Edge was founded in 2013 as a decentralised alternative to the cloud. Originally called DADI, which stood for "Decentralised Architecture for a Democratic Internet", the company was renamed Edge in July 2019, taking the name of the network at the heart of the project to better reflect the evolution of the technology and its mission.
A crowdsale was held in 2018 to raise funds for the delivery of the core network. Set against a five year roadmap, the crowdsale distributed $EDGE tokens to supporters and future customers.
Edge's testnet - running on test.network - was launched in January 2018. The first release of the mainnet was in May 2018. The first products built on top of the Edge Network are DNS and Content Delivery, both of which are live and in production.
In 2019 Edge was recognised as the “Best Edge Computing Platform” in the Future Digital Awards.
In 2021 the blockchain in the network used for the tracking of network requests was extended to become a mechanism for value transfer. This introduced $XE, a coin used for value attribution within the network, operated as a layer 2 solution for Ethereum. $XE is used for the payment of services; for network staking; for the distribution of node yields; and for community governance. It is bridged to the $EDGE ERC-20 token within the Etheruem network.
The project roadmaps for Edge capture the near to mid term development priorities, focused on the core network layer as well as individual services on top of the network (such as Object Storage, Edge Functions and Edge DB).
Edge operates a hybrid model of proof of stake and proof of work. Proof of stake is used to help to secure the network, with a stake required to operate a node. Proof of work is used to distribute yield based on the jobs that nodes successfully complete in the network.
Edge Network Technologies Limited is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. It is registered in the United Kingdom.
Although 'EDGE' was the ticker assigned at the deployment of the EDGE Token's smart contract, it is already in use by another asset that has a larger market presence and higher trading volume on major exchanges. Due to this pre-existing association and to avoid confusion in the marketplace, the alternative ticker 'EDGENET' has been adopted for this token. This designation is specifically used to ensure that assets are distinctly identified.
