IOS/IOST FAQ 1

6 min readJan 20, 2018

General Inquiries

What is IOS/IOST?

The IOS (Internet of Services) is a next-generation blockchain technology that provides the network infrastructure to support a service-oriented ecosystem. IOS Token is IOST. The IOS platform not only provides its users a completely decentralized way to exchange online services and digital goods, but also enables developers to deploy large scale dApps with the ability to support massive number of users.

In short, IOST is a scaling solution we proposed to resolve the scalability issues faced by the greater blockchain community. Our aim is to make decentralized services with large transaction volume possible.

For the technical details, please refer to our white paper draft here.

For more information about the IOS project, you can visit the following sources:

Who is developing the IOS blockchain?

The Internet of Services Foundation, a Singapore incorporated non-for-profit organization, is currently developing the IOS blockchain and relevant technologies. The foundation is formed by a group of blockchain experts, distributed system scientists, world-class programmers and tech enthusiasts, aiming to make business-grade decentralized services possible on the blockchain.

What’s the project plan?

We are currently working on the development of our blockchain network prototype v0.1 Apollo, which we aim to release toward the end of Q1 2018. We will keep you updated via our official social media accounts.

For the roadmap of our project, please refer to our primer draft here.

Is IOS an open source project?

Yes, the Internet of Services will be an open source project. As tech enthusiasts ourselves, the IOS team deeply believe in the power of open source software. We know that open source is the key to innovation, therefore we want to invite all of you to join our community and help blockchain technology deliver on its incredible potential.

Currently, we are developing the IOS architecture in a private repository. As soon as the early stage architecture development complete, we will release source code of the IOS blockchain under open source licenses.

I really think IOST is a promising project. How can I get involved?

The easiest way to support us is by following our social media accounts (posted above).

If you are you a programmer, crypto-expert or in a relevant field, we are always looking for more talent. If interested, please contact career@iost.io with all relevant information.

if you are interested in helping us grow our community, please send an email to community@iost.io.

How can I meet with IOST team members?

The IOS team will soon host a series of offline meetups/information sessions for our community members and supporters to participate. Details of those events will be released soon. Stay tuned for updates.

Additionally, we are currently setting up a main operation office in the greater Bay area. Before our Silicon Valley/SF office is setup properly, our team members will work remotely from New York, Boston, Beijing and San Francisco. If you are interested in meeting with our team members in person, please send an email to us via team@iost.io.

General Technical Question

What are the major highlights of IOS’s technologies?

The secret sauce of IOST’s ability to handle large amount of transactions simultaneously are our Proof-of-Believability (PoB) consensus mechanism and Efficient Distributed Sharding.

How is IOS different from other scaling solutions?

Unlike many existing scaling solutions, the IOS blockchain is an on-chain solution, which means IOS blockchain does not have to deal with security issues caused by on-chain and off-chain communication.

Secondly, IOS is a decentralized scaling solution, which does not depend on any third parties and does not have single points of failures.

Thirdly, many scaling solutions are using PoS as their consensus solution. IOST’s POB mechanism, a variant of the PoS that we believe is a major improvement, can provide better performance without causing issues like centralization and security problems.

How does IOST compare to other systems like EOS and Zilliqa?

Many people would like to think that we created IOST in order to compete with existing scaling solutions like EOS and Zilliqa. To certain degree, this is a fair. However, instead of competitors, we would like to think IOST, EOS and Zilliqa are classmates, trying to address the same question with different approaches.

EOS adopted a new consensus mechanism, DPoS, in order to enhance the transaction processing speed, while Zilliqa is using sharding to enable parallel transaction processing.

IOS vs Zilliqa

The centerpiece of zilliqa’s scalability is sharding, a technique that divides the entire network into smaller subspaces and processes transactions in parallel. While Zilliqa’s sharding creation depends on two PoW(s) processes to elect a committee and assign shards, our Efficient Distributed Sharding technology makes the sharding creation process even faster by replacing the PoW process with cryptographic sortition. All nodes in Zilliqa form shards together which would cause an idle phase where the system couldn’t process any transactions before nodes are bootstrapped. IOS is using a dynamic validators-to-shards assignment protocol during epoch transitions while maintaining system operability. Another difference between the two is how transactions across shards are handed. IOS uses a two-step atomic commit protocol that guarantees transaction atomicity. At this point it is still unclear how Zilliqa deals with transactions across shards as no such information is given.

IOS vs EOS

The cornerstone of EOS’s high scalability is the DPoS consensus mechanism. The network elected 21 so-called “block producers” to record blocks. The probability of a node being selected is proportional to the node’s stake. Then all of those 21 nodes will propose blocks in term. Despite the high TPS, there are two major risks associated with the system. Firstly, the size of the elected committee is not large enough to support large scale network. Secondly, just like many other DPoS consensus protocol, EOS’s solution is troubled by a greater risk of unhealthy centralization. IOS is taking a different approach; leaders and shards are configured dynamically via EDS and TransEpoch without causing system downtimes while guarantees the security and liveness. Centralization is minimized due to PoB’s multi-dimension stakes and multi-league processing.

When will IOST be live?

In order to build a solid foundation for future developments, the IOS team has devoted a huge amount time conducting research in order to locate and attempt to solve the existing issues of blockchain technologies.

A MVP test network is anticipated to be launched towards the end of Q1 2018.

Token, Funding and Market Related

What are IOS tokens? How can I find them in my wallet?

IOST is an ERC-20 token. That means, it can be stored in any ERC-20 compatible wallets.

If your wallet application has not yet listed IOST. You can lookup your tokens balance via the IOST smart contract:

Contract Address: 0xfa1a856cfa3409cfa145fa4e20eb270df3eb21ab
Decimals: 18
Symbol: IOST

Where can I buy/sell IOST?

The IOS foundation has formed partnership with the two largest cryptocurrency exchanges in China, Huobi and OKEX. Starting Jan 15, 2018, you can trade IOST on those two exchanges. Please see the announcements below for more information.

Update: At the time of writing, we are now listed on Huobi, Okex, CEX, Big.one, and DEW.

How did you raise your funds?

We raised our money via a hard-caped 35,000 Ether private sale. The private sale is closed on Jan 3rd, 2018. There will be no ICO.

How will be the proceeds form private sale be used?

The proceeds from our private sale will be solely used to fund the development of the IOS project as well as relevant applications and technologies.

What is the total supply and circulating supply?

The total fixed supply is 21 billion IOST. The circulation supply is 52.5% of the total supply, which is about 11.03 billion IOST.

For more information about the token distribution, please refer to our primer’s token distribution section.

What’s your expectation/prediction on the price of IOST?

We are extremely serious about this project. What our scientists and dev team members really care about is solving the scalability issues of current blockchain technology. We are looking to be at the forefront of what our team sees as the most promising technological development since the internet. We will not speculate about the eventual price of IOST.

Can I mine IOST?

No, since the total supply of IOST is fixed. IOST can not be mined.