Ardor has completed a successful hard fork of its mainnet, bringing Triffic App’s native token into a live environment for the first time. The Ardor blockchain, maintained by Jelurida, was scheduled to undergo a hard fork on September 22, with the protocol upgrade introducing a number of features. The most notable of these was the launch of Triffic’s GPS token on Ardor, ushering in a new era for augmented reality (AR).
A Big Day for Ardor, A Massive One for Triffic
Triffic is an AR app that rewards users in cryptocurrency – namely GPS. The gamified app pays out GPS rewards to users simply for moving about in the real world. Everyday tasks like going to the shops or walking the dog can be monetized, providing tangible incentives for keeping fit and staying active.
For Triffic’s GPS token to be activated, it was necessary to hard fork the Ardor blockchain, enabling the GPS child chain to connect to the main network. A child chain is simply a separate blockchain that shares similar architecture to its parent, allowing assets to be transferred from one to the other. The child chain is typically maintained by a separate entity to that of the main chain, but the two are interoperable.
The benefits of operating a child chain are that it enables assets to be transferred in an environment that is more conducive to fast and low-cost transactions, because entities aren’t forced to share block space with other users. This is ideal for applications such as on-chain games, as it enables users to record actions regularly and at negligible cost, and it’s one of Ardor’s main value propositions.
Jelurida Rolls Out a String of Updates
In addition to facilitating the child chain debut of GPS, Jelurida has introduced a host of other changes to coincide with its September 22 hard fork. One improvement has been the creation of an official Ardor Node Docker image, enabling anyone to deploy a network node. This will make it easier for developers to build applications using Ardor, and to host it on cloud providers such as AWS and Azure.
Furthermore, several new network features have been rolled out with the hard fork, following successful deployment on the Ardor testnet. For example, the upgrade means that child chain transactions can be sent for zero fee, which is ideal for onboarding new users, and a big deal when it comes to gaining adoption for blockchain-based apps such as Triffic.
One of the biggest problems when it comes to onboarding new users to crypto is getting them to set up a wallet and make their first transaction. For example, with Ethereum, it’s impossible to send a transaction without having ETH in your wallet – even if the wallet contains other assets such as USDT. Ardor’s introduction of zero-fee child chain transactions will go a long way towards making crypto more welcoming for newcomers who can get started quickly and easily.