What Is AragonOS?

Although a lot of people readily dismiss altcoins these days, there are some interesting projects out there. The Aragon project is currently working on AragonOS, which introduces some major changes to smart contracts as we know them today. More specifically, smart contracts’ underlying architecture is in dire need of some upgrades. Introducing more flexibility and making it easier to extend the functionality of these contracts is well worth looking into.

AragonOS can be a Powerful Project

It is evident the concept of smart contracts has attracted a lot of attention. Most people were introduced to this form of technology as part of the Ethereum ecosystem. It is thanks to Ethereum that a lot of altcoins incorporate smart contracts, as they all aim to focus on innovative technologies in one way or another. Aragon is one of the many altcoins focusing on smart contracts as well, and its developers are looking for new ways to improve upon the technology moving forward.

A new infrastructure for Aragon smart contracts has been introduced thanks to the AragonOS initiative. It employs the concept of an organization as the “aggregate of multiple applications”, combined with a Kernel. With this combination, the Kernel can govern applications, which are also capable of talking to one another. Moreover, the Kernel also ensures third parties can interact with these applications for whatever purpose they see fit.

Contrary to what some people may expect, there is often a problem when it comes to upgrading smart contracts. Especially when embracing such organization-like models for smart contracts, there are a lot of challenges to take into account. In this case, every organization running Aragon needs to be forward compatible as early as possible. That is rather difficult to achieve, yet it appears the team has come up with a viable strategy in this regard.

As a result, the Kernel can upgrade itself and any other app relying on it. This is achieved through delegate proxies, which are “thin” smart contracts of their own. They do not contain business logic, but rather delegate their own logic on to other contracts. It is a rather surprising take on things, although it is not necessarily an implementation that will be second-nature for Aragon moving forward. Instead, it is possible this functionality will be ported to various other cryptocurrencies supporting smart contracts moving forward.

Considering that every Aragon-based application is a smart contract which can be added to any organization, the possibilities are virtually endless. Being able to upgrade said applications without much friction is well worth taking note of, as this could usher in a new era for smart contract technology in general. A set of default applications has been built by the team already. Once third-party developers start building new projects, things will get very interesting, to say the least.

For the time being, the foundation has been laid for AragonOS. Moreover, the code has been made open source, which means interested parties can get a hands-on experience pretty quickly. There is still some tweaking to do by the developers, but external audits are scheduled to take place in the coming weeks. This is definitely a concept worth keeping an eye on moving forward. Full documentation is in the works as well.