IOTA

The IOTA Foundation is a charitable non-profit organization headquartered in Berlin, Germany. As one of the longest-standing cryptocurrency projects, the IOTA Foundation has been at the forefront of distributed ledger technology innovation. It was founded in 2017 and develops the IOTA protocol, steering open-source governance to bring the technology to production maturity. The Co-founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation is Dominik Schiener. A current initiative of the IOTA Foundation involves developing infrastructure to represent real-world assets in digital tokens, with the goal of connecting the physical and digital worlds to enable new economic opportunities. Two organizations help drive the adoption of IOTA and grow the ecosystem of partners and builders using the technology: The Tangle Ecosystem Association (TEA) The IOTA Ecosystem DLT Foundation

IOTA distinguishes itself in the distributed ledger technology (DLT) landscape through its innovative architecture and features. The core of IOTA's technology is the Tangle, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure, which facilitates the processing of transactions in parallel. This approach effectively overcomes the common bottlenecks found in standard blockchain architectures. The unique capacity of the Tangle to support simultaneous additions of blocks, coupled with its DAG architecture, enables continuous and parallel transaction processing. This optimization of computational resources allows the IOTA network to handle high volumes of transactions efficiently. Another key characteristic of IOTA is its operation without the need for external validators or miners. This distinctive strategy removes the necessity for transaction fees based on tokens. As a result, transactions on the IOTA platform are not only cost-effective but also safeguarded against possible manipulation, promoting smooth and secure transaction transfers.

The IOTA 2.0 protocol upgrade introduces a robust validator and committee selection process to ensure network integrity and resistance against malicious activities through a staking-based consensus mechanism. IOTA 2.0 will introduce several innovations to enhance the security and scalability of the network: Committee-based Consensus: IOTA 2.0 will employ a committee-based consensus mechanism, where the selection of committee members is based on the amount of value staked. This approach is designed to deter potential attackers by making it costly for them to gain a significant share of the committee. Conflict Resolution: The protocol will guard against state reversion through the use of conflicting opinion chains and supermajority consensus. This ensures that the network can arrive at a consistent and secure state. Access Security: IOTA 2.0 will introduce token-generated Mana and the Scheduler to enhance access security. The Mana system will require tokens to be staked for block issuance, effectively thwarting spam attacks without introducing traditional transaction fees. These advancements in consensus, conflict resolution, and access control are aimed at making IOTA 2.0 a more robust and scalable distributed ledger technology.