Aphelion: Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Trading Platform Based on NEO
The Aphelion whitepaper was written and published by founder Ian Holtz and the Aphelion team between late 2017 and early 2018, aiming to address common pain points in the cryptocurrency market at the time, such as high fees, transaction delays, and asset security risks, and proposing an innovative decentralized solution.
The theme of the Aphelion whitepaper is “Aphelion Whitepaper,” with its core description as “Aphelion advances distributed ledger technology (DLT) as an open-source, peer-to-peer (P2P) decentralized asset distribution application protocol based on the NEO blockchain.” What makes Aphelion unique is its use of smart contracts, atomic swaps, and superconducting transactions to enable direct, wallet-based peer-to-peer trading on the NEO blockchain, with the APH token serving as the liquidity validation device for the Distributed Exchange Asset Ledger (DEAL) protocol. The significance of Aphelion lies in providing a trustless environment for cryptocurrency trading, eliminating high fees, delays, and third-party asset control found in traditional platforms, thereby revolutionizing the decentralized trading model.
Aphelion’s original intention was to solve the inherent problems of existing cryptocurrency exchanges and trading platforms. The core viewpoint stated in the Aphelion whitepaper is: by providing a fully on-chain, DApp-based decentralized exchange on the NEO public chain, Aphelion enables users to securely, instantly, and freely trade assets peer-to-peer without relying on centralized intermediaries.
Aphelion whitepaper summary
Hello friends! Today let’s talk about a blockchain project called Aphelion. But before we dive in, I need to share a very important piece of information: this project—the decentralized exchange based on the NEO blockchain that we’re discussing today—announced its closure back in October 2019. So, what we’re doing today is more of a retrospective: looking at what it was and why it came to an end, rather than introducing an active project. It’s like reviewing a finished history book, learning from past stories and experiences.
What is Aphelion
Imagine when we buy and sell things, like shopping on Taobao, we need a platform to connect buyers and sellers, and this platform holds our money to ensure the transaction goes smoothly. In the crypto world, such platforms are “centralized exchanges.” But what Aphelion wanted to build was a “decentralized exchange” (DEX).
As the name suggests, a decentralized exchange means there’s no centralized institution controlling your funds, and no middleman matching trades. It’s more like a public, transparent marketplace where buyers and sellers can trade directly, and all transaction records are openly recorded on the blockchain. Aphelion was such a peer-to-peer decentralized trading platform built on the NEO blockchain.
Its core goal was to allow users to trade cryptocurrencies directly through their own digital wallets, without having to deposit assets into an exchange, thus avoiding issues common to centralized exchanges such as high fees, transaction delays, frozen or stolen funds.
Project Vision and Value Proposition
Aphelion’s vision was to provide a truly decentralized, trustless trading environment. It aimed to solve the pain points of centralized exchanges at the time, such as high fees, slow transaction speeds, and user fund security risks.
It emphasized open-source code and community-driven development, aiming to use smart contract technology to let users control their own digital assets and enable borderless, near-instant crypto trading worldwide.
Technical Features
Aphelion was built on the NEO blockchain. NEO is a blockchain platform that was considered superior to Ethereum or Bitcoin at the time in terms of energy efficiency, security, scalability, and compatibility with multiple programming languages.
Aphelion leveraged NEO’s smart contract technology to enable peer-to-peer trading. Smart contracts can be understood as automated protocols written on the blockchain that execute automatically once certain conditions are met, without human intervention.
The platform also supported NEP-5 standard tokens (NEP-5 is a token standard on the NEO blockchain, similar to Ethereum’s ERC-20), and later integrated support for Bitcoin (BTC), making it the first NEO wallet to support Bitcoin at the time.
Tokenomics
The Aphelion project had its own native token, APH.
- Token symbol: APH
- Issuing chain: NEO blockchain
- Total supply and circulation: Aphelion’s total supply was 70,188,440 APH, with a circulating supply of 50,000,000.
- Token utility: APH tokens were mainly used to pay transaction fees on the Aphelion platform. An interesting design was that APH tokens spent in peer-to-peer trades would be automatically redistributed to all APH holders, similar to the relationship between NEO and GAS on the NEO blockchain, aiming to incentivize community participation.
- Token sale: Aphelion’s initial coin offering (ICO) was the second public token sale on the NEO blockchain, ending in December 2017. The plan was to raise the equivalent of $34 million in NEO, BTC, and ETH, but the actual amount raised was between $4.7 million and $6.7 million.
Project Closure and Summary
Unfortunately, despite Aphelion’s innovative vision and technology, it announced the closure of its mainnet platform on October 8, 2019.
The team stated that the market environment had a huge impact on them. Despite their efforts in development and open-source contributions, the lack of users and trading volume on decentralized exchanges, as well as the overall downturn in NEO ecosystem asset trading, made it impossible for the project to continue operating.
The team was in a loss throughout 2019, and although they tried to seek funding by introducing Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) into their wallet later on, it was too late.
The closure of Aphelion also reflects the challenges faced by early decentralized exchanges, including user adoption, insufficient liquidity, and regulatory uncertainty (such as SEC regulations in the United States).
Not investment advice: Friends, please remember that the blockchain and cryptocurrency space is full of innovation, but also high risk. The story of Aphelion reminds us that even projects with good vision and technology may not survive due to market, operational, or regulatory factors. Always do thorough research and understand the risks before considering any project. The above content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
For more details, please research on your own.