IOTA and SafeCoin

I wanted to get some feedback from some on this forum about how IOTA and the Safe Network might interact if both are successful in the future.

As a disclaimer I am more excited about a decentralized internet with decentralized storage than I am about IOT (Internet of Things) but I’m confident both of these technologies are the logical next step in our connected evolution.

I have read of a few notes about how the Safe Network can play a role in the IOT space but I’m not convinced of this for two reasons. One reason being this isn’t The Safe Network’s core competency from reading the wiki as well I feel it seems more a marketing campaign than an actual goal.

I see a world where Safe Coin is a true “Internet” currency since it gives license to maintain content that would otherwise exceed the bounds generated by farming. However, I don’t see value in Safe Coin reaching IOT devices especially when these devices function autonomously. That’s not to say the Safe Network shouldn’t be the platform for IOT interfaces just that Safe Coin doesn’t seem the proper currency to incentivize IOT device manipulation/interaction.

Someone educate me here if my assumptions seem short sighted or if there is a killer use-case not considered yet.

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I moved this question to #safecoin category.

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If your fridge can farm SAFEcoin and also order your milk, what would be the most appropriate currency it would use? Please don’t say dollars, because an app would just auto-exchange SAFEcoins for dollars to get you your milk. Likewise if your roomba, would need a maintance it would order the needed parts and message you through the SAFE Network and pay for the parts in SAFEcoin etc.

Your iot devices would also be in a far safer environment on the SAFE Network.

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IOTA is not nearly as appropriate for the job despite being a bespoke solution.

I invested in the IOTA ico and have followed it closely from the start. I hold very very little now, just a few GIs.

SAFE has no PoW, it will be decentralised and has far more robust security for that fact. Tangle can never resolve a tx in under a minute. At the end of the day it’s the bottom line that will win this war for dominance. SafeCoin is more efficient so ultimately it should displace other solutions if they all work as we expect/understand now.

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I’m not sure I follow this argument. Surely IoT devices are constantly in communication with both other IoT devices and their hubs. What better way to provide secure communication, data distribution and value exchange than via SAFENetwork with SAFECoin?

If you use a blockchain for value exchange, you are going to need other protocols for moving data about and for communication with the device. This opens up a number of security issues, not least because the device may contain coinage, but also because of the sensitive data they may have stored.

SAFENetwork can provide all the key ingredients to make a autonomous and secure device. Seems like an ideal solution to me.

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To give credit to concepts i didnt consider mining Safe Coin with IOT devices seems a valid use case. Requirement being that the IOT device has a CPU, hard drive and bandwidth.

As i maybe should have stated more clearly In cases where devices are autonomous and offline they would not be able transfer value between other devices. The assumption being accepted here is that all devices will necessarily be connected.

If the future isn’t exhaustively connected then there is room for crypto like iota which allows autonomous offline value transfer between IOT devices like cars and drones. This feature of the tangle is somewhat interesting and allows 0 internet uptime situations if parties are willing to go out on a limb with value transfer between their IOT devices.

Basically, the assumption being challenged in this thread seems strictly related to connectivity. IOTA isn’t ignorant of this distinction and considers specific chips (albiet trinary processing) as minimal hardware necessary for allowing IOT devices on board pow to transfer value between one another.

I personally see this use case valuable over always requiring fully loaded and connected on board hardware with IOT devices.

Regarding byteball i dont know much other than it isnt free transactions and requires connectivity like every other crypto.

I was also not aware of lack of quick confirmation times with IOTA. Is this due to pow calculation times?

All in all Safe Coin seems an overwhelming leader for value transfer between connected IOT devices. With that said intermittent offline or completely offline IOT devices would be strictly an IOTA use case currently.

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Not meaning to sound pedantic, but how does a transaction occur if the device is offline? Surely nothing actually happens until connectivity is resumed and the transaction is pushed to the network. Am I missing something?

I think you could do offline transfers in a way a bit similar to lighting network. Lock up safecoins available for offline transfers, transfer peer-to-peer between IoT devices that connects directly to each other and settle on the network when they go online.

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I think those points are fair. I guess time reveals all in the end. The bottom line will decide which way things go and no one can predict how any of these technologies will end up evolving.

CFB himself said it would be impossible to ever get confirmation times to under 1 minute. I presume that’s because of the PoW, but I just took his word for it at the time and didn’t probe him about it.

If you receive an offline IOTA transaction, how do you know you’re not being double spent?

It seems to me that IOTA has not come up with a decentralized solution to the double spending problem, and I suspect that such a thing is impossible.

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Double spends cant happen. If an IOT device posts a tangle transaction which lacks funds or tries to resolve an empty address then it will just sit there and wait to be connected until such addresses have appropriate balances as to resolve, which is that it finally attaches to the tangle. Maybe this never happens and the txns are lost forever.

Remember though, it is the owners choice to allow offline txns in this way. If a single owner quarantines his IOT devices he probably doesnt concern himself with lost value since those devices are under his own umbrella. In addition if a device only transacts tiny amounts does the risk a losing that amount warrant constant internet connectivity?

Also, not only can value get attached to the tangle in the form of iota but so can data which becomes associated with a 0 cost transaction. In this way double spend is superfluous since no value is changing hands but data is still attached after an offline capture.

To Note: I find myself defending Iota here due to lack of knowledge of some responses. It isnt my intention to shill Iota but to clarify its value distinction from Safe Coin. As these IOT devices come online after running valid offline transactions theyll need a way to confidently commit their transactions autonomously. Is the Safe Network the answer here? How would an offline device securely connect to the Safe Network autonomously?

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IOTA is a very interesting technology and I believe only the no tx fee crypto will survive in the future but just like blockchain I don’t see an apparent use for it yet. IoT seems like a big attractive name which doesn’t seem to mean anything (what can iota/blockchain be used for that can’t be done using normal non-blockchain software?)

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Side chains still require constant connectivity

Ya, i stuggle with this. Its probably why we are all in this forum to begin with. Application of the Safe Network would be obviously beneficial and because of this there is no question it is a problem worth solving. A lot of very pragmatic people in this forum

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My understanding of IOTA (which may be flawed and incomplete) is that the IOTA ledger is eventually consistent, and so that at any given time, two nodes don’t necessarily have the same ledger.

If a node receives two mutually exclusive tip updates (that is, two tips containing mutually exclusive transactions) from its peers, how does a node choose which tip is correct?

If a node receives a transaction when it is offline, how does it know the funds won’t be spent elsewhere when it goes online?

If they are offline then they are not IoT devices are they. :wink: So for an IoT device it, by definition, is online at least a significant amount of time. Even if the connection is through a “gateway” device

You could do this for non IoT devices.

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I dont believe there is any formal definition of IOT that requires devices to have internet connectivity only that devices themselves interact with each other. Like the devices create their own internet of communication.

And no, non connected side chains cant exist.

Its in the title.

Internet-of-Things. definition of “Internet” is globally interconnected (online). Its not “interconnected” but “Internet”

Ya, this isnt a valid argument. IOTA intentionally designed their protocol to allow for offline function because constant connectivity was an assumption which IOT couldnt assume

No side chain in this case