IOTA News

We have been working on a new and vastly improved version of MAM (Masked Authenticated Messaging) for a couple of months now. Today, we are releasing an alpha implementation. Together with the release, and as described in this post, we are also renaming MAM to IOTA Streams. The implementation, written in Rust, allows you to test how IOTA Streams can be used and how it differs from previous versions of MAM. Please bear in mind that this is an early implementation, and it was mainly created to get feedback as we progress towards the final implementation. Find the repository here.

To summarize some of the changes, as compared to MAM v0 (thanks to Michele Nati):

• Cryptographic framework — IOTA Streams is not just about channels. IOTA Streams is a framework for cryptographic applications. The Channels functionality, significantly extended from MAM v0, is now just one example of an application that can be implemented on top of IOTA Streams. For purposes where the Channel application isn’t the ideal solution, a different application can be built using the IOTA Streams framework.
• Channel application — The IOTA Streams channels application has some novel features. For example, as before one Author can sign messages and multiple Subscribers can receive messages. Subscribers can now however also publish unsigned messages. In contrast, in MAM v0 only channel owners could publish messages.
• Message types — In IOTA Streams, messages have a structure based on the header. In MAM v0, the message format was fixed, and if your use case required different message structures, you needed multiple channels for each structure. For example, you may have different message types for monitoring messages and alert messages. In IOTA Streams, you can publish both in the same channel, and applications that read the messages will distinguish them based on their specific headers.
• Improved access control — In MAM v0, you needed multiple channels to share various information with different parties. In IOTA Streams, you can apply a different cryptographic mechanism to each message based on its message type. All in one channel. This means that different messages have different access control rules based on their type. And different parties only access the information they have access to.
• Linking messages — In MAM v0, all messages were independent, in IOTA Streams, messages can link to one another. This means that a message can link to another message containing supplementary information about the current message.
• Message sequencing — In MAM v0, if you wanted to invalidate a message with a newer one, you needed to create a new channel, this increased the application level complexity. In IOTA Streams, you can amend previous messages in an existing channel, and while the older message remains in the Tangle to guarantee integrity, applications can directly retrieve only the newest, valid message. This makes replacing and changing information like credentials much simpler than before. You can update credentials linked to a digital identity, for example, without having to create a new channel and identity like you did with the previous MAM.

To test some of the functionality yourself, see the Streams repository on our Github. As we progress with the implementation and finalize the functionality, we will be working on more comprehensive examples and scenarios in our documentation.

We’d like to take this opportunity to gather feedback, and then adjust the specification and implementation as necessary to then follow up with a full Rust and C implementations, as defined in our roadmap.

We welcome you to have a look feedback and suggestions on our #streams-discussion channel on the IOTA Discord.

Thanks to Vlad Semenov for his amazing work on IOTA Streams!

IOTA Streams alpha was originally published in IOTA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

IOTA Research Status Update

March 2020

Our research groups are pleased to share our latest progress updates from February & March 2020. All groups are progressing nicely toward our goals. Much progress has been made since our February ReSum — where we were engaged with the topics outlined below, as well as liaising with several of our engineers, with whom we are working together to translate our results into end-user products

Research Meeting — Lisbon Summit: This Research Meeting had a different approach than previous meetings. With most Cordicide questions answered and a large number of its components well specified, it was time to discuss in detail how our research is to become the Coordicide. Therefore, much of the meeting focused on defining the structure of nodes, the transaction structure, and how transactions will be processed, among others. We also defined our communication processes with the Engineering team so work on specifications will be as streamlined as possible. We have now begun work on the specifications of Coordicide (think of it as a “yellowpaper”), and our whole team looks forward to seeing the final result.

Networking. We have built a Python simulator in order to evaluate the performance of the Additive-Increase/Multiplicative-Decrease (AIMD) congestion control protocol in the Tangle. The metrics we are interested in include (i) probability of transaction drop, (ii) throughput and (iii) fairness (i.e., the capacity of a node to issue transactions based on its reputation score). Our goal is to customize the protocol in order to prioritize transactions based on their size, type and timestamp.

