The Benefits of Building on Ergo

In an industry with an overwhelming number of cryptocurrency projects, it can be a daunting task for developers, project leads, and community members alike to choose a blockchain upon which to build. Proven to be a robust and secure network, the Ergo Platform offers a vast amount of unique tooling for developers who wish to build smart contract enabled dApps. In this article, we will go in depth on several reasons why it is beneficial for a new project to build on Ergo.

1. Open Source Code + Ergoscript
2. Ergopad: Ergo’s Launchpad
3. NFT Projects: Low Minting Fees and Two Marketplaces
4. Community
5. Miner Governance
6. NiPoPoWs

Open Source Code

Ergo was created with the mindset that transparent code and decentralization should be the core principles of a blockchain. For those who wish to build on Ergo, they can access a wide variety of open sourced code and technological tooling.

One of the most vital benefits of open sourced code is that it is often more secure. It allows other developers in the ecosystem to check for bugs or glitches. Consequently, it is also much easier to make necessary improvements to existing code. With open sourced code, it can be argued that it is much less effort required for new projects to start building. This is because people can add new ideas onto existing ones. One does not have to start from scratch with every facet of their design. Developers can utilize existing tools such as dApp connectors, oracle frameworks, privacy implementation and more to aid their project’s development.

For the purposes of this article, several developers from the Ergo community were asked why they chose Ergo?

Blitz TCG - “Blitz chose Ergo because of the unparalleled community, strong focus on decentralization, and near non-existent fees on its L1 solution. The community, specifically, is one of the best in crypto, providing an excellent platform for engagement and feedback.”

Ergopad + Paideia - “As ErgoPad and Paideia, we decided to build our project on Ergo because it provides great fundamentals as well as these key facts, which align with our principles and goals:

1. Ergo has no pre-mine, a solid basis, and a fair launch; this means that no one person or group has an undue amount of influence.

2. Low cost of maintenance in comparison to EVM-based blockchains, which require gas payments for transactions.

3. Using NiPoPoWs, the blockchain creates checkpoints at periodic intervals, reducing the user's storage needs for blockchain data to just those intervals. This function allows any device, such as a mobile phone, to operate as a full node, giving you full control over your funds. It takes a third party to grant access to a Node for light clients like Metamask. As a result of NiPoPows, there isn't any middle man.

4. The security features of Sigma protocols are more advanced than those of Bitcoin.

5. The UTXO model upon which Ergo is based offers far more robust security guarantees than the EVM chain accounting model. Transactional behavior is known prior to user submission, and smart contract behavior can be tested with greater certainty. A UTXO blockchain is much less likely to have unanticipated problems.”

MrStahlfelge is a reputable developer on Ergo that is responsible for creating one of the most popular wallets: the Ergo wallet. He stated that Ergo is a great blockchain to build on “Because it has the best community.”

Ilya @RozaLuxemburgg is a software engineer that is responsible for working on dappstepjs and the kaching tool on Ergo. Ilya believes that “Ergo is beneficial to develop on because it's easy to make an impact. It's still a relatively small community that doesn't have all the tools that bigger projects have, and when you build something, it gets noticed and appreciated, and you feel like you make a difference.”

Krasavice Blasen is a co-founder of reputable Ergo projects such as Skyharbor and Duckpools. He stated that it is beneficial to build on Ergo because “As a maturing complete smart contract language, Ergoscript is extremely expressive but surprisingly simple. As a developer, I cherish how easy it is to develop dApps which meet high-level security standards. In consequence, the development cost (the amount of man-power to build some serious DeFi products) is magnitudes lower than that of any other chains. [Also], coupled with the ideals of the community, their attitudes towards decentralization, transparency and good technology, you can easily see why I decided to build on Ergo.”

Crypto Quokka works closely alongside Krasavice Blasen and is also one of the co-founders of Duckpools and Skyharbor. He stated that “What others can build in a year, on Ergo you can build in a month.”

