An overview of AIKON

Blockchain technology has the power to change the way we live and work. However, widespread adoption is slow to take hold—due in large part to the complexity of the technology, the limited interoperability between chains, and the poor user experience involved with securely storing and managing digital assets. 

Enter AIKON, an innovative blockchain solutions provider that delivers products to help make traditional and crypto businesses more accessible, efficient, and secure. 

Together, AIKON and Republic Realm will support mainstream adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology.

About AIKON

AIKON helps businesses get blockchain-enabled products off the ground quickly through a range of plug-and-play blockchain-powered services. 

Its flagship products are ORE ID—a cross-chain, single-sign-on authentication solution, and ORE Vault—an enterprise-grade shared wallet platform that enables multisig control over digital assets.

AIKON works with blockchain projects to expand their markets and grow the blockchain ecosystem. ORE products are engineered to move Web 2.0 users onto public blockchains. 

In partnership with the Open Rights Foundation, AIKON built the Open Rights Exchange (ORE) Network—a purpose-built blockchain that helps developers easily access and leverage blockchain-powered tools, products and data. Both ORE ID and ORE Vault were built on top of the ORE Network, along with several other projects from companies including Alliance Block, Meld Gold and, yes, Republic.

Since it was founded in 2017, AIKON has grown to become a powerhouse in the crypto space. Its products are now used by a wide variety of pioneering traditional and crypto businesses. This includes Republic, which is currently leveraging AIKON’s technology. 

With ORE ID, Republic users can easily create an on-chain account without leaving the Republic app. Their private key is encrypted with a password of their choosing and stored for them so they never have to remember their blockchain accounts or keys.

Additionally, AIKON is making it possible for Republic Realm to purchase, trade and store digital assets and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum with the ORE Vault enterprise crypto wallet. With the ORE ID authentication solution, Republic users can hold and trade the Republic Note token on Algorand. 

Over time, this solution will also allow Republic users to hold and manage assets on many blockchains. Storing and using digital assets will become a simple, seamless experience—regardless of which chain they are on. 

Want to learn more about AIKON? Check out our five-part series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 

Team and advisors

AIKON is backed by several notable venture capitalists based in Silicon Valley and LA, including Alpha Edison, OVO Fund, Mighty Capital and Think+ Ventures. 

Republic and AIKON have a working partnershp with two main goals: to integrate AIKON’s ORE ID tech across the Republic ecosystem, and to connect AIKON with Republic ecosystem projects—including Algorand, which awarded AIKON with the first grant from their 250M grants program last year. 

AIKON’s solutions are developed by a heavily experienced team hailing mainly from prominent tech and blockchain startups, including Ripple, Diem (formerly Libra), Block Daemon, and Adobe. 

AIKON CEO Marc Blinder is a successful serial entrepreneur with more than a decade of experience in delivering powerful products using then-experimental technology. He is joined by CTO Tray Lewin, who previously led Microsoft as its Global Tech Strategist before founding several tech startups, including social meetup app Connect. 

Other notable members of the AIKON team include Caitlin Abejon, VP of Marketing & Customer Experience and former Ripple Content Marketing Manager, as well as Bill Rusitzky, VP of Business Development—an accomplished company builder who has held more than half a dozen VP roles over his career spanning more than 20 years.

AIKON’s advisory team is also stacked with talent, including Phu Styles, founder of the Women in Blockchain Foundation; Brynly Llyr, General Counsel C Labs and former GC of Ripple; SC Moatti, Managing Partner at Mighty Capital; and Mas Sakamoto, former VP and GM at NEC. 

Taken together, AIKON is backed by some of the best in the business. 

What’s behind the technology

ORE ID

ORE ID allows projects and businesses to easily add blockchain-based user authentication and account creation to any application. It achieves this through a simple plug-and-play library. 

Once integrated, ORE ID ensures that user accounts and their associated keys are created on multiple blockchains simultaneously. These are then managed under a single entry point, dramatically reducing the complexity associated with interacting with multiple chains. 

Once their account is created, users then sign in through their associated Web 2.0 accounts such as Facebook, Google, Twitch, etc. Users can interact with applications, sign transactions, and manage their blockchain identities in a familiar and intuitive way using just their passwords. 

Users no longer need to maintain separate wallet software for each blockchain they wish to interact with. At the same time, the technology is completely non-custodial—users are able to export their private keys whenever they choose. 

Thanks to a free-to-use basic plan, projects can get up and running with ORE ID and test its features at no cost. This option supports up to 1,000 active users and eight social media locations, including Facebook, Github, and Telegram. 

For larger businesses, the Enterprise plan supports an unlimited number of users, as well as a custodial option. 

ORE Vault

AIKON’s ORE Vault allows teams to securely manage access to shared wallets using multi-signature technology. The platform enables businesses to easily enforce their company policies over the wallet, providing granular control over who can spend funds, which conditions apply, and who must approve transactions with an ORE ID signature. 

The platform supports a wide variety of cryptocurrencies and several of the most popular blockchains, including Ethereum, Algorand, EOS and Polkadot. Better yet, all of AIKON’s solutions are CCPA and GDPR compliant by default. 

