IOTA (technology)
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (September 2017) |
 IOTA logo | |
| Unit | |
|---|---|
| Symbol | IOT, MIOTA[1] |
| Denominations | |
| Superunit | |
| 103 | KiloIota (Ki) |
| 106 | MegaIota (Mi) |
| 109 | GigaIota (Gi) |
| 1012 | TeraIota (Ti) |
| 1015 | PetaIota (Pi) |
| Demographics | |
| Date of introduction | 11 June 2016Initial Coin Offering |
| User(s) | Worldwide |
| Valuation | |
| Supply growth | Fixed supply of 2 779 530 283 277 761 units |
IOTA is an open-source distributed ledger. It uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) instead of a blockchain.
The system is peer-to-peer, with transactions taking place directly between users and with an Coordinator intermediary. Transactions are considered confirmed when the Coordinator has included the transaction in its set of released milestones. In order to send a transaction, a user must validate two other transactions on the network. A sent transaction must accumulate a sufficient level of verification (i.e. must be validated a sufficient number of times by other users) in order to be accepted as “confirmed” by its recipient. The system works with a central or single administrator called the Coordinator, without which the network is not sufficiently secured in its early stages. The Coordinator is meant to be removed later when network is sufficiently large. Iota addresses the scalability and transaction cost concerns inherent in other distributed ledger technologies which are based on a block-chain. [2]
Origins
The community funded large corporate collaborations, community projects, and developer acquisition initiatives.[3]
IOTA began open beta testing on July 11, 2016. Trading took place over-the-counter between users for 11 months leading up to the first exchange listing at Bitfinex on June 12, 2017.[4]
Cryptography
IOTA uses Winternitz hash-based cryptography signatures instead of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC).[5][6] Hash-based signatures are faster than ECC.[7]
History
In June 2017, Outlier Ventures, a venture capital firm, invested 7 figures into IOTA, their first direct investment into a distributed ledger technology. [8]
Design
Tangle
Instead of using a blockchain, IOTA uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) as its protocol. IOTA’s DAG protocol is colloquially referred to as the "Tangle”, and is a generalization of the block chain protocol (a blockchain is a special case of a DAG[9]).[better source needed]
Cryptography
IOTA uses Winternitz hash-based cryptography signatures instead of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC).[5][6] Not only are hash-based signatures much faster than ECC.[7]
Grover's algorithm dictates that a quantum computer would be very efficient at conducting brute force attacks. The process of finding a cryptographic nonce in order to generate a Bitcoin block is particularly vulnerable to such brute-force attacks. As of today, an average of around 268 nonces must be checked to find a suitable hash, and this trends up over time.[10]
References
- ^ "Coin Market Cap - IOTA (MIOTA)". 2017.
- ^ Aitken, Roger (2017). "IOTA's Bitfinex Listing Surges To $1.5B Record-Breaking 'Crypto' Capitalization On Market Debut".
- ^ O’Higgins, Conor (2017). "IoT Operator IOTA Launch New $2 Million Ecosystem Fund".
- ^ Bitfinex Blog (2017). "IOTA Launch".
- ^ a b Buchmann, Johannes; Dahmen, Erik; Ereth, Sarah; et al. "On the Security of the Winternitz One-Time Signature Scheme" (PDF).
{{cite web}}: Explicit use of et al. in:|last4=(help) - ^ a b Hopwood, David-Sarah (2010). "Merkle-Winternitz-HORS signature scheme for Tahoe-LAFS".
- ^ a b Rohde, Sebastian; Eisenbarth, Thomas; Dahmen, Erik; et al. "Efficient Hash-Based Signatures on Embedded Devices" (PDF).
{{cite web}}: Explicit use of et al. in:|last4=(help) - ^ Aitken, Roger. "IOTA's Bitfinex Listing Surges To $1.5B Record-Breaking 'Crypto' Capitalization On Market Debut". Forbes. Retrieved 2017-08-18.
- ^ "Blockchain-free cryptocurrencies - CryptoWiki". cryptowiki.net. Retrieved 2017-07-05.
- ^ wiki, bitcoin. "Bitcoin Difficulty".