What is IOTA?
What is IOTA?
IOTA is a cryptocurrency that does not run on a traditional blockchain, it runs on the Tangle.
The Tangle is a revolutionary new blockless distributed ledger which is scalable, lightweight and for the first time ever makes it possible to transfer value without any fees. Contrary to today’s Blockchains, consensus is no-longer decoupled but instead an intrinsic part of the system, leading to decentralized and self-regulating peer-to-peer network.
IOTA is focused on being useful for the emerging machine-to-machine (m2m) economy of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), data integrity, micro-/nano- payments, and other applications where a scalable decentralized system is warranted.
This means that IOTA can be used by the Internet-of-Things, for example a drone, programmable lighting or other smart devices that are becoming more popular.
Features:
1: No transaction fees (enabled by the Tangle's unique architecture)
2: Data transfer through the Tangle
All data which is transferred through IOTA is fully authenticated and tamper-proof - making attacks impossible.
3: Decentralized e-voting
4: Masked Messaging
As the first extensible module of the IOTA core, MAM enables nodes to exchange data through the Tangle, fully authenticated and encrypted. This means that your devices can transmit valuable and sensitive data with quantum-proof security through the Tangle, ready to be analyzed later.
5: Service
While the whole world has adopted the ‘Sharing Economy’ in areas like driving and accomodation, IOTA enables a whole new realm where anything with a chip in it can be leased in real time. Most of our belongings stay idle for the vast majority of time that we possess ownership of it, but through IOTA a lot of these things like Appliances, Tools, Drones, eBikes etc. and resources such as computer storage, computational power, WiFi bandwidth etc. can be turned into leasing-services effortlessly.
6: Ledger
The Tangle ledger is able to settle transactions with zero fees so devices can trade exact amounts of resources on-demand, as well as store data from sensors and dataloggers securely and verified on the ledger.
IOTA is a fascinating cryptocurrency with a lot of potential. I do not fully understand everything about IOTA and the Tangle yet, but I am learning as much as I can. I hope this summary helped you learn a little more about IOTA!
100% upvoted-IOTA is my biggest stake percentage wise in my long term altcoin portfolio-this technology is solid-these guys have 40k work staff around the globe already-in my opinion this is what Amazon was to the internet
Can you give e any advice on which is the safest way to store IOTA if you don't want to keep it in an exchange?
There's a huge learning curve in the crypto world. If you don't come from a computer science and math background and/or have been away from the field, then you won't truly understand these concepts. That's okay though, because if you can understand things at the surface level, just enough to gain confidence and be able to use the technology for your benefit, then that's enough.
I'm learning as much as I can everyday, and I might not be very knowledgeable, but hey its fun to learn and I enjoy it! Thanks for the well written response, here's a follow!