents a giant step towards removing barriers between the blockchain and the business sector.
Ontology is revolutionary in the sense that it allows businesses without prior knowledge of distributed networks to use blockchain technology. Right now, there is no way for businesses to integrate blockchain into their infrastructure without extensive blockchain knowledge.
In addition, existing networks of trust face a number of challenges. Poor privacy protections, untapped value of data, monopolization of data management, and inefficient authentication of authenticity are all opportunities to block. It seems that Ontology resolves these issues with its robust trust ecosystem.
Thanks to the created ontological tools, corporations can implement trust mechanisms and adapt them to business needs. In essence, its blockchain protocol opens the door for the global adoption of blockchain technology in a corporation. It eliminates the learning curve and offers massive customization.
In the words of the Ontology:
“Ontology is a blockchain/distributed ledger network that integrates a distributed identity systеm, distributed data exchange, distributed data interaction, distributed procedure protocols, distributed communities, distributed attestation, and various industry modules. Together, this creates the infrastructure for a peer-to-peer web of trust that is cross-network, cross-systеm, cross-industry, cross-application, and cross-device.”
Ontology was launched by Onchain, a Chinese blockchain company that was also connected to NEO as they are both led by developer and entrepreneur Da Hongfei. “But doesn’t that mean NEO was launched by Onchain?”
Well, technically not. There is a difference between both projects and this has to do with how they are funded. According to Da Hongfei, Onchain is a blockchain solution development and consulting company funded by the Chinese financial group Fosun, while NEO is a community-funded blockchain network.
How are Ontology and NEO related?
The ontology release was announced by Onchain in November 2017 to a group of investors and blockchain enthusiasts in New York. Da Hongfei introduced the network as a kind of partner with NEO and said that both platforms will be used together to create an "ecosystem" that will enable the use of blockchain technology in the business world.
While Da Hongfei leads Onchain, he is not listed as the official founder of Ontology. Instead, developer Jun Li is listed as its founder. What the official role of Da Hongfei in the development of the Ontology, we do not know clearly. However, it is clear that the goals of Ontology and NEO are very similar - to create a blockchain network that can be used in real applications and with a lot of functionality.
These are technically very different, despite the fact that they are associated with the same group of people and companies.
“First, I need to clarify that NEO and Onchain are separate entities, so Onchain does not belong to NEO or NEO, Onchain. They are funded separately - NEO is funded by the community, while Onchain is funded by a very famous financial group in China, Fosun. They bought a lot of insurance companies and banks in Europe. Therefore they are separated. Secondly, Onchain uses the NEO ecosystem. The product, called DNA, is very similar to NEO, but written in the Go language. OnChain helps other blockchains and financial institutions build their blockchains with DNA. It's basically very similar to NEO and in the future with NEOx (internet protocol) everything can be tied together." — hongfei
Ontology is a trust framework that mainly focuses on issues of trust, authentication, and secure data transfer, while NEO is a more traditional blockchain with its own currency that focuses on transactions related to buying, selling, and trading assets.
Ontology is being developed by Onchain, a private company focused on blockchain solutions, while NEO is a separate project that is fully funded by the community. Having NEO tokens gives you Ontology tokens when you launch the Ontology Network. Technically, the two platforms are designed to work together, with the ontology providing a secure trust structure and the ONT providing the transaction facility.
“Ontology will initially be based on a dBFT protocol model similar to that used by NEO, however, Ontology provides various consensus algorithms such as POW, POS, dBFT, OCE, etc. In addition, organizations can choose their preferred consensus nodes in order to ensure functioning of its ONTX network and using blockchain integration to interact with the entire global network of Ontology ”- Jun Li.
Target structure
The core ontology is what is called the Trust Framework ontology, which consists of different modules that make up the interrelated protocols that handle identity verification and secure data transfer.
One of the main parts of this structure is the trust anchor, the user or group of users who determines what and whom they "trust". Associated nodes from each of these trust anchors form a kind of branch (which they call a trust path) that can be traced back to the trust anchor.
The structure, as you can see in the image, has several levels. First, it is checking people, things and services; then at the next level you have applications that also need to be checked; further, modules, APIs and protocols; the last level includes chain entity matching and data transfer.
The ontology should be modular and flexible, giving businesses the ability to change and extend things to suit their own needs, rather than having to find ways to tailor their own needs to the platform.
Conclusion
One of the things that keeps many companies away from blockchain technology is the idea that it is somehow insecure. They don't necessarily trust that a distributed network with new protocols can be trusted, preferring instead to rely on what's currently going on for privacy and authentication in state-of-the-art technology.
An ontology is a network designed to enable businesses to integrate blockchains into existing businesses in a way that does not compromise the security of user information or company data. The levels of verification and trust that Ontology offers seem to be more than enough to satisfy even the most paranoid business-minded developers.
Ontology hasn't even had its main web launch - it's scheduled for Q2 2018 - but when it does, it will be interesting to see not only how companies react to what it has to offer, but if it actually interacts with and supports the NEO blockchain. If so, NEO and Onchain could indeed become one of the dominant ones in 2018.