Most of you have probably heard of blockchain technology by now. But how many of you truly understand what it is? Blockchain is characterised by an immutable public ledger which brings transparency to a range of applications, spanning from transactions of money, data transfer, and many more. Blockchain is predicted to revolutionise the way the internet works, and many of the exciting projects are widely regarded as the best technology since the invention of the internet itself.

Another technology you may have heard of is the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is defined as “the interconnection via the Internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data.” The IoT market is forecast to grow from $170B in 2017, to $560B in 2022. However, this industry is not without its limitations. Due to centralisation, IoT is held back by scalability issues, high operating costs, privacy concerns and security risks.

A new project is aiming to tackle these issues: IoTeX. Remember the name. IoTeX will harness the best of IoT and blockchain technology by introducing a blockchain-in-blockchain architecture with token economy. IoTeX has been described as “Ethereum for IoT including sidechains with built-in privacy + lightweight computation/storage/communications.”

“IoTeX is the next generation of the IoT-oriented blockchain platform with vast scalability, privacy, isolatability, and developability for incubating new IoT applications and ecosystems. Connecting the physical world, block by block.”

Features of IoTeX include: Blockchains-in-blockchain, which will provide cost-effective scalability; constant size ring signatures for true privacy; fast consensus with instant finality for reduced transactional cost; and a purpose-built IoT architecture to accomodate key applications across multiple industry sectors.

The consensus mechanism will be Randomized Delegated Proof of Stake (RDPoS), which will allow for a fast consensus that is highly scalable with low transactional costs, as apposed to other consensus mechanisms, such as Proof of Work.

In terms of use cases, IoTeX will be aimed at the prospering industries of smart homes, and autonomous vehicles. The platform will allow others to build Decentralised applications (DApps), with each DApp running on its own subchain and can communicate with other subchains via the rootchain.

Due to its niche target market, IoTeX doesn’t have any direct competitors, although IOTA and IoT Chain are other projects in the IoT space. IOTA is the project that most will compare to IoTeX, however it specialises in machine-to-machine payments. IoTeX will scale in a different way to other IoT projects by using a subchain approach, as compared to the DAG method as used by IOTA and IoT Chain.

About The Token

The IOTX token is native to the IoTeX blockchain, and will be used solely within this network. It will initially exist as an ERC20 token, which will be migrated to its own coin when the main net is launched. The token will be used for functions such as paying for fees on the network, executing transactions, and running IoT applications on the IoTeX network. It will be mineable for 50 years, and available also as a reward to those who positively contribute to the network.

Overall there will be 10,000,000,000 tokens. 30% of the tokens will go to community and ecosystem, 25% to the foundation, 15% to the team, 6% to the community rewards program, meaning just 24% will be available for the token sale. I would like to see more allocated to the public, in my opinion.

Team

IoTeX is based in Menlo Park, Silicon Valley, and the team behind the project is very strong. The founding team is particularly strong, with Raullen Chai having worked as the head of crypto R&D at Uber, and a security engineer at Google. Qevan Guo was also an engineering manager and research Scientist at Facebook. The rest of the team is comprised of Ph.Ds, and experience at Bosch and Microsoft along with deep experience in the blockchain and cyber security space.

Key Links:

Website: http://iotex.io/

Telegram: https://t.me/IoTeXBountyBot?start=KuaQ1

Twitter: https://twitter.com/iotex_io

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IoTeX/

Medium Blog: https://medium.com/@iotex

Email: support@iotex.io

Hash ID: KuaQ1