Founded in 2016, æternity is an open-source, blockchain-based distributed computing platform that builds on decentralized cryptographic P2P technology. Designed to deliver unmatched productivity, transparent governance, and global scalability, æternity offers blockchain technology with a consensus mechanism that is as efficient and cost-effective as possible. æternity's unique state channel design enables the off-chain verification of data and smart contracts, allowing for all transactions to be independent of each other, thereby increasing transaction speed and scalability while also ensuring increased privacy. æternity’s underlying value token is the AE token, which can be transferred between members and is used to compensate participant nodes for any number of computations performed. All AE token users are allowed to participate in the governance of the aeternity blockchain through a voting process, weighted by the number of tokens each user holds.