It is arguably one of the highest profile ICOs at the time of writing, and with yesterday’s announcement that Charlie Shrem has now joined its advisory board, XYO.network may also just have staked its position as one of the most promising blockchain start-ups around.

28 year-old Shrem, rumoured to be worth in the vicinity of $50m, having invested massively into Bitcoin whilst it was still trading at under $20, is also the original founder of the Bitcoin Foundation, and is credited with bringing the world’s first cryptocurrency to a wider audience.

“Proof-of-Location”

The XYO Network is setting out to solve one of the major challenges of the internet age – establishing a new protocol known as Proof-of-Location – that will allow IoT devices to report their physical location in a demonstrably verifiable manner.

Currently, such devices distribute details of their location based on trust leaving geo-location technology open to the possibility of spoofing and other similar, manipulative techniques. XYO’s proposed solution to the problem, laid out in the project’s white-paper, incorporates an incentive-based mechanism tied to reputational scores for devices reporting back location details of neighbouring devices.

If the problem is solved, the applications within industry are potentially limitless. However, the project team is still a distance off from implementing a fully working, viable product. Whilst not essential to the overall functioning of the network, comprehensive global coverage offered by XYO will eventually incorporate the involvement of low orbit satellites, explaining its $48m hardcap.

“Our website lays out details of use cases of the proposed technology for various industries, and how XYO can solve specific problems related to those problems,” a project representative states. With Shrem on-board, there will likely now be a few more taking an interest in such use cases.