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The Argennon Project

Argennon (the classical pronunciation should be used: /ɑrˈɡen.non/) is a next generation cloud based blockchain and smart contract platform. The Argennon blockchain uses a hybrid proof of stake (HPoS) consensus protocol, which is capable of combining the benefits of a centralized and a decentralized system. In Argennon, ledger storage and transaction processing are outsourced to the cloud and normal personal computers or smartphones, with limited hardware capabilities, are able to validate transactions and actively participate in the Argennon consensus protocol. This property makes Argennon a truly decentralized and democratic blockchain and one of the most secure existing platforms.

The Argennon cloud is trustless and publicly verifiable. Computational Integrity (CI) is achieved by using Succinct Argument of Knowledge systems (STARK/SNARK) and data integrity is guaranteed by cryptographic accumulators. At the same time, a smart clustering algorithm keeps the bandwidth usage and the overhead of cryptography manageable for validators.

The Argennon protocol strongly incentivizes the formation of a permission-less network of Publicly Verifiable Cloud (PVC) servers. A PVC server in Argennon, is a conventional data server which uses its computational and storage resources to help the Argennon network process transactions. This encourages the development of conventional networking, storage and compute hardware, which can benefit all areas of information technology. This contrasts with the approach of some older blockchains that incentivized the development of a totally useless technology of hash calculation.

Using Succinct Argument of Knowledge systems makes the main functionalities of an Argennon validator light enough to be implemented as a smart contract. By deploying a validator contract on another platform, Argennon could use more established blockchains as an extra layer of security. In addition, this contract will facilitate trustless bridging of assets to the Argennon blockchain. To reduce the execution fee, this validator contract can be used for validating only roll-ups of the state transition.

An initial draft of the Argennon white paper can be found here. In addition, this link provides a brief overview of the important properties of the Argennon platform.

Until the launch of the Argennon main-net, an ERC20 token and a governance system will be deployed on the Binance Smart Chain in order to represent investors’ share in the project and give them the opportunity to determine the project’s path. After the launch of the Argennon blockchain, this token will be convertible in 1:1 ratio to the native currency of the Argennon blockchain.

The Argennon ERC20 Token

The Argennon token (ARG /ɑrɡ/) is an ERC20 token intended to represent an investor’s share in the Argennon project. After the launch of the Argennon blockchain, the ARG ERC20 token will be convertible in 1:1 ratio to the native currency of the Argennon blockchain. Meanwhile, the ARG ERC20 token will act as a governance token:

• The ARG ERC20 smart contract is a profit distributor. That means when an amount of an ERC20 token which is registered as a profit source, is sent to the contract address, that amount will be distributed between all ARG holders, proportional to their ARG balance.
• Holders of the ARG token are eligible to vote in the Argennon Decentralized Autonomous Governance system (ADAGs).
  • In order to vote, a user needs to lock his ARG tokens for at least 6 months. During this period he will not be able to transfer his tokens.
  • Any proposal that gets more than 66% (2/3) of the total ARG supply vote will be accepted by the ADAGs.

ADAGs

The Argennon Decentralized Autonomous Governance system (ADAGs /eɪ-dagz/) is a smart contract which is able to perform governance actions. These actions, for the ADAGs version, functioning on the Binance Smart Chain or the Ethereum network, include:

• Starting new token sales with different configurations
• Minting new ARG tokens
• Sending funds to any address as grants
• Changing the threshold of voting weight needed for accepting a proposal
  • can be changed between 0.55 and 0.8 of total ARG supply
• Changing the minimum lock period required for voting
  • can be changed between 120 and 540 days
• Changing the required fee for creating a proposal
  • can be changed between 0 and 0.5 BNB
• Changing the administrator of other Argennon contracts
  • this operation is possible only if ADAGs is the current admin of that contract
• Deploying a new governance system
  • this operation can only be proposed by ADAGs admin. (It should be noted that this will not give the admin a special role, because the admin of ADAGs can be changed through a normal proposal and voting mechanism.)