Additionally, we are delighted to communicate that the paper “On the Fairness of Distributed Ledger Technologies for the Internet of Things” has been accepted to the Poster track of the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC 2020) and the papers “Implementation Study of Two Verifiable DelayFunctions” and “Parasite Chain Detection in the IOTA Protocol” have been accepted for publication and presentation at the 2nd Tokenomics on Blockchain Economics, Security and Protocols.

dRNG. The development of a decentralized Random Number Generator (dRNG) for IOTA is well on its way. After the analysis of available options, we decided to use the drand protocol, based on the threshold version of the Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS) signature scheme. This protocol seems to be better suited for our purposes than schemes based on commit-reveal and VDFs, for example. We also started working on the committee selection among high mana nodes (those nodes are going to be producing randomness). We have a few available options for committee selection. One promising result of our research thus far is related to nodes being able to declare their own mana simply by issuing a special transaction.

GoShimmer Implementation. We have finally released GoShimmer v0.1.0 [blogpost], which supports zero-value transactions and includes a set of new features such as the salt-based autopeering, a rewritten gossip layer, and new APIs and dashboard, to list a few. We are so excited to see the full Coordicide solution implemented into GoShimmer that we have already started working on the next release.

We have also completed an initial integration of the drand protocol into GoShimmer [see this branch on Github]. This integration enables a distributed committee to generate and broadcast fresh and publicly verifiable randomness into the Tangle. In order to speed up dRNG testing independently from other sub-modules, such as the committee selection, we are planning to temporarily run a community-based committee for the first test of our drand integration. Stay tuned for more information about this in the following weeks!

Moreover, we are working on implementing other important aspects of GoShimmer, such as value transfers. You can follow our progress on the develop branch.

FPC. In the FPC group, we worked on reducing the communication overhead for the voting protocol. The amount of mana a node holds proved to be a core element in deciding in which way a node should communicate. In order to make the voting communication efficient, it was required to consider various concepts depending on various network assumptions. Additionally, we have worked on several improvements to the voting protocol itself, in the sense that the agreement failure rate could be reduced greatly, also in the context of various mana distributions in the network.

Mana and Autopeering. For autopeering, we have largely completed the first round of simulations and we are currently analyzing our results. We have begun organizing our simulation and analytical results on autopeering into research papers. These results, however, mainly consider the case where mana is not used in the Autopeering. Thus we need to add mana to our model.

For mana, we established some goals and questions. We have decided to use Mana 2, and to compute it using a moving average. Using these tools, we can bound the difference between any two nodes’ perceptions of mana in terms of the network delay. However, under these assumptions, mana growth is governed by a number of equations that we are now studying.

Protocol. The protocol team has been focused on answering questions about some details of the protocol specification, so we’re now preparing to pass them to the development team. Of the many discussed ideas, the “Levels of Knowledge” approach was found to fit many of our needs, especially our desire to reduce the number of voting rounds, and also giving a fair threshold for filtering bad timestamps or existence of conflicts, for example. We also worked on how we would handle the parameters for the “Levels of Knowledge,” such as how resynchronization of small sets of transactions occurs and when to transition this resynchronization to a restart of the node (large scale resynchronization). Finally, we discussed the use of finality criteria and which tools we should provide for users to be able to accept transactions. Among the three good proposals we have, checkpointing is particularly suitable since it is also useful for local snapshotting.

In the coming month, the protocol team will finish the discussions about the few details that still need to be addressed, and will write the specifications of those components which remain to be coded in the prototype.

Extra Discussions: Coming out of the Lisbon Summit, we decided there were some research questions around which we would like to fine tune our conclusions. So the teams have held smaller meetings aimed at tackling them. These topics included resynchronization, snapshotting and the “realities” approach for ledger state calculation. The extra discussions were successful in enabling us to optimize our approach to each topic.

