Elastos aims to be a blockchain-powered version of the internet. The project originates all the way back to the year 2000; however, the current version that is based on blockchain technology and has been in active development by Elastos was founded in June of 2017.
The team behind the project genuinely believe that Ethereum, as well as DApp platforms, face limitations in scaling. While they are great for smart contracts, they are slow, not flexible at all, and inconvenient for full applications, according to Elastos. Elastos is a platform for decentralized apps, or DApps for short, that claims to solve many of these limitations.
With Elastos, aside from the fact that you gain full ownership over your digital assets, you do not have to access the internet in order to run DApps. All DApps will run on the Smart Web. The idea behind this Smart Web is to protect you from malware and other digital attacks that expose you to data theft. The platform is extremely optimized for mobile and you can run network DApps on every operating system out there.
## Who Are the Founders of Elastos?
When it comes to the founders of Elastos, the project originated in the year 2000 when founder Rong Chen worked on operating systems at Microsoft Research. He returned to China to develop his own vision, an operating system designed for the entire web.
Rong Chen was a senior software engineer at Microsoft from 1992 to 2000, after which he founded and was the CTO of Kortide (Beijing), and became the chairman and CEO at Kortide in 2003. In 2017, he became the chairman of the Elastos Foundation.
Later on, when blockchain emerged as a revolutionary technology in 2017, Rong coordinated with Elastos co-founder Feng Han to incorporate blockchain and complete his vision.
Feng Han started out as a mentor at the Tsinghua University, after which he was the principal at the Yuncol School. In 2017 he became the co-founder of Elastos and is currently the founder of MIT IDE Blockchain Pillar and Foundation.
## What Makes Elastos Unique?
Elastos has four pillars that enable network separation as well as platform flexibility. These are blockchain, runtime, carrier and software development kit or SDK.
The blockchain separates app functionality between the main chain and side chains for each individual application.
The runtime gives you the flexibility to run DApps outside of the Elastos operating system all-together.
The carrier is a peer-to-peer decentralized internet service where you are able to rent out your computational power and storage to other users.
The software development kit connects applications to the Smart Web that is beneficial to non-Elastos applications.
The elastOS application brings the entire decentralized ecosystem into an App.
This flagship product of the Elastos Smartweb has the entire decentralized ecosystem into a single application.