Reflections on cryptocurrency: IOTA

Steemians!
There are so many cryptocurrencies out there that I must admit keeping track of even half of them is a challenge! I read and read about one crypto for days and once I feel that I "master it" I move to another one....but memory is not always on my side (maybe some short memory issues, who knows!) so I decided to write down characteristics and personal considerations and post it on Steemit! We start today with IOTA!

Note: These are personal considerations (and nothing else), so please feel free to comment and contribute to the discussion. This is how we grow both in term personal knowledge and community!

Name: IOTA

Website: https://iota.io

Market cap: $ 1,310,442,906

Type: decentralised, self-regulating, peer-to-peer network

License: Open Source

Developers:
Dominik Schiener

General description
Iota is the blockchain for the internet of things. In a world of connected devices there is an increasing need for a silver-bullet technology capable to effectively enable the so called "Economy of Things". Iota team claim that their technology is able to solve all aspects related to the establishment of a huge network of connected "Things", sharing value and interacting with the physical world. Iota platform comprise also an embedded cryptocurrency that can be transferred along the network without fees, thus allowing micro and nano-payments

Main purposes:
Become the backbone for the Internet of Things ecosystem
Enable secure interoperability between devices
Enable IoT data tamper-resistant distributed storage

Maturity:
Project is in Beta stage. A software implementation of the platform exist but is intended to be a reference implementation that hasn't been stress tested yet. Other optimised implementations are under active development (C++, Rust and Go). Currently the IOTA network is running in "bootstrap mode" with the help of a software component (called "Coordinator"). This module serves to shield the network to attacks that can be made to it while system is its' infancy. The coordinator will be shut down permanently once the network's strength increases.

Technology:
Iota is based on a new ledger technology named "tangle" which is fundamentally an alternative way to the blockchain to store transactions. Main benefits of the tangle are scalability, data integrity and transmission, and protection to attacks done via quantum computing devices

Mining and currency supply:
Although mining concept exist in Iota isn't coupled to the generation of new iotas. All iotas available (more than 2 quadrillions) are pre-mined and exists regardless of the adoption of the currency or the mining process thus making iotas a fixed supply currency. Mining process anyway exists and have the only purpose to validate transactions that occur within the network. Nodes need to perform mining to gain the right to make a transaction themselves. This assures network survival and relegate the use of iota tokens just for transactions involving (nano-)payments.

Proof algorithm:
Based upon Curl hashing algorithm, resistant to quantum computing attacks based on large prime number factoring

Community:
Mainly open source developers and distributed ledger enthusiasts

Sponsors:
Main sponsor is the IOTA Foundation, on 19th June, 2017 they have teemed up with Oslo Medtech, Oslo Cancer Cluster, NTNU CCIS, The Norwegian Centre for E-Health Research and Alpha Venturi. Early proof of concepts were done in cooperation with Microsoft. In February 2017 Canonical Ltd set a partnership with IOTA Foundation with the aim to give a bold impulse to the whole project.

Strategy and roadmap:
The project is still in it's infancy and the roadmap isn't quite well defined. Anyway on 5th may 2017 iota.org announced to have gathered 2M dollars in the so called "IOTA Ecosystem Fund" a fund entirely dedicated to speed up IOTA growth, open to whom want to submit an idea. Nowadays the network need to rely upon a "Coordinator" which is a network component whose purpose is to protect the IOTA network against attacks to the Tangle ledger. Those attacks could only be performed in the early stage of the ledger, once the network start to grow up there will be no need to keep up the Coordinator and then will be permanently shut down. To ensure network scalability on the long run IOTA plans include also an open source hardware module to offload calculations to. This could be a game changer that could definitively open the way to low resources devices like ones commonly used in IoT contexts where cpu and memory are highly constrained; however shadows still remains on it's claimed "ternary calculation system" and isn't very clear if and how this technology will be released and made available to the public.

Potential risks:
Project is young and many things could go wrong. Although DAGs (math foundation for the Tangle ledger) are well studied and have solid mathematical foundations, only time will tell if the Tangle will confirm itself like a viable, scalable and secure alternative to the classic blockchain as we know it today. Other source of uncertainty could reside in the IOTA's network bootstrap process especially when the coordinator will be shut down to perform transition to a fully decentralised network.

Trading exchanges:
Bitfinex