Does anyone truly understand IOTA?

[lukaexpl]

Let's leave price aside.

IOTA promises to have found the holy grail - infinite scalability with zero transaction fees.

If that is truly so, then screw just the IoT usage, such a system should replace every imaginable form of value transaction known to humanity.

Questions that arise from it are:
1. What is the mechanism behind such an ingenious discovery?
2. How come nobody came with the idea before (there must have been some bright minds within blockchain technology who understood the scalability and fee problem and never came up with solution)?
3. What prevents other coins from implementing such a revolutionary design?
4. Can other coins with established market caps and track records switch to such a design?
5. Who secures the network if there is no fee-incentive?

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[LiftOff1969]

I've seen the IOTA thread pop up from time to time so naturally I had a look at it, Honestly my opinion is split, on one side it sounds too good to be true, on the other seems like a smart investment.

[pereira4]

Anyone knows whats the final supply of IOTA and if there's any inflation?

I would like to know the details too. Sounds to god to be true. It looks like it's 100% premined

Circulating Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT
Max Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT


How was that ugly number decided? how did the coins get released into the market?

[lukaexpl]

I've seen the IOTA thread pop up from time to time so naturally I had a look at it, Honestly my opinion is split, on one side it sounds too good to be true, on the other seems like a smart investment.

Same here. I am trying to disregard whether it is a good investment or not.
I would be interested to learn and understand how does this IOTA thing work and what is so special, unique and unthought of before.

[Fuserleer]

Let's leave price aside.

IOTA promises to have found the holy grail - infinite scalability with zero transaction fees.

If that is truly so, then screw just the IoT usage, such a system should replace every imaginable form of value transaction known to humanity.

Unfortunately that is a claim I have seen no evidence to support.  A transactional DAG still relies on a global state to ensure double spends can't happen, thus its still vertical in nature even though the architecture promotes horizontal scaling.

Ultimately the problem of scale comes into effect when you try and shard it.  The structure of the transactions within the DAG is shard-friendly, but the consensus is not.

Lets say we shard a DAG into 2, and I present a transaction on the strongest tip on each shard.  Unless there is still a node that has both shards, the transactions I presented will validate in each, thus a double spend.

The 2 shard example is very simple, but as it scales you'll have less overlap between shards as nodes scale back how many shards they can support, thus the possibility of double spends going undetected increases.  Auto-detecting shard availability and overlap is an NP-Complete problem...i.e expensive!

Does IOTA have a mechanism to mitigate this?  I don't know and for my example I'm talking about a pure DAG implementation.  If there is a solution it will likely be a form of master node that witnesses all transactions within the network / batch of shards and alerts on a possible double spend across shards.  Not really ideal IMO.

The good news is, I researched and implemented similar architectures a number of years ago now and it certainly WILL scale better than a block chain (a lot better), and the lack of a global state won't become a problem for quite some time.  IMO though, it's no holy grail, just step forward in the right direction.

Questions that arise from it are:
1. What is the mechanism behind such an ingenious discovery?
2. How come nobody came with the idea before (there must have been some bright minds within blockchain technology who understood the scalability and fee problem and never came up with solution)?
3. What prevents other coins from implementing such a revolutionary design?
4. Can other coins with established market caps and track records switch to such a design?
5. Who secures the network if there is no fee-incentive?

1. Not sure what the question is.
2. They have, DAGs have been around for a while, using them in a decentralized transactional nature is fairly recent and so development has taken the time.
3 & 4.  Can't be done, they are TOTALLY different architectures.  It'd be like trying to install a combustion engine into a horse to make the horse run faster.
5. Thats IOTA specific, so I can't really answer it.

[forkedchain]

Anyone knows whats the final supply of IOTA and if there's any inflation?

I would like to know the details too. Sounds to god to be true. It looks like it's 100% premined

Circulating Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT
Max Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT


How was that ugly number decided? how did the coins get released into the market?

The total supply of IOTA is (3^33-1) / 2, which equals to a total number of IOTA's of 2779530283277761. IOTA is specifically designed for machines, so this high supply makes IOTA optimal for tiny nanotransactions while still keeping efficiency in mind. It also nicely fits into the MAX_SAFE_INTEGER value in Javascript.

they had the ico a good while ago, and i believe sold nearly all IOTA, not sure how much if any was held for devs only.  i guess i just missed out

[Mr. Green]

Circulating Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT

Max Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT

They sold all the iota to the funders and now funders have to sell their iota's to other people.

No PoW, no fee, no economy.

Fucking ponzi.

If everything is free with iota,.. Why would i pay for an IOTA? Don't make any sense dawg

[lukaexpl]

Thanks Fuserleer but I feel like a 4 year old who has just been given a lecture on quantum mechanics.

I guess I am to far behind to be asking the questions in the first place. Lot of reading ahead.

[clardalan]

i do not understand it neither.
also, I do not understand if it is all free transacitons, why people would pay for it being 1.6bln market cap?

does not make any sense to me.
i do not own it, will not buy it until i understand what it is.

[Fuserleer]

Thanks Fuserleer but I feel like a 4 year old who has just been giving a lecture on quantum mechanics.

I guess I am to far behind to be asking the questions in the first place. Lot of reading ahead.

Ok let me present a simpler example.

I have a Picasso painting I want to sell, and I make a copy of it also.

