IOTA – In Depth Analysis & Review https://iota.org/

What is it?

IT IS THE TANGLE! IOTA is unique in that it has created and built itself off what could be the next generation of blockchain, which they call, “The Tangle.” The Tangle is a third-generation distributed ledger, “made for the problems of tomorrow.” The Tangle as a network uses a crypto architecture called DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) to verify transactions and keep the network running. All MIOTA tokens on IOTA’s network are pre-mined and flow in a permanent non-circular direction across the Tangle. With this being the case, the need for mining is removed, so no large corporation can seek control of the network via mining. The best part of IOTA network for the everyday user is that there are zero fees since you are the miner of your own transaction. When sending MIOTA, your computer will connect to The Tangle and verify two previous transactions behind your own. Doing so will verify your own transaction and make it a permanent part of The Tangle. So, IOTA has no miners, fast transactions, and no fees.

What makes The Tangle so special?

Well, The Tangle is technically not even a blockchain, in fact it is supposed to be the replacement of blockchain. The Tangle and it’s DAG architecture sets out to solve problems that Blockchain and in general, “the internet of things” has been dealing with today. The internet of things currently includes approximately twenty billion devices and is expected to reach seventy-five billion by 2025. Security is a growing problem with these devices since they are built to provide steady internet access from your Wi-Fi router but have little to absolute no digital security. What is often over looked with smart devices is how they may expose your Wi-Fi network to serious cyber security breaches. Smart appliances generally also lack in CPU power, making it impossible for them to run or connect to a blockchain like Bitcoin’s. IOTA and its networks is aiming to connect these devices on global scale in the most secure way. Since IOTA’s network is decentralized, hacking into it would be extremely hard if not impossible adding a lot of security to such a device. The Tangle is also very scalable or lightweight, this means that any device with internet access should be able to handle and run IOTA’s network. This type of scalability is something we have not yet seen anywhere else.
Blockchain technology in general has struggled to increase scalability and transaction speeds as their users grow. Such issues have plagued dozens of cryptocurrencies to be bogged down and slow. Bitcoin today verifies around four and a half transactions per second, Ethereum can process about thirteen transactions per second, PayPal can verify around four hundred transactions per second while visa, verifies four thousand transactions per second. Clearly if we’re going to see cryptocurrencies reach worldwide adoption, things like this need to be improved. IOTA believes, that they have solved these problems with the tangle. The Tangle, holds no blocks and is the first cryptocurrency to truly have no third parties handling the network. Strict block sizes have also added to these issues that so many cryptocurrencies are dealing with today. Since the tangle has no blocks or block sizes the more users and more transactions the network sees the faster The Tangle will scale and verify transactions. This is groundbreaking technology as today most cryptocurrencies slow down and become excessively heavy for machines to run as more people begin to use them.

Big news and the future of IOTA:

IOTA has recently released some huge news and partnerships. IOTA last month announced the development and impending release of a decentralized, global, Data Marketplace. This data marketplace will utilize IOTA’s decentralized ledger to facilitate business to business trades of large digital data. There is no limit for what type of data is exchanged in this market place giving it exponential potential in this new digital age. Data can now be a company’s greatest asset or biggest headache. None the less, today there is no such data marketplace for individuals or business to seek rewords on recording or buying information. IOTA wants to be the ones to create such a space. In 2017 alone, more data was generated than in the past 5000 years combined. This is a statistic IOTA uses a lot to help show the great potential such a network could have. Obviously, we are in the era of data, yet 99% of all big company data today is stored in what are called data silos. These silos are essentially giant voids that companies dump data into to be retained and almost never unleashed to the public. Some of this data may be considered irrelevant to even the people collecting it, however others may find it exceptionally valuable.

With IOTA’s data marketplace, a company who has a lot of data could stake their information onto IOTA’s decentralized ledger and allow others to skim the information. Others on the market then could browse and buy data from such a company. With this type of platform, research and data will be more accessible than ever before and could generate additional revenue for thousands of old company projects. The founder of IOTA frequently compares the scale of this type of data market to that of today’s crude oil market. IOTA and its team believe their data marketplace will be the catalyst for the economic engine of the future, just as crude oil has done over the past few decades. IOTA’s data marketplace still has a lot more development to go through, yet they have already partnered with over 25 companies to build and test the marketplace. IOTA has been talking to companies such as Bosch, Fujistu, Samsung, Cisco, Volkswagen and even Microsoft to help develop or consult their data marketplace. Now just to clarify these companies have been working with or consulting IOTA’s team however not all of them have signed and documented official partnerships with the project. This is in fact something that has been heavily debated and questioned over the past few weeks.

One last point that I feel needs to be made is that IOTA is still in Beta and by no means is perfect. But this is also why I am so excited to see this project grow. This project has an amazing team who are all well experienced and dedicated to IOTA’s progression. Once IOTA can take this next step, remove the training wheels and release its full fledged data marketplace, there will be nothing to stop this beast of project. Overall, IOTA is a next generation project brought to you today.

Written by: Kyle Freiman
Sources and additional information:
https://blog.iota.org/iota-data-marketplace-cb6be463ac7f
http://www.tangleblog.com/what-is-iota-what-is-the-tangle/
Image Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1216479.0