Blockchain / Technology
Ambrosus

Ambrosus Network (AMB-NET) Roadmap 2018

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Ambrosus Network (AMB-NET) Roadmap 2018

“I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day: but when I search out the massed wheeling circles of the stars, my feet no longer touch the earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself, I take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods…” – Ptolemy



Ambrosus — the world’s leading blockchain-IoT platform for quality assurance in food and pharmaceutical supply chains — has come a long way in the last 4 months. Most recently, we unveiled the Alpha of Ambrosus Masternode, which was tested by numerous students in two hackathons at world-leading technology institutions — the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich).

Now, we are working diligently to integrate the security of public blockchain ledgers, with the scalability and efficiency of permissioned blockchain protocols, in our quest to improve the global supply chain and logistics ecosystem. We are proud to unveil this High-Level Product Roadmap for Ambrosus Network (AMB-NET), the nucleus of the Ambrosus ecosystem.

After a relentless Q4, where we spent many sleepless nights building and testing our core technology, the Ambrosus team is pleased to announce some new and exciting developments, including a more focused vision for 2018.

Organized in two sections, Ambrosus’ 2018 Roadmap will first discuss the technological milestones we have achieved and upgrades that we have implemented. Then, we will provide a timeline for the rollout and launch of key products and services for AMB-NET in 2018.

Part 1: Achievements & Upgrades

The heart of Ambrosus is AMB-NET 1.0, our decentralised solution for storing assembly-line and sensor data about food and pharmaceutical assets. AMB-NET serves two primary functions: Designating asset identity; and tracking the storage, transportation, delivery and temperature conditions of assets throughout the supply-chain life-cycle. In this document, we will refer to all asset-linked activity as “events.”

AMB-NET is a distributed network of IoT sensor software, comprised of a few dozen Masternodes. This model provides a local Ambrosus Application Programming Interface (API) that allows networked device sensors or applications to send information to Ambrosus. Most of the data will be stored by masternodes in various repositories, e.g. IPFS, cloud, or a local private database.

Public data will be stored directly on AMB-NET and synchronised with other nodes, while Masternodes continue to enforce standard blockchain-ledger consensus, validating data with other nodes in the network through cryptographic-proof mechanisms. This is what allows AMB-NET to retain a transparent and immutable catalogue of every single asset or event created by any user on the network.

Some Masternodes will be hosted and operated by Ambrosus in different data centers and jurisdictions, including Singapore, the U.S., Switzerland, and Germany. But the majority of Masternodes will be hosted and operated by our customers and key partners. Once the stability and integrity of the system is established, the opportunity to host a Masternode will be offered to Ambrosus’ broader community.

To operate a Masternode, customers will need to lock a certain quantity of Amber (AMB) tokens into a smart contract for as long as they plan to operate the node. Ambrosus is also exploring mechanisms that enable token owners to “lend” their tokens to node operators, but that initiative is still in its experimental stages. We will reveal additional details on the crypto-economic model of Amber (AMB) in the spring of 2018.



For the Beta release, Ambrosus will use a permissioned Ethereum network using Proof of Authority (PoA) which optimizes AMB-NET processing speed and efficiency by delegating block-creation and consensus exclusively to Masternodes. By provisioning operating functions to a pre-designated number of nodes, AMB-NET is less computationally intensive than other networks, enabling faster, more predictable and cheaper transactions.

This PoA framework also allows customers to segment public and private data. For example, PoA architecture allows any Ambrosus client to query a manufacturer product or order via serial number, while only revealing the data that the producer has provisioned for public disclosure. AMB-NET only stores the ID, the hash of the data and other encrypted information on its blockchain.

Private data is always stored and managed exclusively by the Masternodes in the network. Each Masternode operator will have the ability to implement as many different storage options as they want in their node. Through AMB-NET, Ambrosus provides the blockchain software- application glue, enabling food and pharmaceutical producers to determine how they want to share product and logistics data with other nodes in their supply chain, in one convenient, scalable and secure environment.

And on a more socially conscious level, PoA is much more energy-efficient than other distributed network models. Given that many of our corporate partners and the United Nations have expressed concerns about the environmental impact of Proof-of-Work mining networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum, Ambrosus aspires to cultivate an eco-friendly solution. Using a PoA network, Ambrosus can mitigate pollution and CO2 emissions — an important differentiator that layers envrionmental sustainability over Ambrosus technology.

Part 2: Timeline

We have divided our 2018 Roadmap into three sections: Q1; Q2; and Q3&4. Beyond that, we will only provide high-level overview that we will update and communicate as we get closer to those dates.

Q1 2018



JANUARY

We released a private alpha version of the Ambrosus Masternode at the end of January. This node has already been used and tested by numerous students in two hackathons — one that took place at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and the other at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Both of these Swiss institutions are world-renowned for their technology and engineering programs, and are ranked as the 12th and 10th most prestigious universities in the world, respectively, by QS World University Rankings 2018.

Ambrosus also started building and testing the key functionality of AMB-NET Masternodes, especially the distributed part, so that the different Masternodes of the network can eventually process all assets and their related events rapidly and reliably.

FEBRUARY

We are releasing our Developer Portal (API documentation) and will onboard selected developers to test the alpha version of AMB-NET. This will offer developers insight into the core data model used by Ambrosus to describe Assets and Events. Interested developers can get in touch with Ambrosus if they wish to test our solution to build client applications or SDKs for various platforms.

MARCH

By the end of Q1, we aim to launch the Beta version (v 0.9) of the Ambrosus Gateway. This will allow any developer to start interacting with AMB-NET. The gateway offers the following:
... Public REST API to access AMB-NET
... No uptime guarantee, best effort SLA
... Updated developer Experience / documentation

We are also planning to release the Alpha version of our native iOS developer Software Developer Kit (SDK) and a demo application, both of which will be open-source. We also plan to open-source a native SDK and a demo application that allows iOS developers to build consumer and enterprise-facing mobile apps that can interact with Ambrosus.