I find 2 buyers, Alice and Bob and we all meet in the same room.  I give Alice the original and Bob the copy.

Because Bob is in the same room as me and Alice, he can witness that there are 2 copies of said Picasso and can refuse to accept the one I gave him.  Alice can also, as there is no way for either of them to determine which is the copy and which is the original (plus you probably would call off the deal even if you could because of the dishonesty).

With sharding, I meet Alice in a room, and Bob meet in another.  I give them both a Picasso and take payment.  They are both unaware that there is a copy as they have not witnessed the existence of one, so they both pay up.

The problem therefore, is how to allow Alice and Bob to become aware of whats happening in the other room, reliably and without needing to trust a 3rd party to tell them, without actually having to BE in the room.

Does that make it more clear?

This isn't just an issue for IOTA or a DAG, this issue exists when sharding a block chain too.

[lukaexpl]

Thanks Fuserleer but I feel like a 4 year old who has just been giving a lecture on quantum mechanics.

I guess I am to far behind to be asking the questions in the first place. Lot of reading ahead.

Ok let me present a simpler example.

I have a Picasso painting I want to sell, and I make a copy of it also.

I find 2 buyers, Alice and Bob and we all meet in the same room.  I give Alice the original and Bob the copy.

Because Bob is in the same room as me and Alice, he can witness that there are 2 copies of said Picasso and can refuse to accept it and pay.  Alice can also as there is no way for either of them to determine which is the copy and which is the original (plus you probably would call off the deal even if you could because of the dishonesty).

With sharding, I meet Alice in a room, and Bob meet in another.  I give them both a Picasso and take payment.  They are both unaware that there is a copy as they have not witnessed the existence of one, so they both pay up.

The problem therefore, is how to allow Alice and Bob to become aware of whats happening in the other room, reliably and without needing to trust a 3rd party to tell them, without actually having to BE in the room.

Does that make it more clear?

It does. The problem.
But not the solution.

[Fuserleer]

Thanks Fuserleer but I feel like a 4 year old who has just been giving a lecture on quantum mechanics.

I guess I am to far behind to be asking the questions in the first place. Lot of reading ahead.

Ok let me present a simpler example.

I have a Picasso painting I want to sell, and I make a copy of it also.

I find 2 buyers, Alice and Bob and we all meet in the same room.  I give Alice the original and Bob the copy.

Because Bob is in the same room as me and Alice, he can witness that there are 2 copies of said Picasso and can refuse to accept it and pay.  Alice can also as there is no way for either of them to determine which is the copy and which is the original (plus you probably would call off the deal even if you could because of the dishonesty).

With sharding, I meet Alice in a room, and Bob meet in another.  I give them both a Picasso and take payment.  They are both unaware that there is a copy as they have not witnessed the existence of one, so they both pay up.

The problem therefore, is how to allow Alice and Bob to become aware of whats happening in the other room, reliably and without needing to trust a 3rd party to tell them, without actually having to BE in the room.

Does that make it more clear?

It does. The problem.
But not the solution.

For a DAG and a block chain I believe there is no acceptable solution without relying on trusting 3rd parties (master nodes for example, which trade security for performance).

I spent a lot of time trying to solve the problem on both technologies and I could not.  Resource based consensus mechanisms (POW, POS) are not designed with sharding in mind.

The only solution is to start fresh and design BOTH an architecture AND consensus algorithm at the same time that support sharding/partitioning.

[lukaexpl]

 Resource based consensus mechanisms (POW, POS) are not designed with sharding in mind.

Thanks a lot. You have been a great help already. Could you expand just a bit on what exactly sharding is and why is it important.

[lovely89]

Permanode != Masternode

[bitcoinpaul]

Dan really knows his stuff. Makes me even more happy about the upcoming radix launch.

[pereira4]

Circulating Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT

Max Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT

They sold all the iota to the funders and now funders have to sell their iota's to other people.

No PoW, no fee, no economy.

Fucking ponzi.

If everything is free with iota,.. Why would i pay for an IOTA? Don't make any sense dawg

Yep, it seems it was 100% premined, then it suddenly appeared in coinmarketcap above litecoin... funny.

From the comments above (Fuserleer, banano... thanks for your hindsight) it seems this is another broken promise with impossible claims.

Another failed attempt at solving bitcoin problems it seems?

[skywave]

I actually intended to invest into IOTA - joined their slack a while ago - have mostly only followed what people post in there - and due to the somewhat chaotic chatter around the ICO/Bitfinex saga, I have to say: I'm holding back my investment, as I sense/feel IOTA is not ready and does not have a public face ready to stand on it's legs.
Too many unanswered facts for the public to inform themselves from - or to be fair - the answers may be out there somewhere - but if so, they are certainly deep into a tangle, hard to find.

[lurker10]

Somewhat.

[shyliar]

Anyone knows whats the final supply of IOTA and if there's any inflation?

I would like to know the details too. Sounds to god to be true. It looks like it's 100% premined

Circulating Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT
Max Supply
2,779,530,283 IOT

How was that ugly number decided? how did the coins get released into the market?

Total supply is actually  2,779,530,283,277,761

The reason supply is shown as MIOTA at the link below is that the M stands for MillionIOTA.

http://coinmarketcap.com/

Not that it matters much. Bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places.

[lurker10]

Iota is a crypto paradigm shift.