Could MATRIX AI Network Be a Potential Moonshot?

MATRIX presents itself as an intelligent blockchain 3.0 platform and combines blockchain technology with artificial intelligence. It sets out to be the world’s most advanced and first intelligent open blockchain platform. By combining this, the project focuses on solving the biggest issues of the current blockchain industry: scalability, ease of use, security, and interoperability.

MATRIX is a huge project that deserves your attention. Let’s shine a light on this impressive blockchain platform and present why MATRIX is a potential moonshot.

Disclaimer: This is not intended to be financial advice and you should always do your own research.

MATRIX Features

MATRIX is an enormous project that offers a huge variety of technological and functional features. The graph below neatly displays the core features of the to-be-created platform:

Source: https://twitter.com/matrixainetwork

Natural Language Smart Contracts

MATRIX is building software that allows anyone to create smart contracts in their native language. That’s right—no difficult programming, just easy smart contract deployment in English, Chinese, Spanish, and many more languages.

They make this possible by creating tools that can convert natural language into programming language. Users can express their intention in their own language and the software will translate this into a smart contract.

Source: MATRIX Whitepaper

This is a complex problem the MATRIX team is trying to tackle. If the team succeeds, the MATRIX AI Network can bring the revolutionary yet highly esoteric smart contracts to the masses and let the average person take advantage of this new technology.

Moreover, businesses that use the MATRIX AI Network are able to easily create smart contracts through this engine, eliminating the need for hiring expensive programmers and allowing managers to create their own smart contracts.

AI Integration

The MATRIX AI Network will initially use artificial intelligence algorithms for two main purposes.

The first purpose is to consistently secure the blockchain platform in which AI is employed to conduct automated security audits. Through this, the AI automatically detects errors in smart contracts. This function perfectly complements the natural language smart contract development, as a lot of errors and security flaws can be expected in this feature.

Secondly, AI is used to constantly optimize the platform, making the platform self-optimizing. The AI algorithms will continuously look for ways to upgrade the platform, making it highly flexible. This construct replaces a lot of the inefficient models used by other blockchains to improve their platform. Because of their use of AI for optimization, the platform is constantly evolving and will never need to be forked.

Mining Chip Company and Second ICO

The MATRIX team is also building their own mining hardware. This because algorithms employed to run the MATRIX blockchain and its AI are computationally heavy, requiring heavy GPUs.

To prevent this from becoming an obstacle for miners, the team decided to design a new type of miner hardware. There is even rumored that this production will have its own ICO. The proprietary mining engine will allow for simultaneous mining of MAN tokens and AI computations.

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Hybrid Consensus Algorithm

The blockchain platform is powered by a patented Proof-of-Stake/Proof-of-Work hybrid engine. This engine uses Proof-of-Stake as a dynamic random selection model for delegate nodes. These delegate nodes are able to mine based on the Proof-of-Work algorithm.

Interoperable Public and Private Chains

The MATRIX protocol allows for both public and private chains to run on the platform. Both types of chains are also interoperable. Companies require private, permissioned networks which are provided by the MATRIX platform and these permissioned networks are also able to link to public networks on the blockchain.

High-Speed Transactions

The MATRIX team claims it has achieved 50,000 transactions per second on its testnet, making it the fastest blockchain platform at the moment. The team’s goal is to reach 1 million transactions per second. We will only find the true transaction speed of the platform once a public testnet or mainnet is launched.

These are just highlights of the complex technology behind the MATRIX AI Network. All the details can be found in their technical whitepaper.

Collaborations

The MATRIX platform has developed strong government relations, which is clearly signaled by their biggest partnership (more on this below) and their official partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Health. The latter has lead to multiple hospital partnerships, including the Beijing Cancer Hospital. The first application on the MATRIX platform will be a diagnosis system for hospitals assisting with cancer diagnoses.

Venture capital is essential for a project of this magnitude, and in this area MATRIX doesn’t disappoint:

Source: http://www.matrixfan.site/partners/

Moreover, MATRIX launched the “Global Blockchain Game Alliance” with several large gaming companies includingBit.game, GMGC, ForGame, Trustnote, Achain, and Qtum.

The project also has a strategic partnership with the Huobi Group. Huobi is a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange based in Beijing with multiple globally dispersed offices. Even though MATRIX’s native cryptocurrency MAN isn’t listed on the exchange yet, this partnership could indicate a change in that.

MATRIX also joined Hyperledger, a project from the Linux foundation and one of the top blockchain business and technology communities.

The team has indicated that they will have cooperations with several banks, although the names of these banks remain unannounced for now.

The platform also announced a mutual research fund with one of the most reputable universities of China, the Tsinghua University, which is globally ranked number 25.