The demo will enable the scanning a variety of 1D/2D barcodes to identify assets; read and display data about assets/events; and create new assets and events. We envision a broad range of applications, including consumer-facing rewards programs and product-history authentication services, along with enterprise tools that can be deployed at various stages of the supply chain.

Q2 2018



APRIL

In April, we will release our Alpha Javascript SDK (ambrosus.js) that will allow any Web developer to easily interact with Ambrosus from any Javascript application. This will allow for the design of easy-to-build web apps that integrate with Ambrosus’ platform, enabling any of our partners to seamlessly plug their back-end systems into our network using node.js.

We also plan to unveil the Alpha version of amb.to. This will be our public, web-based browser that can be used to visualise products. This is a responsive web application that can query Ambrosus information about any asset and its associated events, displaying all of this data in an intuitive and visually engaging way. We plan to open-source this application as well, so any developer can create their own “branded” product viewers.

MAY

Ambrosus will unveil its Developer Dashboard. This is simply a web-based user interface that allows any non-developer to manage their various assets in our network. We already have an alpha version of our dashboard running privately, but we are devoting significant resources to making it a lot more intuitive and functional for key users (supply chain and production line operators) of the Ambrosus network to allow rapid adoption by the industry.

We will also unveil our Android Client. Just like the iOS version scheduled for release in March, we also plan to open-source a native Android SDK to build a variety of apps that talk to AMB-NET. More specifically, we’ll focus on IOT-Android device communication, ensuring a chain of trust between Android phones/tablets and Bluetooth-enabled devices like: Printers, RFID readers & scanners, and a large variety of data-loggers that use Bluetooth.

JUNE

By the end of Q2, we will launch our Marketplace Network. Ambrosus will merge the work done on Crossroads and its Marketplace to release a production-ready platform, where suppliers can sell their quality-assured goods. This marketplace will leverage the Ambrosus blockchain to prove the provenance and quality of sellers’ products.

We will also include simple “pret à porter” (ready to use) smart contracts that can easily be used to do track shipment orders and define key asset properties (temperature, timing, quality assessment). These data-driven insights will help suppliers and distributors autonomously regulate their payment terms and conditions. These will be our Smart IoT Contracts.

Q3 & Q4 2018



JULY

Our top priority until the beginning of Q3 is to enhance our public Beta version 0.9 into a fully functioning enterprise solution — this will be AMB-NET v1.0 and will be released in July. Until then, we’ll be investing heavily in security and performance testing and third-party audits. We’ll also implement 24/7 support resources for customers, along with all the network & infrastructure-monitoring tools required to detect and fix any problems that may arise.

Our target from Q3 onwards is to be able to guarantee 99.95% uptime in our service-level agreement (SLA).

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

By the end of Q3, we aim to release our first complete toolkit for sensors & IoT devices. This includes Ambrosus’ first embedded gateway that leverages trusted computing environments, such as Intel SGX, to ensure that communication between devices and Ambrosus is secure.

Upon successful deployments of version 1.0 during Q3 with various customers and partners, we will improve it and evolve it into AMB-NET version 1.1 that will be released by the beginning of Q4. This iteration will strongly enhance the basic capabilities of our solutions, including significant improvements in the performance and security of the network. We’ll also unveil our first connectors to key ERP systems used by our customers.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER/DECEMBER

By year’s end, we aim to have a fully operational and enterprise-ready blockchain solution that powers dozens of real-world applications. The core focus in the last quarter will be to achieve a fully decentralised solution to enable both client apps (mobile/web) and embedded devices to talk to AMB-NET, without the need to trust any gateway in the system. We call this milestone AMB-NET 2.0, an Industrial Grade Blockchain-IoT Platform.



2019 & BEYOND

As many in the community know, we are currently setting up a variety of R&D collaborations with the EPFL and ETH Zurich and to expand the Ambrosus consortium to other leading academic institutions. In 2019, our biggest ambition will be to transform our various blockchain and IOT-sensor R&D projects into ready-to-use products. One of the areas we strongly believe in will be printed electronics, for which we will eventually design Blockchain-secured tags and sensors.



On the software-security side, we will be investing heavily in zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption. These technologies enable secure decentralized data storage, ensuring that large volumes of enterprise data can be authenticated by trade partners, without actually sharing private information.

Ambrosus also plans to innovate within the area of masternodes architecture. As AMB-NET adoption grows, more companies will want to host their own masternodes to reduce the cost of using Ambrosus. We plan to put a system in place that allows Masternodes to have an internal auction every year. This way there will be an open auction where companies bid in cash, how much they’re willing to pay to the network.

We also work to scale our dApp Marketplace ecosystem, helping developers launch and monetize their solutions on top of Ambrosus Network. They can currently do that easily, but in 2019, we aim to provide them with tools to track their apps’ usage, manage their user bases, and process their own billing functions, creating an Android-like marketplace for blockchain-based applications that make use of connected devices.

Please keep in mind that we are an agile company at the very beginning of our lifecycle in a hyperfast-evolving market, so roadmaps are only intended to provide guidance and not concrete predictions. The best way to produce a successful outcome is to vigilantly monitor our market and revise our roadmap and adapt our strategy as market and end-user conditions evolve.

Our only constant is the Ambrosus mission: To build and operate a global Blockchain-IoT infrastructure that enables enterprises to achieve full visibility into their supply chains, optimizing efficiencies and enhancing trust with their partners, distributors and end-consumers.



We are always open to collaboration enquiries, project proposals and spontaneous job applications. Please contact us at info@ , if you wish to join us on this exciting mission.

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