Original article by EVALUAPE

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A. Introduction

A decentralized peer-to-peer direct connection network solution.

B. Industry

According to Strategy Analytics’ research, with the rapid development of IoT in recent years, the total number of IoT devices is expected to reach 50 billion by 2020, while the overall market size will reach trillions of dollars. The rapidly increasing number of IoT devices has led to a great demand for frequent device update and data transmission with network connection. Currently, these needs are mainly satisfied via OTA server and Relay server. However, large loads of downloads and transmission within a short period of time not only means a great challenge for the system’s loading capacity, but also presents some thorny problems including high cost and potential risk of data security. To solve this pain point, ioeX has built a new direct communication network architecture based on the existing Internet via blockchain technology, a reliable network providing data transmission and storage services in a decentralized and distributed manner for manufacturers and other users.

As one of the blockchain-related industries with lower barriers to entry, there are many IoT-based blockchain projects on the market, among which the most famous one is IOTA. IOTA is dedicated to the construction of the future robotics economy with a number of innovative technologies including DAG and ternary arithmetic. But it is so far not open-sourced and faced with certain problems including the problem of security. Projects like IOTes and ITC are also its likes, most of which hold the ambition to reintegrate or reform the whole IoT industry. These projects fail to come true due to the great technical difficulty. In contrast, ioeX chooses to start the project by solving the urgent pain point of medium and small-sized smart devices manufacturers, which gives it certain advantage in the development progress and chances to seek for partnership. (7.5)

C. Mode

The goal of ioeX is to help manufacturers to eliminate the unstable factors brought by OTA and Relay Server during the smart devices upgrade through its decentralized peer-to-peer direct connection network. The solution of ioeX can largely reduce the huge cost of network connection, file storage and calls, and file transmission. For smart devices manufacturers, the project promises to save over 70% software update cost through its direct communication network. For end users of ioeX’s on-chain products, they can receive rewards for sharing resources, and therefore forms an ecosystem with a positive circulation. In the future, the project will eventually form a large-scale distributed computing and storage platform through on-chain computation and storage, and create an IoT-based ecosystem through external APIs. In terms of token economy, ioeX will issue two types of tokens: ioeX as rewards for mining as well as method of payment and circulation; Gas of constant value. Bitcoin miners can receive ioeX tokens as additional rewards without extra cost during their ledger keeping process. (7.5)

D. Technology

The core technology of ioeX is its decentralized peer-to-peer connection network (referred to as “Carrier” with reference to the project’s whitepaper). This network was built on top of Elastos and was based on the decentralized Distributed Hash Table (DHT) network technology. It links Bootstrap Nodes with fixed IP addresses and Peer Nodes with dynamic IP addresses together with the Carrier SDK, in order to realize the connection and communication across multiple Bootstrap Nodes and Peer Nodes. Even on the same DHT network, there will be no direct communication as long as no Friend network is established, which provides better protection against hacker attacks. Elastos helped ioeX to build a main chain based on PoW consensus mechanism to distribute rewards for sharing resources, and a sidechain mechanism based on DPoS consensus mechanism to record the resources contribution and usage on nodes. Instead of two-way peg technology, ioeX chooses to use Bitcoin merged mining to ensure the security of the sidechain. The sidechain needs to integrate the Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) on the main chain to accept transactions and ensure the security of transactions. A decentralized consensus can be reached on transactions with the help of data structure and algorithm. ioeX has a profound study over the consensus protocol and the overall logic is clear and sensible. It has well clarified the potential security problems as well as corresponding solutions. From this perspective, the technical design is done well. But the project is not open-sourced on Github. Nor has it launched its testnet so far. Although the technical development is claimed to be in a steady progress in its weekly report, there is no detailed description of this progress, which leads to questions over the implementation of the project. (6.5)

E. Team

The team of ioeX comes from Taiwan. Its members have some entrepreneurial experience as well as experience in IoT-related development. Most of the members were from Foxconn Group. Aryan Hung, CEO of ioeX, was the mobile phone ODM project manager of Faxconn Group and director of the company from which grew out Elastos. All of its operating members have previously worked in consulting companies and have shown strong ability in marketing. China’s mainstream paper media like people.cn have reported this project. Sina also did a special interview with its founder. The persona descriptions about its members are in consistency with their profiles on LinkedIn. There is no hype around this project. (7)

F. Ecosystem

ioeX has 13,692 followers on Facebook and 2,456 followers on Twitter with few forwards and comments. It has 12,994 members in its English Telegram group and 15,751 members in the Chinese group. The wechat community of ioeX has 80,600 members now. The roadmap has shown a clear plan about the implementation of technologies and the release of the network. Overall, the project owns a well-developed ecosystem and rather high popularity. At present, several smart devices companies have signed agreements with ioeX and announced the adoption of its technology, including ARCHOS, Everex Ltd, UCIC. ioeX also received investment from EOS Global VC, SBI, MIC, Elastos Foundation and etc. As the governmental think tank in Taiwan’s communications industry, MIC has certain connection with the authorities. So, the investment of MIC can be regarded as a relatively positive attitude of the Taiwan authorities toward the project. (7)

G. Conclusion

ioeX aims to solve the pain point continuously plaguing the founding team during the years working in small-size smart devices industry. The team has adopted blockchain technology to polish and realize their well-designed model. Both its business and technical model are rather perfect. The problem is that Elastos, its partner, has been exposed to scandals repeatedly, whose technical capability is a question open. As the project itself is not open source on Github, it is hard to track its progress. The focus of the project is relatively small, so it is easier to implement compared with other projects. In addition, the project has already completed the initial customer accumulation by signing cooperation agreements with some enterprises. What’s more, the project is located in Taiwan, where policies are more pro-blockchain. The project has also been recognized by the government. After successful implementation, it will not be difficult for ioeX to launch its network.

Hype Score: High

Risk Score:Medium

Expectation: Medium

Total Score: 7.2

All information in this article is provided for reference only and does not constitute investment advice.