The concept of a provable location is not new; it has been around since the 1960s. Some may even argue that it was in the 1940s. After all, that was when a ground-based radio-navigation system such as LORAN was invented.
In this modern day, there are location services that offer different mediums of verification. When combined together, these mediums create a Proof of Location through GPS services and triangularization.
There is just one problem. These approaches are yet to address how to fraudulent signals and discourage the spoofing of local data, which are the most critical problems faced in location technologies today.
Hence, a need for crypto location platform that offers the service of proving the origin of physical location signals. However, the idea of applying location verification to Blockchain technology did not appear until September 2016. This was at Ethereum’s DevCon 2, when an Ethereum developer from Berlin, Lefteris Karapetsas first introduced it. However, Ethereum Foundation developer, Matt Di Ferrante expounded on it.
PROOF OF LOCATION; WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT
Proof of location can be described as a way of leveraging the powerful properties offered by Blockchain, such as decentralization and time stamping, and combing them with an off-chain location-aware device that is resistant to spoofing.
This is one of the vulnerabilities of the crypto-location technologies that are currently in use. They revolve around off-chain devices that report object’s location back. This is the problem the XYO Network is trying to solve.
Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?
WHAT IS XY ORACLE NETWORK?
According to the whitepaper, XYO Network is a platform, whose aim is to create a trustless, decentralized systems of location oracles, that is not only expected to give the highest possible certainty when queried for data, it is also expected to be resistant to attacks.
The team behind this platform intend to achieve this aim by using a set of abstractions which is expected to reduce the risk of location spoofing significantly. It’ll do that through a chain of zero knowledge proofs along the components of the platform.
THE XY ORACLE NETWORK; AN OVERVIEW
According to the whitepaper, the network is supposed to provide some type of entry point into a protocol of connected devices. These devices are expected to provide use a chain of cryptographic tools in providing certainty on location data.
Platform users will be able to issue “queries” to collect a piece of location data which is available on any Blockchain platform that offers smart contract functionality.
It begins with the aggregators from the XY Oracle Network, who listen to the issued queries and fetch answers that offer the highest accuracy. The answers are gotten from a decentralized set of devices that send cryptographic proof back to the aggregators.
After the aggregators reach a consensus on the answer with the best score, the answers are then fed back into the smart contract. This whole process makes it possible to know if an object is at a particular XY-coordinate at a specific time with a certainty that is both provable and trustless.
There are four primary components that are linked to the XY Oracle Network. These include;
Sentinels (The Data Gatherer)
Bridges (The Data Relaters)
Archivists (The Data Storers)
Diviners (The Answer Aggregators)
Let’s explore these four components a little, shall we?
THE COMPONENTS OF THE XY ORACLE NETWORK
As, said earlier, the network has four basic components. The first one is;
THE SENTINELS
Think of the Sentinels as location witnesses. What does this mean, you ask? They are the ones responsible for observing data heuristics, and vouching for its certainty and accuracy by producing temporal ledgers.
One of the most important aspect of the Sentinels is that, the ledger produced as to be such that the other components can be sure that it came from the same source. This is achieved by adding Proof of Origin to the relay chain of cryptographic proofs.
The fact that XYO Network is a trustless system means one thing, there has to be some type of reward to serve as incentive so that Sentinels will provide honest location information. Consequently, there is a combination of reputation component with payment component to make this possible.
So, when a Sentinels information is used to answer a query, he or she is rewarded with XYO Network Tokens.
BRIDGES
Think of the Bridges as data transcribers. What they do is simple, the relay of location ledgers from Sentinels to Archivists. The most important function of the Bridge is to assure the Archivist that the heuristic ledgers that are received from the Sentinels, have not been altered in any way. They also have the responsibility of adding an additional Proof of Origin.
Like the Sentinels, the Bridge also receives a reward in XYO Network Tokens when the information relayed is used to answer a query.
ARCHIVISTS
The location information from the bridges are stored with the Archivists. They do this in a decentralized form, with the main goal being, having all historical ledgers stored. They also perform the duty of indexing ledgers such that, a string of ledger data can easily be returned if necessary.
DIVINERS
This is the most complex part of the XY Oracle network. Their job description involves fetching the most accurate data for a query from the Network, then relaying that data back to the issuer of the query.
The answer to this query can be found through an interaction with the Archivist network. Of course, it has to be an answer with the highest accuracy and confidence score.
HOW THE XY ORACLE NETWORK WORKS
At this point, you should have guessed that the XYO Network is based in an end-to-end functionality. This can be summarized into the steps outlined below;
Sentinels gather information
Bridges gather data from Sentinels
Archivists index and assemble data from Bridges
Diviner fetch a user’s query
Diviner collects data from Archivists, formulates answer and proposes a block
Diviner returns result to query initiator
It is also important to note that all the components involved get rewarded in XYO Network Tokens.
XYO TOKEN SPECIFICATIONS
There is supposed to be a public token sale which has a tiered pricing structure. The token sale will start at 1ETH for 100,000 XYO and maxes out at 1 ETH for 33,333 XYO. T
he tokens with a ticker name of XYO is a utility token that is based on Ethereum platform. This means that it is ERC 20 compliant. According to the whitepaper, the projected token cap is $48 Million and any unsold or unallocated token will be burned.
Also, no further XYO tokens is expected to be generated after the end of the main sale.
Source
Website: https://www.xyo.network/
Whitepaper: https://docs.xyo.network/XYO-White-Paper.pdf
Ann Thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3040825.0
Twitter: https://twitter.com/XYOracleNetwork
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xyonetwork
Medium: https://medium.com/@XYOracleNetwork
Telegram: https://t.me/xyonetwork
Bitcointalk URL: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1943421