The early token sale for DataBroker DAO is ongoing and a number of our new community members have asked on various channels whether DataBroker DAO is taking on IOTA?

This post is intended to address this question and to clarify how network operators, such as IOTA, and DataBroker DAO should be seen in a broader ecosystem of IoT sensor connectivity and data monetisation.

To be short, the simple answer to this question is no.

Why does DataBroker DAO exist?

The sole reason for the existence of DataBroker DAO is to connect IoT sensor owners that produce data with data buyers looking to access hard to get and previously unavailable data.

DataBroker DAO provides current sensor owners and manufacturers with a direct path to monetisation of their sensor data on the one hand and on the other provides entrepreneurs, researchers, smart cities and other data consumers with access to data that remains locked away in organisational silos today. To unlock the silos, DataBroker DAO integrates with the current networks that act as the information transmission highways for the existing and massive IoT sensor market.

What don’t we do at DataBroker DAO that IOTA does?

DataBroker DAO does not try to rewrite or recreate the protocol used for device communications nor does it invent its own encryption algorithms. We work with leading, existing technologies and protocols like Ethereum and proven encryption methods. We recognise that the market exists already, just that a suitable marketplace does not.

We also don’t call our project open source then plant landmines for others to unwittingly obliterate themselves. I hope that you appreciate that doing so is no different than creating a centralised system and that doing so, discredits the very trust that blockchain technologies and distributed systems aim to implant in our world.

Riding the wave of blockchain enthusiasm and creating such an “open source” protocol that is actually in no way “open source” or a “blockchain” is also akin to putting lipstick on a centralised pig, then throwing that pig on a surf board to get invited to blockchain events to ride the waves of enthusiasm that distributed technologies create. A protocol that can only be valorised by one party, the creator who knows how to avoid the planted landmines, is the pig.

If not competitors, how do DataBroker DAO and IOTA fit in the broader picture?

In the DataBroker DAO white paper, we map out the IoT sensor market and the stakeholders involved in this ecosystem. We define one of the stakeholders as “network operators”. This is the role that IOTA potentially plays at some point in the future. They have defined a protocol that enables devices to transmit data to communicate and transact directly. This is for DataBroker DAO, another network operator, similar to a telecommunications company operating a network for device connectivity.

The IOTA protocol sits next to any another protocol used for device connectivity to transmit information and/or transactions such as GSM, GPRS, LORA or Sigfox. It has its unique attributes as do the others.

DataBroker DAO is network agnostic so our scope includes various wireless networks like GSM, GPRS, LORA and Sigfox as a few examples. For those less familiar with the IoT landscape, these are existing and mature networks that are already battle-tested and fully in production. They are enabling the 9 billion sensors that are already connected today.

Will the data from sensors connected to the IOTA network be available to data buyers on DataBroker DAO?