Introduction
While the world awaits the full realization of the concept behind the Internet of Things. It is important to note that not many researchers or organisations were willing to give it the attention it deserves ever since the word was first used by one 'Kevin Ashton' less than 2 decades ago. Even though it holds so many potential!. I think most held the belief that was akin to saying ' Why was the Internet so hard in 1996'.
However, just like the internet, IoTs holds a lot of potential for the future of many industry when many people starts to care less about distance, manufacturer and care more about things like their privacy, fast response time and security. The use of IoT smart devices will help many industrial processes to be digitized and automated, data collection to be available for big data analytics by enterprise, allow many day-to-day activities and chores to be automated and also make transactions and services to be rendered easily.
Centralised infrastructure like cloud networks are less secure and offers less privacy for their users; also having tens of billion of devices connected to it will generate massive amount of traffic which will ultimately lead to low latency or slow response of the network due to bandwidth limitations of the internet.
Along side IoTs, another technology that is being talked about is edge computing; which simply enables analytics and data gathering to occur close to the source of the data. In otherwords, this approach requires leveraging resources that may not be continuously connected to a network such as laptops, smartphones e.t.c. This means that these devices can compute and process* most of their *data independently without bothering the internet with tonnes of data request, hence latency of the overall network.
Edge computing technology apart from improving the response time, also offers users the security and privacy they need when processing their data but this belief does not holds true when trying to exchange data over the cloud infrastructure since it is centrally owned and controlled; making it susceptible to hacks, third party manipulation amongst others.
Therefore, combining blockchain technology and edge computing to deploy IoT devices with no or minimal cloud infrastructure can be the ideal solution to solving the numerous challenges hindering the growth of the IoT industry.
IONChain is a platform borne out of the need to address this challenges and they are doing so by adopting a protocol that can support the deployment of IoTs smart devices by hosting their data on the edge while allowing them to interact over a secure, privacy-rich channel like the decentralised blockchain!
What does IONChain stands for?
IONChain , a non-profit organisation founded in singapore in early 2018. Therefore, they have backed their vision with the acronym of a One Device, One Coin, One Code to drive a standardised data processing platform. Consequently, their goal is to solve issues confronting IoTs in these major areas
- Data Security
- Data Circulation
- Data Sharing
- Data transactions
Source : Whitepaper page
Meanwhile, IONChain will serve as the underlying protocol that integrates many otherwise incompatible devices and merge them to create a unified ecosystem to enable them be part of our everyday lives!
The IONChain Concept further Explained
In the IONChain ecosystem, everything could be a mining machine!. It is this concept that makes IONChain a true Internet of Value because every time data is being mined by these devices, new IONC coins gets emmited as rewards via the ionization algorithm. Therefore serving as an incentive for any IoT device accessing the IONChain platform.
This concept of everything could be a mining machine apart from solving the problem mining incentives, also equip the IONChain with the edge computing framework. And collectively they satisfy the demand for quick responses.
While the edge computing technology is sufficient to ensure our data security and privacy, it is impertinent to use a secure channel to transfer data over the network when two smart devices interact. And this is where the IONChain blockchain comes into play to meet the security and privacy needs of transfering data over the network when needed.
While cloud services can serve as a complementary resources when large task are being computed. Edge computing helps to improve user experience since most data are computed locally effectively rendering the response time low.
Key Attributes of IONChain Ecosystem
Creation of a data trading market
This will attract data providers from exchanging information about anything and get rewarded for it while data collectors can process this data collected from different inputs via a DApp activated by a smart contract within the IONChain protocol.
A Value sharing Economy
Values generated as above can easily be shared in any of this format based on the smart contract demarcations
- user-to-device interactions
- device-to-device interactions.
Thereby effectively removing the need for third party in the process of value transfer which is unlike conventional cloud infrastructure that ensures data pass through a central authority before it reaches the other party.
Security and Privacy
IONChain ensures security of this data by distributing the data to be stored on different nodes within the network. While only the user gets full control over such data. And only the owner gets access to use it as a transfer of value.
Edge Computing to the rescue
Adopting edge computing technology to improve the response speed while deploying nodes nearby
Overview of IONChain Technical Architecture
How Value is generated within IONChain
This can be divided into four (4) layers of system architecture namely value creation, value verification, value evaluation, value confirmation.
