A Future Day with IOTA Part II — “Revelations”
Welcome to the second part of this fun, little scenario, in which a fully developed IOTA is incorporated into everyday life (part I). This time spotlight is on how an IOTA-based data-economy will change how we work. Footnotes explain how IOTA is positioned TODAY to enable suggested use-cases.
Hope you enjoy!
“Damn! Three million Dollars worth of vaccine are on the line here.”, Tom hears through his headphones on his way back home. “Customer needs us to proof quality within 4 hours, else they might need discard it. Can you take that on?”. Tom replies “Oh man Amalia, what happened?”. “They say parcel is stuck at border authorities.”
A final task before the weekend can start.
As he arrives back home Tom quickly jumps on his working chair, headphones still plugged in.
“Ok let me see. We need to check what happened to this batch step-by-step to see where´s the problem. Luckily all pharmaceutical products must have a digital twin¹ nowadays, with all data anchored on the IOTA Tangle². If anything´s fishy we´ll find it there.”
Amalia nervously clicks with her pen, while answering: “Alright tell me when you found something”
Two seconds later
“Found it!”
“What? That was quick!”
Tom continues: “Yeah the problem got highlighted by AI. Yellow data-warning. Looks like the shipping company had some low data-confidence score³ right before the parcel met border-authorities. I can see that the temperature-sensor on the inside of the vaccine-container went off at some point. If the vaccines heated up to much the whole batch can go right into the trash…”
Amalia answers: “The parcel went to Anchorage international airport in Alaska. If we´re lucky we could somehow proof things had no chance to heat up. How can we quickly get reliable temperature data from there?”
“I got an idea. Let´s try our luck at the open weather data-marketplace⁴.”
Amalia answers unpatientely: “Common it will not be 45°C in Alaska this time of the year.”
“Authorities don’t care about logic.”
“I know…”
Tom exclaims: “YES we are lucky: Both the airport and the city offer temperature data via their permanodes⁵. Also there is a decentralized temperature oracle⁶ in line with their data.”
“Great! How long until you get this data?”
“Let me see… They need intense KYC, proof of residence, identity, proof of business relations, and some other stuff.”
“Common we´re sitting on a time-bomb here!”, Amelia answers annoyed while starting to click with her pen again.
Two seconds later
“Done.”
“What? That was quick!”
“Yeah they accept IOTA identity⁷ so I had a 1-click KYC, which automatically proved everything to them by showing all verifiable credentials they need.”
“Man great job, problem solved! Send the report to the customer and we should be good to go.”
“Yep, already done. Customer seems to be happy. They just triggered my reward smart-contract⁸ and I got the bonus! Alright Amalia, I´m out for today, gonna meet with the boys for McGregor vs Poirer 7 fight-night. Have a good weekend!”
- Digital Twins
Digital twins are digital representations of physical objects. These representations collect all available data about the respective object, including manufacturing, supply-chain, shipping, border-processing and more. This increases transparency and enables quicker error fixing.
https://blog.iota.org/zero-defects-digital-twins-and-iota-8568f54c3925/
2. Data-anchoring
Data can be anchored on the IOTA Tangle by publishing its hash-value as a data-transaction. The hash-value of any given data is unique and any modification of the data will lead to changes in the hash value too. This way it can forever be proven that any given set of data is unaltered from the moment it´s hash was published on the Tangle.
Deeper discussion about the power of “No-coin DLT” here.
3. Project Alvarium “data-confidence score”
Trustworthy data enables new data-based economies. High data-confidence relies on a full record of what happened to any given data (who changed what, when and for what reason). Project Alvarium builds a data-confidence fabric with clear guidelines for trustworthy data, including data-confidence scores.
4. Datenmarktplatz NRW
The German state of North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) is building the first state-wide data-marketplace on top of IOTA in Germany. It aims at enabling a new data-economy, in which companies can their data to customers.
5. Permanodes
Transactions and data are not permanently saved on the IOTA Tangle — at least not by regular nodes. In order to have full long-term access to any given transaction history or anchored data IOTA Foundation developed a permanode called “Chronicle”. Next in development are selective permanodes, which can track only certain type of transactions (for example only transactions and data from one particular business).
6. IOTA Oracle
Oracles are the connection between a network and the outside world. IOTA developed a first, simple oracle solution which enables sensors to publish data directly into the Tangle, thereby omitting any middle-men and increasing data-confidence.
https://blog.iota.org/introducing-iota-oracles/
7. IOTA Identity and 1-click KYC
Decentralized Identities (DID) enable verifiable identities in the online world. They can be enriched with verifiable credentials given out by third-parties (such as government agencies, universities, companies) in order to dramatically simplify KYC and other processes. Recently IOTA Foundation published their identity demo based on the identity app “Selv” in cooperation with several partners, such as the dutch Bank De Volksbank.
https://www.iota.org/solutions/digital-identity
https://blog.iota.org/selv-demo-a-digital-health-passport-c701bb381d29/
8. IOTA smart contracts
IOTA offers fully programmable layer 2 smart contracts. Each smart contract is its own blockchain on top of IOTAs Tangle with its own validators, fee-structures and possibly tokens, thereby offering maximum versatility and scalability. IOTA smart contracts can interact with one another, allowing for complex, interconnected smart-contract networks. Ethereum smart contracts will be fully compatible with IOTA, so existing dApps can run on IOTAs feeless base-layer.
Beta release on the decentralized IOTA 2.0 DevNet expected soon.
https://blog.iota.org/iota-smart-contracts-protocol-alpha-release/
