As our readers may be aware, IOTA is built on a unique architecture that was designed with the IoT environment of the future in mind. This unique architecture has made it more challenging for service providers like exchanges to integrate IOTA compared to traditional blockchains.

In particular, some of the challenges that service providers have experienced are:

Seed management

No double signing due to database constraints

Reattachment / repromotion of bundles

Confirmation monitoring

Deposit address monitoring

Today that all changes. Welcome to IOTA Hub.

The Hub offers a standardized, open-source solution to these issues using a simple gRPC API in a hardened and audited environment.

This makes integrating IOTA simple for any kind of service provider. Using Hub, an exchange can be ready to support IOTA in weeks rather than months, just by connecting Hub to their existing trading platform.

On top of regular seed and transaction management, Hub also supports externally signed transactions. The remote signing provider allows you to have a separate machine that holds the salt but does not have access to the database. Whereas the Hub itself has access to the database but does not have access to the salt. Communication happens via an encrypted gRPC channel. This increases operational security by making it impossible for an attacker to gain complete control over the exchanges’ funds by compromising a single system.

Everyone at the IOTA Foundation is extremely excited to launch Hub and grateful to all of our partners that supported us on the journey. We are confident that more exchanges and service providers will begin supporting IOTA in the coming weeks and months, leveraging the simplicity of IOTA Hub.

The open source repository for Hub can be found here, including instructions.