The Trillion Dollar Partner

All these collaborations are great, but there is one partnership that rules them all. The MATRIX AI Network has an exclusive relationship when it comes to AI and blockchain technology with the 1 trillion dollar—yes, trillionOne Belt One Road project.

This high profile Chinese project is a government initiative aimed at strengthening the connectivity and cooperation between Asia, Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Northern Africa. It entails both a marine way and a road stretching from China to Europe. This mega-project comes at a time during which the Chinese government is opening up its economy for more international trade and is trying to become one of the leading players in the globalization process.

Image: Bloomberg

The Senior Vice President of the MATRIX project ecosystem has been appointed as the lead facilitator of blockchain and AI initiatives for the One Belt One Road projects. Moreover, the MATRIX team has several cooperation contracts with the One Belt One Road project which will remain confidential until the MATRIX AI Network mainnet is launched.

Once this happens, multiple applications are expected to directly function to support this mega-project.

The MATRIX Team

All this sounds almost sounds too good to be true and definitely requires an incredibly strong team. The platform doesn’t disappoint in this area, either. MATRIX is managed by an all-star team, especially in the field of AI, with team members having won several awards in this area.

The CEO is Owen Tao. He possesses a strong track record of leading high-tech startups and a rich experience in managing product development.

The Chief Network Architect is Bill Li, a leading expert in communication and IC design. He is a major contributor to 3G, 4G, and 5G standards in China and was the chief architect of China’s first wifi transceiver.

Their leadership and technical expertise comes from Professor Steve Deng. He is the Chief AI Scientist and has a strong track record in computer architecture, machine learning, and data analytics. He has written over 50 peer-reviewed papers. He also wrote a book on AI that is widely accepted in higher educational spheres.

Besides these impressive leaders, the team is backed by a strong board of advisors and by a team of 25 developers with experience at large multinationals such as Alibaba, Huawei, Microsoft and Facebook. In a recent conference, team announced that they have some fresh PhDs coming in from prestigious universities, which brings in additional academic backing to Prof. Steve Deng and his ex-students he hired.

MATRIX’s Current Status

The team indicates that they’re ahead of schedule. As mentioned by a team member, they have currently completed the architecture of the artificial intelligence neural network, the algorithm of MATRIX’s main network AI module, the new consensus algorithm, and a prototype of the AI mining machine. It must be noted here that the MATRIX team already possesses an award-winning AI platform, which is likely the reason for their finished AI products.

The same team member indicated that the remaining work now is to deploy these finished functionalities to the blockchain network development. This indicates that the MATRIX team has first concentrated on their AI functionalities and is now working on completing their blockchain structure. Given the complexities of both technologies relative to each other, it can be stated that the hardest part is already done.

The MATRIX AI Network will have its own blockchain, the MATRIX mainnet. The team behind the platform is planning to partially launch this mainnet in Q3 2018 and expects a full launch of its platform in March 2019. In the meantime, demos and beta versions of their services are expected to run on the Ethereum blockchain. So for now, the MATRIX token MAN is an ERC-20 token. But as soon as the mainnet is launched, MATRIX will have its own native cryptocurrency. MAN will be distributed to node owners and miners for running applications and for using AI services.

Should You Invest in MATRIX?

In its early stages, the MATRIX platform keeps on giving. Their function allowing people to use their natural language to create smart contracts has the potential to be an industry game-changer and the same goes for their AI self-optimization and security algorithms.

Their involvement with One Belt, One Road—one of the biggest infrastructure projects in world’s history ($1 trillion)—is likely the biggest partnership in the entire crypto industry. Besides this partnership, the project is highly networked in the blockchain space, has valuable VC backing, and is included in multiple collaborations.

As a secondary (or tertiary or even quadriary) business focus, the project is also planning to launch its own mining hardware and will likely attract investments for this business through a second ICO.

If it was a blockchain platform only, the MATRIX AI Network would be facing fierce competition even with its claimed superior transaction speed. However, the combination with AI, a field in which the team comprises renown experts, makes the platform could stick out from its competition and gives it nearly unlimited growth potential. It uses AI to make the platform self-adaptive, secure, and fault-proof. The upcoming MATRIX AI Network is designed to be highly flexible and has the potential to be used for limitless variation of future applications.

Where most platform blockchains have to settle with a few collaborations, the MATRIX AI Network has already established an impressively strong network of partners even before the launch of its mainnet. This network can greatly assist in creating a much desired network effect for the MATRIX platform, giving it the potential to become one of the biggest in the industry.

Currently, MAN is only listed on Idex, Gate.io and the fork of EtherDelta, but it’s only a matter of time before a project of this stature will be listed on major exchanges. This and the upcoming launch of their mainnet are events to look forward to trade-wise.

Given all these early stage achievements and MATRIX’s experienced team, I’d say investing in MATRIX AI Network could be a potential moonshot, especially since this project isn’t in the top 100 yet.