FAQs

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  • What is IOTEdge?

    IOTEdge is a decentralized edge computing network for Internet of Things, built on blockchain technology for autonomous device coordination and improved security.

  • What problems can IOTEdge solved?

    Despite the explosive number of Internet of Things, the reality is that IoT still remains a promise. There are three main problems that are holding back the massively development and adoption of IoT: high infrastructure cost, security and privacy concerns, data is static and segregated, hard to monetize. IOTEdge is solving these problems by creating a two-level blockchain infrastructure tailored for IoT, adding token incentives into the system, and building an autonomous machine-to-machine economy.

  • What are IOTEdge’s competitive advantages?

    • Based on blockchains for a well-balanced distributed network that maximizes scalability in a cost-effective way• Encrypted, privacy-preserving transaction improves security• Fast 2-level chain consensus scheme greatly improves the throughput of the network• Shared computing power, storage, bandwidth lowers your infrastructure cost

  • Why IOTEdge uses a two-level chain structure?

    Borrowing the idea and success of the Internet, we also architect IOTEdge chain to be two-levels: the local level chain, we call it L-chain, would be based on Tangle but an improved one, so-called LST-Tangle (explained later), just like the Local Area Network (Layer 2) in the Internet architecture; and the global level chain, we call it G-chain, would be based on Ethereum, just like the IP Protocol (Layer 3) in the Internet architecture. G-chain and L-chain are not two independent separate parts but two interacting subcomponents of one integral chain. L-Chain is essentially a short-term running ledger which records the detailed micro-transactions among its neighborhood only for a period of time, called T. This time period T is adjustable given different design, e.g. one hour, one day or one week etc. After every time period T, a consolidated version of the L-Chain ledger for the last T period will be put into G-Chain, just as a regular macro transaction, validated with consensus algorithm and becoming part of a block in G-Chain. With this design, we are able to keep the short-term ledger (L-Chain) with a constant storage footprint, while at the same time achieving a global consensus and permanent ledger with macro transactions at the G-Chain.

  • What is LST-Tangle?

    LST-Tangle is an improvement IOTEdge made upon IOTA Tangle (https://www.iota.org/research/academic-papers). “LST” stands for “Local” and “Short term”. Micro transactions between IoT devices are local because, as we observed, interactions between IoT devices are largely happening within a limited neighborhood and have nothing to do with the interactions outside their neighborhood. Thus, the ledger running on IoT devices only needs to reach consensus among their peers in that neighborhood. Ledger running on IoT devices should be short-term since what happens right now on an IoT device generally has nothing to do with what happened long time ago, it does not make sense to use storage on IoT devices as a permanent global ledger, as what happens to other classical blockchain. On the other hand, the algorithms running on IoT devices need to be lightweight and real time.

  • What is PoSp?

    PoSp spells for Proof of Stake posterior (PoSp), which is an improvement IOTEdge has made upon PoS. In IOTEdge platform all microtransactions happened will reach consensus later at the higher level, with Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus on the newly generated macro transactions. This will greatly reduce latency and resource consumption at the IoT end device level, while keeping the network extremely secure at the macro transaction level.

  • What are the security features on IOTEdge?

    IOTEdge takes security and privacy to another level:• Based on LST-Tangle. The content sent from a node can be looked up, traced, but cannot be tampered with.• Every transaction value is limited at the local level, thus making potential attack less harmful.• IOTEdge assigns a unique identity to each sensor, and each data generated by the sensor is tagged with sensor’s ownership, and this ownership is traceable and tamper-proof.• IoTEdge uses IOTA-MAM (Masked Authenticated Message) technology to encrypt data to protect privacy. Only authorized parties can read and reconstruct the entire data stream.• Each sensor has a trusted root built in the chip or flash memory. Based on the trusted root, the sensor has a physical-level trusted identity.

  • What is an IOTE token? How does it work?

    IOTEdge Network token is called IOTE which is pre-mined and no miner will be on the platform. IOTE can be obtained in the following ways:1. Sale of computing power/storage space/bandwidth2. Sale of data3. Sale of IoT services (DApp)4. Contribute code to improve IOTEdge platform5. Community award program, including creating genuine content in Internet to promote IOTEdge, circulating the content etc;The first 4 ways are in the production phase and the last one is in the distribution phase. We will issue a fixed number of 2 Billion tokens. Prior to the launch of the IOTEdge Mainnet, the circulated IOTEdge token will be an ERC20 token.