IOTA at the Crossroads (4) — A bit of Optimism Needed
COVID-19 is severely impacting the word. The token price spells doom. The MoonPay hack and the Jinn Labs fiasco reverberate badly but we’ve decided to hold on a deep study of several issues we’ve been working on and, despite the gloom, offer true beam of light: IOTA seems so damn close to finally fulfilling its primary vision. (feeless, decentralized, scalable protocol)
In a few weeks IOTA would release the first prototype of the decentralized network, GoShimmer implementation of Coordicide, a prototype node software for an IOTA network without the Coordinator. We asked one of IOTA co-founders, Dr. Serguei Popov to clarify a few issues for us:
Blockchain Ghost: “How soon we can see GoShimmer, are we off the mark regarding these ‘few weeks’ statement?”
Dr. Popov: “Due to the MoonPay hack episode, the GoShimmer was, unfortunately, delayed — because half of devs that worked on it had to go and help resolving the crisis. We will hopefully see value transactions and conflict resolution implemented in a month. The mana system integration might take a bit longer.”
BG: “What would ‘the mana system integration’ be in the real world?”
Dr. Popov: “Implementation of our current Sybil protection mechanism (which we call ‘mana’) to GoShimmer.”
BG: “Will we see a significant improvement in the network’s performance, something measurable, like transactions per second? And if so, how those improvements would look like?”
Dr. Popov: “I think you are mixing GoShimmer with Chrysalis here. The former is just proof-of-concept/alphanet; the tps figures achieved there will have little to do with the real-world system. To improve the pre-Coordicide network performance, we will be doing this: Chrysalis (Path towards IOTA 1.5).”
BG: “You are a mathematician, a ‘probabilist.’ How probable is the Coordicide to succeed, given your February 2019 statement, “I think we did it.” (found a Coordicide solution)?”
Dr. Popov: “This, of course, depends on the definition of ‘success.’ I’m sure (okay, okay, let me put 0.999 probability here) that the solution is theoretically sound. I’m, probably, not the best person to estimate probabilities that it will work flawlessly as a real-world system really soon (although I’m confident we can do this too).”
This is huge. These IOTA Foundation guys are busting their butts in order to deliver.
Wish them luck.
Blockchain Ghost at your service
Spare some cutter, me brothers?
It’s been lot of damn work, researching and writing all that “On the Crossroads” stuff. (1, 2, 3, 4) And so much of it is on hold. Hate to ask of you, but your support is our most precious recognition.
IOTA address:
ANXUONPNJVSDOVFLZM9OKUOEYRHIAVHM9DJURPIELNKCNTDKFPJXWXVKYZIZDJADOSAFBIJEMYGCQWJQXGNBPGETYZ
