The Internet of Things refers to the future network of internet-connected physical devices like home appliances, cars, etc. that users manage and control with a digital watch, mobile, desktop, or tablet. Essentially, IoT makes the idea of smart homes, smart cities, intelligent transportation, and smart grids a reality.
IOTA is a next-gen distributed ledger technology designed in Germany. Its associated cryptocurrency is MIOTA (Mega IOTA or Millions of IOTA). It mainly aims to revolutionize the space of the Internet of Things (IoT).
IOTA for IoT aims to:
- Support the fourth industrial revolution) and effectively form its backbone
- Lay the foundation for real-time, secure and efficient transactions between internet-connected machines
- With machine to machine communication in mind, it aims to be the go-to currency for transactions within the IoT ecosystem.
The mechanics of IOTA
IOTA is slightly different from the legacy blockchain platforms. It uses an inventive technology called the ‘Tangle.’ It is a unique data structure that uses the Directed Acyclic Graph or DAG.
Important Reads:
How IOTA is Reimagining the Blockchain for the Internet of Things
Top 5 Technological Advantages Of IOTA For Industries
What is Tangle?
For more detailed information on Tangle, visit this blog. However, here’s a quick review of the significant aspects of Tangle
- It has no chain
- It has no blocks
- And no miners, too – it doesn’t require mining
IOTA employs a unique distributed ledger architecture, which makes it ‘Blockless.’ The method to achieve consensus in IOTA is also different. It uses a type of ‘Proof of Work.’
Why is IOTA different from others?
From a high-level perspective, IOTA and the associated Tangle technology have four significant features that make it better than other blockchain platforms.
Scalability
IOTA scales as the number of transactions increases. Each transaction needs the sender to verify the last two transactions on the Tangle. So, the more users send the transactions, the more they get confirmed. It runs establishes a low difficulty ‘PoW’ to verify transactions, which is only a series of mathematical problems.
Swift Transactions
The more the transactions, the less time it takes to confirm each transaction.
Free-of-charge:
Tangle eliminates the need for miners. It reduces the cost of transactions on IOTA to almost zero.
Static Money Supply
The total numbers of MIOTA that’ll ever come into existence were already created in the genesis block. The total digital currency supply of IOTA is 2,779,530, 283.
IOTA for IoT will it win?
The ICO of IOTA and was so large that it initially crashed the exchange platform of Bitfinex for almost half a day.
Given to this excellent start, IOTA does contain prominent differentiating characteristics that would help it in the longer-term.
Everyone knows bitcoin’s scalability problems and slow transaction confirmation times because of its rapidly grown user base.
More info: How IOTA’s Tangle Gives a Stiff Competition to Its Adversaries
On the contrary, in IOTA, confirmation would process slowly when the network is small. However, it could even approach zero as the user base expands in size. To put simply, as the transactions in IOTA increases, Tangle’s capacity to handle and confirm transactions get increased.
The bottom line is that the internet of things ecosystem would be massive, which could likely change the world as we know it today.
If IOTA and MIOTA work well with IoT, there’s no stopping for IOTA.
