What is IOTA?
IOTA, publically announced in 2015, is an open source project initiated for and entirely focused on enabling future applications, security, services, infrastructure, business models, governance structures and beyond.
It is a new distributed ledger based architecture, the Tangle, which overcomes the inefficiencies of current Blockchain designs and introduces a new way of reaching consensus in a decentralized peer-to-peer system of new transactional settlement and data integrity layer for the Internet of Things (IoT).
Fig: The Tangle
IOTA is the first cryptocurrency without a blockchain, that aims to establish itself as the fuel for efficient machine-to-machine (M2M) transactions. It uses directed acyclic graphs (DAG) instead of a regular blockchain, enabling various features like zero-cost transactions, infinite scalability or offline transactions.
People can transfer money through IOTA, even infinitesimally small nanopayments can be made without any fees.
IOTA is a public, permission-less backbone for the Internet of Things (IoT) that enables true interoperability between all devices, it is the missing puzzle piece for the Machine Economy.
What is the Tangle?
Tangle is a directed acyclic graph (DAG) as a distributed ledger which stores all transaction data of the IOTA network. It is a Blockchain without the blocks and the chain (so is it really a Blockchain?). The Tangle is the first distributed ledger to achieve scalability, no fee transactions, data integrity and transmission as well as quantum-computing protection. Contrary to today’s Blockchains, consensus is no-longer decoupled but instead an intrinsic part of the system, leading to a completely decentralized and self-regulating peer-to-peer network.
Tangle is the main technology behind IOTA. To understand the technology in detail, white paper is available.
Proof of Work in IOTA
All IOTA's which will ever exist have been created with the genesis transaction. This means that the total supply of IOTA's will always stay the same and you cannot "mine" IOTA's. If anyone does Proof of Work (PoW) in IOTA, he is not generating new IOTA tokens, but simply verifying other transactions.
What is the total supply of IOTA?
The total supply of IOTA is 2779530283277761.
IOTA is specifically designed for machines, so this high supply makes IOTA optimal for tiny nanotransactions while still keeping efficiency in mind.
IOTA on Exchange
IOTA is currently in Beta, It’s development roadmap can be referred for the project's progress.
While, IOTA is still going to go through iterations and optimization in the following weeks and months until the core protocol is ready for standardization and prime time deployment in the real world on a large scale, the team announced,
“The technology is now sufficiently matured to the point we are confident that we can go on exchanges and welcome thousands of new users.”
Each individual exchange will make their own announcements of IOTA exchange listing timelines and plans, but the first exchanges will start listing IOTA on the 13th of June 2017!
If you represent an exchange and want to begin the listing process, then contact IOTA at exchanges@iota.org for further assistance and documentation.
Project Overview
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Concept: Transactional settlement and data integrity layer for the Internet of Things (IoT) using distributed ledger based architecture, the ‘Tangle‘.
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Currency: IOTA
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Website: https://iota.org
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White paper: http://iotatoken.com/IOTA_Whitepaper.pdf
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Github: https://github.com/iotaledger/
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Blog: https://blog.iota.org
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