- Value Creation
All devices hosted on the IONChain protocol bore a unique identification code which contains the manufacturers information, device identification and other related information. This information are stored within the device and encrypted with zero proof algorithm. This devices are made to interact with each other via a customised smart contract called the IMQTT protocol; meaning that contract initiator can have the option to configure interactions between user and device or device to device
Meanwhile, the edge computing infrastructure also helps to support the weak computing capability of IoT devices via the built in Edge computing centers which act as intermediary devices to boost their computing capabilities.
Note: To calculate the value generated, the IONChain protocol utilizes the Data Quality proof and Time Lapse proof via the mining machine to achieve that after receiving relevant updates from the independent IoT devices.
Ultimately, value creation layer is a chemistry between IoT smart devices and Edge computing centers!
- Value Verification
Here, it is important that all participating nodes agree unanimously to the value generated. Any inconsistent response from any node means that the value will be returned as invalid. However, if successful, the value is passed down for evaluation.
- Value Evaluation
It further acts on the verification process by offering a layer of protection to ensure the IONChain system is able to prevent malicious attacks such as double spending.Source : Whitepaper page20
- Value Confirmation
It simply allow the protocol to package the verified value and then pass the packaged information to the value transfer part.This ensures that the value created by the IoT device is officially present in the IONChain ecosystem in the form of digital currency. Source : Whitepaper page 20
Value Transfer in IONChain
Divided into six layers (as shown above) in the system architecture which are summarised below
- Application layer ; This is the layer via which devices request access to the IONChain framework
- Service Layer; Is an abstraction of the internal modules inside IONChain
- Protocol Layer; Ensure the integration of different underlying protocol to create a unified access protocol for the both internal and external application support.
- Smart Contract Layer; Act as a bridge to connect the blockchain layer with the applications. Therefore this layer is embedded with many easy-to-use features to easily manage any contract deployed on the IONChain platform.
- Blockchain Layer; consensus mechanism is at the core of this layer. IONChain employs the IPOS algorithm to solve some of the complex mining issue associated with PoW and PoS algorithms.
- Data Storage Layer; Combine both the IPFS(Inter Planetary File System) and BigChainDB distributed database filing method to make the platform more flexible for handling different class of data.
Features of IONChain platform that serves as benefits to different classes of users
- Automate Industrial Processes
- An open data sharing platform for daily needs
- Unified smart device ecosystem to drive an Internet of Value for every class of users both big and small
- Access to a host of unique, standardized Internet of things devices for easy identification and verification
- Secure and Private data sharing channel for users to conduct their transactions in a fair, transparent manner
- A protocol that supports cross-communication between numerous beyond technology, manufacturer or physical barrier that may exist
- Rewarding manufacturers for deploying their devices on the IONChain platform
- Reliable and scalable for mainstream adoption
- Customised smart contract
- User-control
- A native currency, IONC coin to serve as utility within the platform and drive the economy of Value as it is.
Here is a quick summary of the IONC coin usecases:
- Serve as compensation for smart contract computation and DApp deployment
- Reward miners
- Enabling users to be elected as IONChain council members
- transaction fee settlements
- Rewards for connecting other ION nodes
Source : Whitepaper
Conclusion
According to the latest IDC forecast report, there are over 14 Billion smart devices installed worldwide and it is projected that by 2020, it will rise to 30 Billion.
If this statistics are anything to go by, this means that there are still a lot of untapped potential in this green industry and that is why tech giants like Google and Amazon are working their ass off to buck the present trend so they can stay ahead of the queue.
However, it appears any major achievement made in this sector will still be curtailed by an underlying centralised framework. This is why a platform like IONChain with all the benefits accruable in a centralised framework and even more is so desirable.
Use Case
- A transport company
Gimentor is a firm that runs 24/7 commuter service within its catchment area or inter-state. But due to the dishonesty of some of his drivers, the company is not bouyant as it should be. Such that a healthy vehicle can be lied by the driver to develop fault halfway through a long journey. This incur extra cost without verifiable proof for such incident or the journey.
Meanwhile the company could use a platform like IONChain to deploy a smart device that can be implemented on the vehicle to monitor the engine temperature and other vehicle information and give the feedback to the company so that any cheating driver can be easily caught. Saving the company extra cost in the process!
All at little or no cost.
Tokenomics
Roadmap
Meet the Team
For more detailed information visit our website TEAM section
Check this Links for more Info
- IONChain Website
- IONChain Bitcointalk
- IONChain Whitepaper
- IONChain Steemit
- IONChain Medium
- IONChain Twitter
- IONChain Youtube
- IONChain Github
- IONChain Telegram
This article is submitted for 
IONChain2018