GEO: infrastructure off-chain protocol for IoV (Internet of Value)
With the rise of DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology), mankind has an opportunity to create and maintain different assets in trustless decentralized networks. Today we’re witnessing thousands of crypto-assets emerge, each of which is essentially a digitized right to an action or asset. These are the prototypes of the future IoV — the Internet of Value.
From this, a fair question arises: why the future, but not the present?
Through using this technology, it has become evident that DLT has still to evolve. Factoring in the reliability of trustless ledgers, we are forced to contend with limitations such as:
- Scalability
- The cost of operations
- Throughput
- Weak interaction between different ledgers
The combined effects of these limitations creates a certain gap between the theoretical and practical implementation of distributed ledger technology in the real world.
What’s happening now?
Over time, the developer community has realized that blockchains are good at reliably registering and storing assets in a trustless environment. However, due to the above limitations, such ledgers are far from being suitable as consumer-ready products.
In the quest of finding a solution to these constraints, an infrastructure has gradually begun to form (exchanges, cross-chain technologies, state channel projects etc.). At the same time, competition is occurring more often than real cooperation for the benefit of the industry as a whole is being observed. Blockchain teams and their communities are focused on improving their own technology as opposed to aiding other solutions. Often this is happening due to economic incentives — the token price, publicity and so on.
This situation is similar to what’s happening in off-chain technology developments. Taking place in specific communities (and with their support), this trend is leaning towards solving problems and strengthening certain blockchain projects rather than the entire industry. The picture resembles a hypothetical world where automobile companies build separate non-overlapping roads exclusively for their own car brands.
Internet of value. Is it possible?
Despite these barriers, the construction of the infrastructure of the Internet of Value, sufficient for mass adoption, is possible. However, it requires solving several important challenges. At the very least, we need:
- Competition in the sphere of DLT
- Flexible and interoperable off-chain atomic protocols (or several compatible ones) which include: unlimited scalability; productivity comparable to common processing technologies; speed
- IoT devices accessible to the masses by price and type (including smartphones)
- Decentralized cross-chain identification or several compatible.
GEO Protocol
At the moment, our team is working on a concept that exactly fits this description.
We are not followers of a certain crypto-asset or technology. On the contrary, our goal is to create a flexible infrastructure protocol that connects different ideas and ledgers, including centralized ones.
We believe that only an open and equally accessible solution will connect all industry participants evolutionarily (as it happened with HTTP or SMTP).
Our key features:
- Off-chain protocol — there is no general ledger, and the interaction occurs through the chain of channels.
- Productivity and scaling are limited only by the speed of the internet.
- Multi-asset — support for an unlimited number of values of any kind (including created centrally). In addition, we envisage the possibility of complex transactions with several assets included simultaneously.
- Flexibility — the infrastructure and terms of interaction are built and determined by the network participants themselves.
- Liquidity in the network — the ability to simultaneously use state channels, IOU, hubs and so on.
- Sustainability — the creation of protocols for independent identification, P2P routing (including smartphones), clearing, state keepers etc for a sustainable infrastructure.
Application cases
Infrastructure expansion on the basis of this solution will allow us to create a whole new variety of products:
- DEX — decentralized assets exchange. Including crypto, existing currencies, as well as other types of assets (for example shares, rights, obligations etc).
- Processing and “one-click” integration for dApps, payment systems, exchanges, financial institutions and so on.
- Infrastructure solutions for IoT.
- Applications that can simultaneously use assets of various kinds in “online mode”.
- The ability for smart contract implementation in an off-chain environment.
- Custom solutions — voting systems, rating systems etc.
Call for contributions
We are always happy to hear any ideas and suggestions from the community, as well as offers for analyzing or developing existing solutions. In addition, if you are a representative of a product team or a developer, we are open to collaborating on the implementation of protocol-based applications.
