Welcome to Ascension!

What We Have

This is the inaugural posting for the blog of the Ascension Foundation, e.V. We are a long-established project in the cryptocurrency space, but not just another blockchain company or altcoin. We began our earliest design work in 2008 (before Satoshi’s Bitcoin paper!), and today our technology stack includes:

• A private digital cash clearing system, in which cryptographically signed vouchers represent assets and can be spent between wallets without leaving tracks on any blockchain or in any database. This transaction system centralizes clearing for speed, but also protects privacy by dividing the clearing function between the validating node and the individual issuer nodes for each asset, thus preventing double-spending without revealing identity. For asset types backed by coins on a blockchain, this layer provides a solution for both scalability and privacy, without requiring any changes to the way the blockchain operates.
• Asset types already supported by voucher Issuers and now in circulation include: BTC, LTC, USD and CAD stablecoins, gold, silver, and Lyra (the native token of Ascension). We also have a separate testnet with all of these assets and more, using play money.
• A P2P escrow-backed asset exchange, built right into the wallet client using a defined API.
• A Marketplace API for deploying merchant stores directly inside the wallet client.
• A wallet client implemented as plugins to an instant messaging client, so that payment, exchange, and storefront functions exist in the context of a federated XMPP network, where wallet users can also communicate securely. (Facebook is now planning to add wallet functions to WhatsApp and Instagram; we had this concept implemented in 2010.)
• An API for asset issuers (RPC-JSON with web admin).
• A PayPal-style merchant gateway for websites to accept voucher payments.
• A managed account back-end to support the buying and selling of Lyra and other digital currencies, to transfer funds between account balances and external wallets, support airdrops and incentive programs, etc.

What We’re Planning Next

Our near-term future tech development goals include:

• Deploy our own blockchain with public access but permissioned validators. This will provide issuance transparency for Lyra (since all Lyra backing vouchers will be issued on-chain), and support easier interfaces to third-party crypto exchanges and blockchain-based merchant services.
• Port our existing wallet client, which is currently Win/Mac/Linux only, to Android and iOS.

What Our Goals Are

Why are we doing this? What’s it all for? We’re building with these long-term goals in mind:

• Disintermediating value out of the control of the established financial/political system, which today serves the interest of essentially nobody, outside of the donor class and their enablers.
• Building a community where financial privacy actually exists, and state and commercial actors have no ability to monitor or censor economic transactions for their own purposes. Making digital cash truly the equivalent of physical cash where traceability is concerned.
• Decentralizing the entire business model of online payments, not just some network servers.
• Providing a better currency than fiat, gold, or bitcoin alone. Lyra will be fractionally backed using all of these and more, to avoid the issues surrounding deflationary currencies, as well as the more obvious problems with unbacked fiat currencies.
• Providing many of the same services which people have historically sought from offshore banks, without needing an actual bank. We believe crypto should be aimed at both banking the unbanked, and offshoring the banked.
• In short, help to build a new economic system. Fix the money problems and you fix everything build on top of money. You can’t drain the swamp by building in the swamp. You need to build on dry land, using different construction standards. We’ve laid our foundation carefully over the past decade, and now we’re ready for a lot more public involvement. (This is the old school approach: first you build something, then you offer it to the market. ICOs inverted this.)

What To Do If You Like This Vision

If any of this resonates with you, the tech or the goals behind it, we suggest you do the following:

• Evacuate some of your assets from the precariousness and injustice of the modern globalist economy into the new economy lifeboat by buying some Lyra. Sure, you can buy bitcoin or ether etc., only these aren’t being sold at a steep discount any longer. And you’re just buying a coin, not a vision. The socio-political vision associated with first-gen cryptos — predominantly a communitarian socialist one, at that — was largely grafted onto the tech by other people after the fact. In contrast, buy Lyra and you’re embracing a vision of property rights and privacy which drove the tech development from the start. But for the present we’re not conducting an ICO, so Lyra isn’t for sale to the general public. Buyers must be introduced by an existing holder, authorized to make such introductions. Best we can do is suggest that you go to our sales portal website and use the purchase link to register your email address, and we’ll match you up to someone suitable.
• Become an authorized sales agent for Lyra. The best way to build a robust new community is to recruit lots of members to it, and that process is best driven by economic incentives. If you want to serve your fellows by helping them move from the old economy to the new, and get paid in both economies for doing it, this option may be for you. Again, you will need to be sponsored by someone who already has this status. And of course, you’ll need to purchase some Lyra first yourself. (No one should rep for anything they’re unwilling to purchase.)
• If you’re involved with a blockchain crypto project looking for a scalability and/or privacy solution, feel free to contact us. Our server-side tech is available for licensing.

Other Sites and Resources

From now on we’ll be using this Medium account for blogging and public announcements. We’ll also republish with permission some previous content published on independent sites. Other websites within the Ascension family include:

• https://www.ascension.foundation (Ascension’s own home page)
• https://www.ascension.foundation/uploads/1/0/7/1/107142059/ascension-white-paper_1028.pdf (Our original 2017 white paper, revised 2018)
• https://cryptowealth.com (Marketing portal)
• https://silentvault.com/tiki-index.php (Wallet tech Wiki, 2014+)
• https://digitalcash.to (Older marketing site, 2015+)
• https://onionpay.to (Merchant gateway payment service, 2012+)
• https://www.voucher-safe.org (Original project tech site, 2010+)

Welcome to the Ascension of freedom, prosperity, and progress!