Morphic is an Ergo Foundation board member and core developer for Ergo. He believes that “The Ergo protocol is to UTXO smart contracts what TCP/IP is to the internet, acting as a crucial foundation. Since Ergo is still in its early years, many use cases remain to be identified, indicating ample room for growth and development.”

Ergopad: Ergo’s Launchpad

One of Ergo’s top projects, Ergopad, serves as a launchpad for new projects in the Ergo ecosystem. As you may imagine, starting a new project can be very difficult. Ergopad launches IDOs for vetted projects, aiding with marketing as well as the coding process. As a launchpad, it offers anyone the ability to invest in the early stages of a new project. In essence, it allows the community the opportunity to act collectively as pseudo angel investors.

Building NFT Projects

The Ergo ecosystem provides a robust and diverse set of platforms for new artists and project leads to build NFT projects. There are two primary NFT platforms/marketplaces on Ergo: SkyHarbor and the Auction House.

The Auction House is an excellent platform for allowing artists to explore price discovery for their art. Currently, it is the only platform that enables the minting of NFTs. One of the many reasons Ergo is an ideal blockchain for NFT projects is because it costs only pennies to mint an NFT. Specifically, it currently costs 0.003 ERG, which at the time of writing is about $0.013.

SkyHarbor is an equally impressive platform because it has deployed a verification process for artists. This helps promote and maintain brand recognition and reputation within the ecosystem. This also assists with preventing buyers from getting scammed by fake copies and/or artists.

Community Engagement

Within social media circles, the Ergo community is well recognized for its passion, knowledge and promotion of the blockchain. It has grown organically from only grassroots initiatives. Many of Ergo’s social media channels highlight how willing community members are to educate and promote the unique tools and products available on the blockchain. Because of Ergo’s measured and deliberate approach to community marketing, the community is always growing and new developers are regularly onboarding. As is evident below, Ergo’s social metrics are comparable to many top 100 projects - even with fewer members.

Miner Governance

Ergo strives to be as decentralized as possible and therefore incorporates a robust governance system to ensure that those who secure the network have a voice in any potential changes to the protocol. Miners on Ergo have the unique ability to modify various parameters through voting. This can include factors such as instruction costs, computational limits per block, block size limits, storage fee factors, etc. The long-term economic security of the protocol is essentially determined by the collective decisions of miners. For changes related to the block version, a voting period of 32 epochs is allocated, and a minimum threshold of over 90 percent of miners is required to support any proposed change. Miners secure the network and are crucial to the longevity and future of Ergo.

NiPoPoWs

Another reason to build on top of Ergo is due to a revolutionary piece of technology called NiPoPoWs. NiPoPoWs, put simply, are a blockchain compression technique. It has the potential to address key technical challenges in blockchain and offer unique solutions for widespread adoption. This type of technology has the potential to significantly reduce the blockchain data size, enabling ultra-light clients to sync with less than 1MB of data. This breakthrough revolutionizes the industry by lowering technological requirements, thus allowing limited devices to achieve full node security.

When developers build dApps on Ergo, they want a multitude of users utilizing their applications. If NiPoPoWs are able to reduce the technology requirements of users, this should bring a new wave of widespread adoption to Ergo.

A Guiding Founder

Ergo’s founder, Alex Chepurnoy, is a reputable developer who has an impressive past within the cryptocurrency space. He co-founded www.smartcontract.com which is now Chainlink, and was a core developer and researcher for Cardano. He personally adds to the base layer of the protocol and continually works on node client upgrades. His extensive work in these areas allow for smooth and efficient dApp experiences for developers and users alike.

Conclusion

Ergo represents a chance for new projects to build in an ecosystem that values technology, first principles, transparency and open sourced code. This ecosystem is early but rapidly growing and is an opportunity to be part of one of the most fairly launched blockchains since Bitcoin. With its unique and intuitive scripting language, developer resources, launchpad and a strong community, Ergo is cementing itself as a project with strong fundamentals, poised to flourish in the industry in the coming years.