IOTA is a ‘permissionless distributed ledger’ for the millennium economy as it would form the backbone of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the near future. It stands out as the first open-source distributed ledger enabling micro-transactions without fees and data integrity for machines, which would play an important role in backing the IoT. IOTA would also play a decisive role in the protection and security of sensitive data, a role that has been traditionally played by financial institutions. A ledger usually keeps the records of all debit or credit transactions, but with distributed ledger technology, ledgers of data can be distributed and synchronized in a secure and decentralized environment. IOTA provides this permissionless environment as it removes the necessity of a third party as the protectors of sensitive data. IOTA improves the efficiency of the blockchain network through its unique distributed ledger technology, ‘Tangle,’ which makes way for creative opportunities to emerge.
IOTA has a vision, a vision to provide reliable and valid data, and its Tangle would enable only reliable data through a consensus on the state of matters in a network.
“By having a cryptographically secure source of unified truth, we envisage a grand technological Cambrian explosion of innovation to arise from it. Our vision is to enable all connected devices through verification of truth and transactional settlements which incentivize devices to make available properties and data in real time.”
This leads to the emergence of different kinds of general-purpose applications and value chains, and the number of connected devices is expected to be as high as 75 billion by 2025, with rising inter-globe connectivity. With a rapid increase in the number of such devices, IOTA would play an important role in sharing their technological resources among each other, locally and in real-time, on a distributed network. The zero transaction fees would further enable this sharing, bypassing centralized points of failure, clearing the resource infrastructure, and obeying the laws of physics.
One of the major objectives of the IOTA Foundation is to bring innovation to the field of blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The announcement of the launch of the ‘Coordicide’ alphanet with the version 0.1.0. upholds this objective. This launch would act as a stepping stone towards a coordinator-free IOTA. A few important features of the Coordicide would be Autopeering, Gossip, Rate Control, and an API for the Tangle. Autopeering appears as an interesting feature besides Gossip and API, where
“Gossip provides the network layer to send and receive transactions and API provides an interface to send data transactions and query the Tangle.”
Autopeering allows every node to automatically find its peers, unlike the presently used manual peering process, which is vulnerable to attacks like that from social engineering, which can affect the network topology. With the launch of the Coordicide whitepaper, the chances of an attack are reduced. With each node finding and connecting automatically with its neighbor, it makes the process of setting up new nodes easier.
The foundation has other exciting projects also in its store like the IoT projects in Norway and Sweden and Smart city projects in collaboration with SCAALER IoT Labs. IOTA recently made an announcement through LinkedIn, which says:
“Today SCAALER IoT Labs finalized and signed a memorandum with IOTA Foundation where we will work closely with this Berlin based open source technology environment, representing groundbreaking blockchain tech in Swedish and Norwegian #Smartcity & #IoT projects.”
Both the companies have plans w.r.t. smart city and IoT projects in the two countries which they would jointly implement. SCAALER IoT Labs would rely on the IOTA Tangle technology for this implementation as well as for future projects. All details of this collaboration have not yet been disclosed; however, the basic objective remains to ‘promote sustainable development of the IoT in Norway and Sweden.’
IOTA thus aims to bring in a new dimension to the field of blockchain technology with its visionary leadership and unique innovation. It aims to enable the true IoT through the machine economy, to evolve a new and sustainable sharing economy along with data ownership and a new vision for humanity. Since humanity would largely depend on transactions in data, for its growth and multifarious needs, IOTA would play a significant role in ensuring the integrity of the data trade and its contributions would go a long way in the field of blockchain.