coordicide - Pwim.Net

IOTA Launches Chrysalis Phase 1, One Step Closer to an Enterprise-Ready Blockchain

IOTA has successfully launched phase 1 of Chrysalis, reaching one of many important milestones in its development. Chrysalis, also known as IOTA 1.5 is designed as an intermediate phase before its transition to IOTA 2.0, Coordicide.

With the completion of the deployment of Chrysalis phase 1, the network is not witnessing 1,000 transactions per second, with an average transaction confirmation time of 10 seconds. Performance and reliability improvements for node software will also be a feature for IOTA 1.5, and the majority of transactions would reach their destination on the first try.

Before the network upgrade, IOTA was only able to handle 5 to 20 transactions per second, struggling to even reach 40. The network has now upgraded to Hornet nodes, allowing the improvements of tip selection and milestone selection algorithms, supporting over 1,000 transactions per second.

With the new improvements seen in the Chrysalis deployment, the network is now capable of serving a significantly larger number of use cases, taking it one step further towards an enterprise-ready network.

The IOTA Chrysalis launch also allows users to run a node “easier than ever,” and the latest IOTA blog said:

“Node set-up and maintenance has never been easier. Running a node can be done with 4 commands via APT, or through Nuriel’s playbook. With autopeering, officially part of Chrysalis but released in Hornet a few months ago, you do not need to look for manual nodes to peer. We still recommend setting up manual peers if you run a node in a production environment.”

As announced by the IOTA Foundation, the second phase if IOTA 1.5 is expected in the second half of 2020. The second phase plans to introduce the functionality of unspent transaction output (UTXO), atomic transactions, reusable addresses, and a transition to a binary transaction layout. Phase 2 of Chrysalis will conclude the development of IOTA 1.5. IOTA outlined its current progress towards Phase 2:

“Work on Chrysalis Phase 2 began several months ago as RFC specifications. And development already began on some of the components, like the new wallet and client libraries.”

IOTA Foundation Announces the Alpha Release of IOTA Streams for Users' Ultimate Control Over Their Own Data

The IOTA Foundation has continued to aim for the publication of Coordicide in its mainnet by the first half of 2021, as the foundation will work with international bodies to promote clear regulatory guidelines and frameworks.

Today, the open-source non-profit foundation, IOTA has announced the final Alpha release of IOTA Streams, the framework to enable users to control the data collected from their internet of things (IoT) and connected devices.

IOTA Streams is an open-source decentralized ledger technology (DLT) framework for decentralized data streaming and encryption for use in embedded systems. This framework allows granular levels of data access and to enable sharing capabilities directly into connected devices.

Currently, IOTA Streams is still in its Alpha phase, as the IOTA Foundation believes that its new products will stay in this phase until they have transitioned to be compatible with the upcoming Chrysalis phase two integrations.

IOTA Foundation has continued to take the layer two technology approach with IOTA Streams. According to the official press release shared with Blockchain.News:

“This approach is highly important when it comes to the future of IOTA Streams, because to secure data from a device, structure it in an easily consumable fashion, and share it securely, requires these operations to be done on device, on prem, or on chip depending on the use case. By enabling these functions as an embedded integration, something important is created. The reality of the “Own your own data” movement can be realized.”

Although European citizens have their data in good hands with the General Data Privacy Regulation being in place, other parts of the world may have more privacy issues with their data. IOTA’s vision is to solve the issue of how data is stored, especially within existing centralized systems.

The IOTA Streams approach takes the storing and management of data away from a centralized system, allowing the structuring and process of the data in a granular way. This framework creates an intrinsic level of trust, for a fair system to be put in place. The official blog explained:

“For big businesses and enterprises there are a host of other concerns around data. Their employees’ data is being consumed which puts the products and services their business offers at risk. Reducing their ability to protect their intellectual property. They need ways to verify that their business efforts are being protected which puts privacy as a core requirement.”

IOTA is welcoming feedback on the specification for the improving IOTA Streams.

IOTA Looks into “Data Sharding” to Increase Storage on Tangle in Progress for Nectar

IOTA recently published a December update, announcing its progress for its remaining elements for the delivery of IOTA 2.0, Nectar.

IOTA’s next major milestone, IOTA 2.0 Nectar, is expected sometime in the first quarter of 2021.

In the past month, IOTA’s team has seen great progress on the Pollen testnet for the implementation of IOTA 2.0. IOTA recently published a new version of its Pollen testnet, which is the step before reaching Nectar.

The IOTA team released the Pollen testnet v0.3.1 last month, where the update included the refactoring of the message structure according to the new Tangle RFC. Progress has also been made on the mana branch, where there was a tool added to determine how much mana would be generated when spending funds.

IOTA’s team has been optimizing the consensus implementation by introducing FPC statements, where the FPC protocol requires nodes to directly query randomly selected nodes for conflict resolution.

The team also noted that another milestone reached by the team was the implementation of markers, which is a tool to infer knowledge about the structure of the Tangle, in the past and future cone membership. IOTA’s research and development team explained:

“Finally, many members of our community joined together to set up the first IOTA community-based dRNG committee. This is a great achievement and really shows how much our community is a fundamental and integral part of this prototyping process.”

In the networking team at IOTA, it was noted that they have been performing simulations to validate the congestion control mechanism. The algorithm has been put under extreme conditions, including powerful attacks. The algorithm has been found to be very robust against any malicious circumstances, and is ready to be implemented on the Pollen test network.

Researchers at IOTA are also working on lowering the adoption barrier in Coordicide, which is the most important step for IOTA. The team also aims to guarantee access to low mana nodes during uncongested periods.

IOTA’s team has been writing a proposal summarizing data sharding, as the team has been looking closely into some second layer solutions for data. The idea of “data sharding” is still preliminary, where the amount of data stored on the Tangle could greatly increase.