Finally, we wanted to say a few words about how the Research team collaborated with other teams in the Trinity Attack mitigation process. Research team members were quick to jump into action following the exploit. Researchers and engineers worked closely to develop the master plan, and several researchers were involved in tracking funds, as well as planning around the migration tool. The open dialogue among the teams helped ensure that the “big picture” of the mitigation strategy included all the best approaches.

We look forward to sharing further updates with you soon! As always, you can stay up to date with the IOTA Research team in the #tanglemath channel on our Discord. And you are welcome to follow and participate in our technical discussions on our public forum: IOTA.cafe.

IOTA Research Status Update was originally published in IOTA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

IOTA Foundation and TradeMark East Africa partner up to improve infrastructure and trade through technology

A strategic partnership

TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) is one of the most respected organizations in the region and well-known globally for its work on improving livelihoods through improved trade conditions. TMEA’s track record is impressive across the more than eight countries it operates in and includes programmes across the spectrum from infrastructure development such as roads and border posts; to upgrading government agencies’ systems and processes; and improving the regulatory environment. (Learn more: www.trademarkea.com)

Following a long due diligence process, multiple ideation sessions, and hands-on work, the IOTA Foundation (IF) is proud to receive the approval of the board of TMEA and become a strategic partner. As organizations, we share many of the same values, such as: being transparent and inclusive; using our respective capabilities for public good; as well as both organizations are driven by not-for-profit mandates.

As strategic partners, we share a common vision for improving trade through technology. The partnership will allow the IF to work with TMEA to spearhead initiatives on using the Tangle to: a) improve data management and collaboration along trade corridors, b) explore new ways to ensure digital solutions are inclusive and benefit both large corporations as well as smaller traders; and c) work towards increasing the global competitiveness of East African products whether it is being more cost-effective or providing more transparent supply chains to the end consumer.

Public infrastructure for trade — a perfect match

The first area the partnership is focusing on is the exchange of data and trade certificates across borders and between government agencies and with traders. Today’s trade is still dominated by papers and manual processes. Most government agencies have or are in transition towards digital internal processes. But the sharing of data/certificates between agencies and across borders are still manual as externally sharing of digital data is considered risky: easy to copy and falsify, difficult to uphold access rights and prevent unauthorized actors accessing sensitive information. With existing solutions, there has been little interest in a system with a central actor de facto managing all actors’ data on a centralized platform/infrastructure.

By introducing the Tangle, IOTA’s underlying data structure, we are currently piloting a system to ensure “trust” in the data shared. This system follows a set of agreed design principles: 1) single-version-of-truth capability for all actors; 2) each actor owns and controls their own data (and is accountable for it); 3) accommodates existing infrastructure, and 4) provides time and cost-saving for all. More information about the project will be released shortly!

Given that IOTA’s technology is open source, low cost, secure, and is decentralized, it matches well with building public data infrastructures. It allows for building an infrastructure for government-to-government interactions and government-to-business interactions that are neutral to corporate interests and allow for multiple interoperability with different corporate and public systems.

Furthermore, using the Tangle for data transactions is feeless, it does not require any actor to buy tokens and it avoids potential concerns about the regulation of cryptocurrencies. There are no miners or private actors holding the key to the kingdom and each actor can ultimately decide to share their own data with anyone without asking others for permission or paying a fee.

Thus, in the long-term, it encourages all actors to innovate and develop new ways of collaboration around such public data structure. Innovation will not be confined to the imagination or governance of one or a few actors. The vision is a secure and reliable public infrastructure that allows everyone to take advantage, innovate and grow their services and businesses on a permissionless basis.

Local Training and capacity building

Part of this commitment includes Peter, Dennis and Kelvin — and more names will soon follow. These are local Kenyan developers that have been trained in the IOTA technology as we want to ensure a sustainable path to development and avoid dependencies on only a few individuals. Currently, they are a shared resource between IF and TMEA and have received training from IF engineers. The aim is to build a talent pool in the region that has access to the innovation happening around IOTA and who can collaborate with TMEA’s ICT-4-trade teams to drive use cases and take advantage of new technology.

