11 years on, and I still think there's so much more to give. Privacy, better guarantees, improved security, and ledgers that hold up even at scale.
What's the missing piece for you?
Our co-founder on how he got into blockchain: a distributed systems lecture in 2015, and the realisation that Bitcoin had already solved the harder version of the problem.
Culture ran ahead of the infrastructure, and the infrastructure is still catching up. That gap is why we're building at the protocol layer.
I'll start with a short post on how I actually got into blockchain... back in 2015.
I’d seen Bitcoin floating around games and online forums. Knew it existed, had zero real clue what it was.
Then uni hit, and distributed systems...
Whatever your position on Ethereum's design, a public network that has survived its own governance for a decade deserves credit.
The more interesting question is what you'd build differently knowing what we now know.
Ethereum just turned 11. Eleven years of a network that, whatever you think of it, has not stopped running.
People keep asking me why I got into this and what I actually work on.
So I'm going to start posting properly. Research, mechanics, the not so glorious parts.. Stay tuned!
A network is not the same thing as a chain.
These two words get used interchangeably in blockchain. They shouldn't be.
A chain is a single linear sequence of blocks. One history. One state. One set of validators. Everything that happens on it competes for space in that same sequence.
A network is a set of independent things that cooperate. The internet is a network. The banking system is a network. They're not faster versions of a single thing; they're a fundamentally different model.
When people talk about scaling blockchain, they almost always mean scaling the chain. Making the sequence faster. Adding capacity. Reducing congestion. It's the same problem, approached the same way, over and over.
Amaroo starts somewhere else. Not "how do we make the chain faster?" but "could the network model, the one that actually worked for the internet, produce something the chain model can't?"
One chain getting faster has a ceiling. A network of cooperating chains might not have the same one.
→ amaroo.com
Early internet hit a wall. Things slowed down, and the instinct was obvious: upgrade the machine. More RAM. Faster CPU. Bigger pipe. It worked, until it didn't.
The actual breakthrough wasn't a better machine. It was realising you didn't need one. TCP/IP wasn't a faster protocol. It was a different way of thinking entirely: distribute the work, let ordinary machines cooperate, let the network carry the load.
Blockchain is hitting the same wall right now. And most scaling projects are responding the same way: bigger blocks, faster finality, more throughput on a single chain. Better machines.
Amaroo starts from a different question.
Not "how do we make the chain faster?"
But, "what does it look like to actually scale the network?"
I've been talking to a lot of people about Amaroo lately, and a few others are wondering what it is. So for all curious, I'd love to write up about it from my personal perspective:
Let's start off, what is Amaroo?
The name 'Amaroo' itself is an Australian Indigenous word meaning 'a beautiful place', and my personal thoughts is that it's a destination of what we're striving for and what we think the world of blockchain can one day be.
What are we building?
The Amaroo network has three core pillars:
1. The Amaroo blockchain network
The foundational layer of Amaroo is a multi-chain network powered by a new consensus strategy, Ultra Terminum (UT) with Proof of Reflection (PoR).
This new strategy builds upon existing consensus mechanisms (e.g. heaviest chain) to utilise the existence of other chains in the network to secure one-another.
In essence, each time a block is produced on one chain, miners on other chains acknowledge the existence of that block and include the necessary information about that block (e.g., header information) in their own chain to show their 'support'.
When chains mutually do this, it means that every chain within the network can see their own history being confirmed in other chains.
In Amaroo, each chain is securing one-another, making attacking one chain as hard as attacking the entire network.
To make these reflections useful, Amaroo uses careful conversions of work so that blocks on one chain that include the PoRs of other chains can be used in the consensus and weight calculations.
Not only does this affect the confirmation rate as the number of chains in the network grows, it brings some exciting opportunities for native cross-chain transactions and interactivity!
While this is only the beginning, I personally think there's some great strategies and new designs that can come from this, making the intra-network communication fruitful.
Exciting! 🤩
(P.s. you can read more about the network in the whitepaper at: amaroo.com/research )
2. The Amaroo non-custodial cross-chain DEX infrastructure
One of the problems we want to solve is being able to use coins from my wallet on one chain, exchange and interact with something on another chain without having to (1) pay exuberant fees, (2) having to trust custodians or bridges that might be hacked, or (3) having to default to a centralized exchange.
This presents a fascinating opportunity, where we provide a set of truly decentralized, non-custodial DEXs, hosted directly on the Amaroo L1 in baked into the block building process.
The orderbook provides a DEX between one of Amaroo's simplex-chains and a chosen external chain (e.g. Bitcoin, ZCash, Ethereum, Polkadot, etc. (and tbd.)).
All market price finding, matching, and settlement occur with the block building process so the market is able to clear.
To add more chains to the DEX infrastructure, we implement the integration directly on Amaroo, meaning we can integrate more chains without requiring permission or having to impose requirements on other chains.
We can also utilise the potential execution environments (e.g. create specific contracts for dex interactions on other chains) for added security.
Amaroo is also directly looking at the pathway for stablecoins; providing capital efficient cross-chain exchange, increased interaction with the wider blockchain ecosystem, and the potential for new strategies (e.g. collateral).
3. Amaroo Dapp-chains
Finally, we look to the builders, new enterprises and new markets that are forming (and yet to be formed).
Building exotic on-chain applications is always limited to (1) what languages are out there, (2) the ability/suitability of the execution environments, and (3) the restrictions on processing.
Many on-chain businesses have adapted to building necessary on-chain components that compliment an off-chain element.
Others tried to build their own dedicated chains, but face the problems of bootstrapping and interoperability.
This is where the dapp-chains can make a difference.
The Amaroo dapp-chains are child-chains that can be application-specific or general, but they give the builders more freedom to choose their own state and transaction schemes.
They might use PoW, PoS, PoA, form their own simplex, or do something entirely different.
One thing they do use, however, is PoR with their host-chain for added security and interactivity.
So, where are we now?
As you've probably noticed, there's not much around about Amaroo other than our website, whitepaper, and the start of our socials.
Over the next few months, we're looking to post a bit more, interact and start building up our community.
We're also doing our first external fundraise, so if you're interested - reach out.
Check out our website: amaroo.com
And you can see the whitepaper and all other technical research as they come out: amaroo.com/research
Playing around with @tempo over the past day, and have to say it's good to see some blazingly fast rust! 🦀
Gets me thinking.. there's a few of stablecoin chains starting to surface.
What if there was a way to provide a non-custodial DEX flow between them with @amaroo_network?
Tempo’s testnet is live!
Any company can now build on a payments-first chain designed for instant settlement, predictable fees, and a stablecoin-native experience.
Tempo has been shaped with a wide group of partners validating real workloads including @AnthropicAI, @Coupang,
45K Followers 3K FollowingA real cyborg vibe coder | Study @ChainFeedsxyz | ex Research @ChainNewscom, @MyToken, @IBM | Holding and accumulating BTC since 2011.
8K Followers 3K Followingethereum foundation | opinions are my own but more than likely they come from Vitalik’s blog | run AI locally → https://t.co/zcgcEUpnGr