What Is ARK?

Competition in the world of all-in-one blockchain solutions has been heating up these past few months. Multiple companies and projects aim to make a meaningful impact in this area. ARK claims to have the technology in place to become one of the world’s top blockchain service providers moving forward. With a team of 17 core members, a lot of interesting things are on the horizon.

What is ARK Doing Differently?

Claiming to offer an all-in-one blockchain solution is one thing, but actually doing so is something else entirely. In the case of ARK, the team has been focusing on building a foundation for this ecosystem. As one would expect, there is a lot of work to be done. As of right now, the project is still in its early stages, even though the native currency is appreciating in value as we speak. It will be interesting to see if the team can deliver on its initial promise.

The Technical Side of the ARK Project

It is evident there will need to be some solid technology to back up the claims of the ARK team. For the time being, there is still a lot of development taking place behind the scenes, and most of the infrastructure is not even ready at this point. For example, the team is building the ARK Virtual machine, which will allow users to issue smart contracts in the future. It is very similar to Ethereum in this regard, but the project is only 70% completed at this point.

Furthermore, ARK’s team is working on introducing blockchains which can be deployed with the push of a button. That in itself is pretty interesting, as it will allow ARK to become easily “cloneable”. Moreover, these new blockchains will be linked to the ARK main chain through the Smartbridge technology. Smartbridge’s documentation and instructional videos are currently still being worked on, so this technology may not be of great interest to companies right away.

Even though ARK has its own native currency, there are very few ways to use it as a payment method. Even the project’s own merchandise store still doesn’t accept ARK transactions just yet. The team hopes to integrate its technology with IPFS in the future, although it is unclear when this will happen exactly. Testnets for businesses are coming as well, but there is still more work to be done in this regard as well.

What Comes Next for ARK?

Even though the ARK project has a lot of potential, virtually nothing is finished at this point. It takes time to build an infrastructure, and its website keeps track of how the various sub-projects are progressing. Right now, we can expect to see NFC and contactless chip wearable device partnerships and hardware wallets in the near future. The team is also close to integrating other coding languages for ARK development moving forward. For now, there is a lot of hype, but until all of these essential aspects are completed, there isn’t much to be overly excited about.