About

IOTA is transaction settlement and data transfer layer for the Internet of Things (IoT). Its distributed ledger, the Tangle, is based on a data structure referred to as a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). In the Tangle, there are no blocks or miners, and every transaction on the Iota network must validate two previous transactions through a small proof-of-work (PoW). Thus the more transactions occur, the faster the network can process new transactions, theoretically allowing the network to become more efficient as it scales.

History

Jinn IOTA traces its roots back to the Jinn project, a project revealed to the world in September 2014 on an NXT forum. The project aimed to develop a new efficient micro processor for IoT devices based on trinary (rather than binary) calculation methods. In order to finance R&D of the hardware project, the Jinn team held a crowd sale for in September 2014, selling ~100,000 JINN tokens (10% of the total) for 8,5000,000 NXT worth $250,000 at the time. The JINN tokens were launched on the NXT platform and represented a share in the profits of the Jinn company.

However, fearing regulatory issues surrounding their JINN, which represented a claim on the Jinn's profits, the Jinn team pivoted. On a BitcoinTalk forum in 2015, the Jinn founders announced a new project called IOTA. IOTA aimed to be "a brand new and novel micro-transaction cryptotoken optimized for the Internet-of-Things (IoT)." According to Jinn founder Sønstebø, "...it only makes sense first to introduce IOTA and then Jinn afterwards."

IOTA Crowdsale The team similarly did a crowdsale for their IOTA token, which instead of being a profit sharing token like JINN, was a utility token used for payment on the IOTA network. IOTA sold 999,999,999 tokens in its 2015 crowdsale raising a total of 1,337 Bitcoin, equivalent to $434,000 at the time. Jinn token holders were also allowed to participate in the IOTA crowdsale by converting their JINN tokens for IOTA at a fixed exchange rate of 0.0063BTC per JINN. The supply was later changed to 2.78 billion IOTA. According to IOTA documentation the token supply was increased because “high supply makes IOTA optimal for tiny nano transactions while still keeping efficiency in mind.“ 5% of the funds from the IOTA's token offering were later donated to the IOTA Foundation, which was formally announced in October 2017.

Mainnet Launch In July 2016, IOTA launched on Mainet. The project aimed to provide distributed ledger technology for the internet-of-things (IoT) space where small connected devices regularly share data. Because these devices are generally specialized to be low power and application specific IOTA does not use a traditional consensus mechanism like proof-of-work or proof-of-stake nor does it use a blockchain structure. The goal of the project is to allow these devices to conduct micropayment transactions between themselves and potentially to securely transfer data.

At the core of the project is what is referred to as the 'Tangle,' a directed acyclic graph (DAG) that acts as the public ledger system. The team believes that this structure will allow for feeless payments, lower compute cost, and the ability to connect to billions of devices. The efficiency of this system also grows as the number of participants increases as transactions will be processed at a faster rate. One of the project's more recent releases was a data marketplace that allows for storing and selling data streams while masking the source of the data.

IOTA is currently developed and supported by the IOTA foundation, a German non-profit. In July 2019, Iota co-founder Sergey Ivancheglo stepped down from the IOTA Foundation.