Featuring theft coverage insurance, ORE Vault provides businesses with a secure framework for managing and executing digital asset transactions. Team members have access to a detailed record of transactions and actions for recordkeeping purposes. 

The way it works is simple. Businesses use ORE ID to create a vault, then invite users who need to interact with funds via their work email, and set the governance rules. After the vault is set up, team members can initiate transactions and have them co-signed by the required number of team members before being broadcast.

Making blockchain technology simple

AIKON is designed to bring the benefits of blockchain to both businesses and individuals by building and delivering intuitive, secure, and interoperable blockchain products.  

AIKON tackles three challenges commonly faced by businesses:

1. User experience

Many of today’s blockchain-powered tools suffer from poor usability and are difficult for inexperienced users to navigate.

AIKON tackles this challenge by putting blockchain in the background. Thanks to its seamless sign-in solution (ORE ID), users can sign into blockchain-enabled apps just as easily as their favorite social media app, while seamlessly controlling accounts on various supported blockchains. 

Companies can manage the private keys on behalf of the user to keep things simple, while still allowing users to manage their own keys if they so choose. 

2. Integration issues

Manually integrating legacy software with blockchain technology is generally a cumbersome task that can be resource-intensive. Likewise, the blockchain landscape is rapidly evolving, and staying on top of changes can be a challenging endeavor. 

AIKON effectively eliminates these challenges through a plug-and-play API solution. With ORE ID, companies can integrate blockchain-based account storage and management into their applications without specialized blockchain developers. They can build once and deploy to multiple chains. 

3. Scalability

Many businesses operate on the scale of tens of thousands, to potentially millions of users or more. Manually transitioning these users to a new blockchain-based solution would be an arduous task involving a great deal of user education. 

AIKON makes this transition seamless and allows businesses to migrate users at scale. From the users’ perspective, there might be little to no change in how they log in to the business's app—all while benefiting from the speed and security of blockchain in the background. 

The platform works with both native and web apps (like Republic!) without the need for external wallets.

Unique features

AIKON believes that the future of blockchain is cross-chain. They are determined to build new, easy-to-use solutions with this view in mind. 

To make ORE ID and ORE Vault as accessible and efficient as possible, AIKON incorporates the following unique features:

• Single-sign on: ORE ID allows users to easily sign into applications powered by a wide variety of blockchains. Regardless of which blockchain they are interacting with, users get a consistent, seamless experience that drastically reduces the obstacles associated with onboarding new users. 

• Chain-level multisig: ORE Vault uses chain-level multi-signature to provide businesses with a way to easily distribute wallet management responsibilities across teams and secure their funds. By keeping it at the chain level, ORE Vault ensures maximum compatibility with future upgrades and adheres to best practices. 

• Insurance available: Thanks to a partnership with crypto wallet insurance protocol Coincover, ORE Vault users can easily secure theft insurance to protect their assets against bad actors. 

• Open-source blockchain: All identities created using AIKON’s solutions are stored on the ORE blockchain. Decentralized, these identities are tamperproof, immutable, and secure, and can easily be accessed by other authorized applications. (No personally identifiable information is ever saved on the chain). This approach also eliminates the usual challenges of registering a new blockchain account, such as securely storing mnemonic phrases and private keys. 

A look ahead

Today, ORE Network accounts interoperate with Ethereum, Algorand, EOS, WAX and Telos. Polkadot, Kusama, Cardano, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Solana support are on the roadmap. This additional integration will help more businesses leverage the unique properties of even more chains. 

Further out, AIKON plans to add support for platforms like Casper, Cardano, Polygon and Avalanche to enable use cases that are not possible on other chains. 

“Together with Republic, AIKON is bringing simple-to-use blockchain solutions to people everywhere. Working on tokenized equity with Republic Note and NFT management with Republic Realm has connected us to new markets and the Republic Crypto team’s deep industry expertise has been invaluable as we scale our company,” says AIKON CEO Marc Blinder.  

Want to learn more about AIKON? Keep up with updates via:

Website: https://aikon.com/ 

Blog: https://blog.aikon.com/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeamAIKON 

Telegram: https://t.me/teamaikon 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teamaikon 

This notice should not be construed as an offering of securities or as investment advice or any recommendation as to an investment or other strategy by Republic Crypto LLC d/b/a Republic Advisory Services (“Republic Advisory Services”) or any of their affiliates. Republic Advisory Services is being compensated $40,000 USD, and 1.00% of the total network supply of tokens created by API Market, Inc. for services provided in connection with this web page and other advisory and technical services, respectively. Neither Republic Advisory Services nor any of their affiliates has independently verified any of the information provided or makes any assurances as to the completeness, accuracy or reliability of any such information provided by API Market, Inc. Neither Republic Advisory Services nor any of its affiliates makes any representations whatsoever regarding any third-party content/sites that may be accessible directly or indirectly from this post. Linking to any such third-party sites in no way implies or constitutes an endorsement or affiliation of any kind between Republic Advisory Services (or any of its affiliates) and any third-party. Republic Advisory Services is a subsidiary within a family of companies owned by OpenDeal Inc. (together sometimes referred to as "Republic"). Republic and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting or legal advice — all recipients are advised to consult with their own advisers.