Token Sales

Several token sales may be held before the launch of the Argennon blockchain, all of them will follow a set of predefined rules:

• Every token sale is conducted using a smart contract: the TS contract, and it has its own token: the ICO token. Users may only buy ICO tokens from the TS contract. These ICO tokens can be burnt and converted to the ARG token in 1:1 ratio using the TS contract at any time.
• The ICO token is redeemable. This means anyone can redeem his ICO tokens using the TS contract and get a refund. The redemption price depends on the time since the start of the token sale and the amount of funds the token sale has raised so far:
  • If the amount of raised funds has not yet reached the threshold defined in the TS contract, a user may redeem at 100% price.
  • If the amount of raised funds has reached the threshold, then the redemption price will drop to the price defined in the TS contract, which is determined by the ADAGs. It is guaranteed that a user can redeem at that price for a configured time interval, which is determined by the ADAGs. After that time interval, the ICO token may not be redeemable, and the user should only convert them to the ARG token*. The exact configuration of the token sale is decided by the ADAGs, However:
    • the redemption price can not be less than 50%.
    • the redemption duration can not be shorter than 6 months.
• When a token sale is done, the earnings of the token sale will be automatically sent to the ARG ERC20 contract address and hence, it will be distributed between ARG holders, or it will be sent to the ADAGs smart contract and will be used for grant programs.

*Actually even after this time interval, the ICO tokens are still redeemable. However, since the contract will allow the withdrawal of funds, the redemption price could be anything based on the amount of remaining funds.

Tokenomics

The final total supply of the Argennon currency will be 100 billion which must be reached in 30 years. At max, half of this amount may be minted before the launch of the Argennon main-net. Consequently, The ARG ERC20 token will have a 50 billion cap. The other half, including 50 billion Argennons, will be minted only after the launch of the Argennon blockchain, and will be mainly used as incentive rewards.

The minting of the ARG ERC20 token and the ARG currency will follow these rules:

• 5 billion: founder’s share.
  • 95% (4.75 billion) of the founder’s share will be locked by the ARG ERC20 contract inside founder’s account, and it can not be transferred and liquidated into the market for the first two years.
• 5 billion: founder’s initial minting allowance which will be used for awarding ARG grants to early contributors.
  • These grants can only be given to people who have helped the development and growth of the Argennon ecosystem.
  • These grants must not be sold.
  • Before the launch of the Argennon mainnet, a grant more than 5,000,000 ARGs can be given to a single person only if the grant is locked for at least one year.
  • All these grants are documented here.
• 1 billion: first token sale which will be sold for $0.0005 per ARG.
  • This is the only token sale which is not conducted by the ADAGs.
• 39-44 billion: controlled by the ADAGs (the Argennon governance system). This amount may be used for token sales, air drops and grants, decided by the ADAGs.
  • Token sales will be public and can only be done using the TS contract, complying with the Argennon token sale rules.
• 50 billion: will be minted after the launch of the Argennon blockchain and will be used for the Argennon incentive mechanism. (The Argennon incentive mechanism is similar to mining rewards in other blockchains.)

Therefore, the ARG token should not be minted in order to be sold on the market, to add liquidity to liquidity pools or to do any type of activities for price manipulation.

The minting of the ARG ERC20 token has to be limited by the maximum supply defined by the ARG ERC20 contract. This maximum allowed supply is a function of time. For the first year a maximum supply of 10 billion is allowed, and after that, the maximum allowed supply increases 5 billion per year linearly, until it could reach the 50 billion cap after nine years. It should be noted that this is a hard limit on the maximum supply of the ARG ERC20 token and the actual supply may be lower than this amount.

After the launch of the Argennon blockchain, all unminted ARG ERC20 tokens with respect to the 50 billion cap, will be considered as the reserve of the ADAGs counterpart on the Argennon blockchain.

Contributors ✨

Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):

liang0561 💵 📝	SatoshiMiracle 🐛 📝 🖋 🔍 🤔 💬 👀 📓 🛡️	Rejinderi 📝 💵 🔍 🤔	hacktivist 📝 🔍	Tuananhthepussyhunter 📝 🔍 💬	Jake 🤔 🛡️	uneevn 🛡️ 🤔 💬
ak223wd 🔍	dogperson 📝 🖋 🤔 💬 🛡️

This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!