the The IOTA development team to counter malicious Nodes, a reputation system. Thus, it should be possible to rate certain Nodes and, thus, as „trusted“. A counter-proposal for Proof-of-Work-procedure of Bitcoin.

By Phillip Horch
18. January 2019BTC$3.613,56 0.54%part Facebook Twitter LinkedIn xing mail

Bitcoin, the currencies of most well-known of all Crypto, relies on the Proof-of-Work-procedures, transactions as „legitimate“ and lawful. It is known to be an increased expenditure of energy, the Bitcoin critics cite to condemn the Bitcoin Blockchain.

A completely different method is used IOTA. The project, which is focused on the Internet of things and micro-transactions, is based on a directed acyclic graph instead of a Blockchain – better known as the Tangle. Therein against malicious nodes – better known as the Nodes proceed, the IOTA Team on a new algorithm.

a New algorithm for more Fairness in the IOTA System

As you can see from a recent blog entry, with the new algorithm „Fairness“ can be achieved. So, it should be possible that also Nodes that have only low computing power, can perform their transactions.

the Team is working on a reputation system for Nodes. The idea is, „get the reputation of heavy, but easy to lose.“ As a penalty for Nodes, the invalid transactions, spamming, or a similar „bad behavior“, is to identify other Nodes. So he gets the (digital-symbolic) stamp „not to be trusted“, his transactions are not coming through.

implementation: Difficult

As you can see from the blog entry, is up to the implementation of the reputation system is still a lot of work needed. Accordingly, it is:

„[It] is due to the significant architectural changes that are required, a comprehensive (and therefore lengthy) study was required, to avoid unexpected results. For these reasons, we investigate in this contribution an alternative approach. In particular, we introduce a novel adaptive rate control algorithm […].“

Therefore, it should be first of all necessary to make a certain amount of computational effort to carry out a transaction. To make several transactions in a short period of time, to increase this effort. The IOTA Team hopes can ultimately, a fair distribution in the IOTA-Ecosystem:

„While fast Nodes more transactions to spend, it is ensured in the case of Nodes with low computing power, however, that your transactions can be approved with a high probability.“

To do this, so the developers are mainly two steps are necessary: each Node needs an own identity. In addition, a rate control mechanism was necessary.

Read also: IOTA: 200,000 euros for Troika-Tester

proof of identity

with the introduction of a separate identity for Nodes, the developers hope to manipulation:

„If each Node has an identity, you can use the Common Public Key cryptography to digitally sign a transaction, and to connect them tamper-proof with its issuing Node. Through the introduction of identities in a distributed System is susceptible to Sybil attacks, where a malicious entity masked many fake identities and uses, in order to overcome the rate control and to launch a coordinated attack or to spam the network.“

counter which, in turn, to Nodes (which now have an identity), certain „resources“ to prove. The IOTA development team wants to use a simplified Version of the Proof-of-Stake method. Thus, each identity needs a minimum amount of tokens (Stake), to guarantee security, to conduct transactions.