Cryptocurrencies are by no means complete working products. Even those that have been around for years still have issues. Thankfully though, like most technology, cryptocurrencies have an ability to be improved and upgraded, thanks to the development teams that work on them. MIOTA, the internet of things-based cryptocurrency by IOTA is no exception to this. IOTA work tirelessly around the clock to ensure their entire ecosystem is working in the most effective way possible.

Recently, a problem known as the coordinator problem has arisen within IOTA. His stems from the coordinator within the IOTA blockchain, a part of the network that has been designed to prevent double spend attacks. These occur when hackers and criminals are able to spend the same cryptocurrency twice. This is a fraudulent activity that allows hackers to steal money in essence.

The coordinator stops these double spends from happening by protecting the network, though many have noticed a problem in the way the coordinator works, it reduces decentralisation and makes the network less anonymous. According to Decrypt, a new implementation called Coordicide will be rolled out that ensures the network can continue to be secure, but in a more decentralised manner.

In a recent announcement, a co-founder of IOTA, David Sønstebø has said:

“We have been working towards the removal of the Coordinator since IOTA’s inception. Now, we are bringing that promise to fruition. With this major milestone, we are poised to accelerate into our next phase of growth and enterprise adoption in the real world.”

As it stands, we don’t know exactly Coordicide will work, so the technology behind this is still a bit of a mystery, it has since been made clear that regardless of this, the update will go on to benefit the entire IOTA ecosystem and that this is more than just a basic security update:

“IOTA promises that the new upgrade will provide increased scalability, faster transaction finality and easier node maintenance, as well as a variety of novel use cases. These are likely to include data-streaming services and other real-time applications. IOTA maintains that such uses are currently not feasible in other systems featuring DLT .”

This is a very exciting new project for IOTA and promises to address the decentralisation concerns that have lingered around IOTA for some time now. Keep an eye on this project and make sure you don’t miss their next announcements!