This is aligned with IOTA Foundation’s vision to empower our community of developers to access the technology without the need for the foundation to be involved. The IF is not a classic consultancy or a software company, but more like a movement. In this partnership, IF is systematically empowering local developers with the long-term aim of being hands-off daily coding and system development to concentrate on the core protocol. For now, we take the role of a midwife who transfers knowledge and builds local capacity.

Bringing an ecosystem — getting an ecosystem

TMEA working model is based on collaboration and partnerships with governments, private actors and regional/national trade institutions. They have long-build relationships with both the public sector and the private sector in the region and interventions are built on these partnerships as collective efforts. Co-creation has been part of TMEA’s DNA long before it became a buzz-word in the tech world. Using distributed ledger technology to enhance an ecosystem’s collaboration is more about bringing the ecosystem together than building the technology. Thus, TMEA is a natural anchor for rolling out the advantages of applying the IOTA technology.

In parallel to TMEA providing access to a well-developed ecosystem in East Africa, the IOTA Foundation brings an ecosystem of corporates, start-ups and developers using the technology for trade and supply chain services. Thus, the partnership also provides TMEA access to an ecosystem of new services and innovation in which IF aims to bring in partners that have new models for breaking trade barriers and improving trade lanes. We will share more information about this work in due course.

Read the official press release of the partnership here.

Learn more about TradeMark East Africa: www.trademarkea.com

Learn more about the IOTA Foundation: www.iota.org

IOTA Foundation and TradeMark East Africa partner up to improve infrastructure and trade through… was originally published in IOTA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

IOTA Newsletter #18 — Trinity, Tangle EE, Coordicide Alphanet Release & Chrysalis

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Trinity Incident

Trinity is a software wallet for the IOTA digital asset that has been developed for desktop and mobile operating systems. Managed by the IOTA Foundation, this open-source software project enables the user to manage their tokens over the IOTA network. On February 12, 2020 the Trinity Wallet was attacked via a third-party dependency from Moonpay, which resulted in the theft of around 8.55 Ti in IOTA tokens. If you used Trinity between 17th Dec 2019–17th Feb 2020 and you have not migrated your seed during the migration period, make sure to create a new seed in Trinity and transfer your funds from your old seed.

The IOTA & Eclipse Foundations Launch Tangle EE

Together with the Eclipse Foundation, we are pleased to announce the launch of the Tangle EE Working Group. Tangle EE unites a diverse group of leading companies, academics, and standards bodies in developing data, payment and identity solutions and tooling on IOTA’s Tangle.

Coordicide Alphanet Out Now

GoShimmer is our Go implementation of Coordicide, and today’s release marks an important step forward towards reaching a coordinator-free IOTA mainnet.

Recent News

Chrysalis (Path towards IOTA 1.5)

Apart from Coordicide, the objective of the IOTA Foundation is to fully optimize the IOTA mainnet pre-Coordicide and offer an enterprise-ready solution to our ecosystem. We have therefore planned for an intermediate update called Chrysalis.

The Road to Integration: Part 1 — Getting Started

The IOTA Foundation (IF) can support you to achieve your goal. We build solutions and we can provide consultation on how to best use and integrate IOTA technology or develop new enabling components and interfaces using our blueprints. We organize workshops and we can help educate an emerging class of IOTA developers to replicate, adopt and scale the IOTA protocol into new IOTA-powered solutions.

Trondheim city and IOTA gear up its smart city development

The municipality of Trondheim enters into deeper cooperation with the IOTA Foundation and eight other companies to tackle sustainable development goal challenges in smart cities.

IOTA Releases Updated Coordicide Whitepaper

In this updated version, while the core components remain unchanged, we are pleased to demonstrate substantial progress in terms of validation of our initial work.

In case you missed it…

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IOTA Newsletter #18 — Trinity, Tangle EE, Coordicide Alphanet Release & Chrysalis was originally published in IOTA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.