Nuco's Matthew Spoke: Today's blockchains don't talk to each other – but they will

Enterprise Ethereum Alliance stalwart Nuco has formally announced Aion, an interoperable blockchain network and the framework allowing communication between blockchains.

Nuco is led by Matthew Spoke, who launched the Rubix Blockchain project at Deloitte back in 2014, making him one of the first people in the enterprise space to work with Ethereum; he continues to play a central role in the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.

He said: "The hundreds of blockchains existing today will soon become thousands, then millions. Future adoption of this technology relies on a network of blockchains, both enterprise and public, and we're on our way to achieving this mission. Today's blockchains don't talk to each other at all. With Aion, blockchains will be able to federate, interoperate, and scale in a model similar to the internet itself."

In the future, blockchains will federate data and value in a hub and spoke model similar to the internet. The future of mainstream blockchain adoption will be achieved by the development of a networked, federated blockchain to integrate these separate spokes. Aion is designed to enable any private or public sector organisation to:

Federate: Send data and value between any Aion-compliant blockchain and Ethereum.

Scale: Provide fast transaction processing and increased data capacity to all Aion blockchains.

Spoke: Allow the creation of customised public or private blockchains that maintain interoperability with other blockchains, but allow publishers to choose governance, consensus mechanisms, issuance, and participation.

The first phase of the Aion network development focuses on launch technologies that will be functional for the first version of the live system. The Aion network will depend on a secure proof-of-work algorithm while we continue to design and develop our neural net-backed consensus system, said a statement.

It will leverage characteristics of the Ethereum VM, modified to improve performance, and support a mechanism for AION tokens to flow seamlessly between Ethereum and a public, third-generation blockchain called Aion-1.

Michael Tang, Head of Global Digital Transformation for Financial Services at Deloitte and an Advisor to Nuco, said: "Blockchain technology will soon become integral to every industry's infrastructure, and a framework for interoperability is critical to scaled adoption. As strong supporters of innovation in this space, we are eager to witness how Aion will help enterprise blockchains realize their enormous potential."

Nuco's advisors include Vitalik Buterin, Michael Tang, Scott Robinson, and Alex Tapscott. Advisors on the Aion project include New Alchemy, led by managing director Peter Vessenes, Co-Founder of the Bitcoin Foundation. Additional advisors for Aion will be announced soon.