The Germany-based Iota Foundation has opened a virtual marketplace where parties can trade data coming from various internet-of-things devices, such as sensors.
In an announcement, the organization writes that several companies are participating in the project, including Microsoft, Deutsche Telekom, Fujitsu and Enexis. They are expected to participate in the marketplace and make their data available over the next two months. In the coming weeks, proof of concept applications should be released that illustrate more applications of the marketplace. At the end of the period, the Iota Foundation plans to publish a report detailing its findings. The marketplace is now online, but is not always easily accessible.
The idea behind the project is that there are large amounts of ‘connected’ devices that produce data. This is currently often not used, although it can be of value to certain organizations. The marketplace must make this data accessible and facilitate trade in it. According to the Iota Foundation, the project has been in the works since 2015.
That year also saw the creation of the Iota cryptocurrency, which forms the basis of the current system. A digital ledger, or ledger, called Tangle is used for this. A white paper on the technology states that this is a so-called directed acyclic graph that should form an alternative to the blockchain. The difference with this technique is that Tangle has no transaction costs, because the condition is that a transaction validates two previous transactions. Therefore, it is not necessary that this is done by miners, as is the case with a blockchain. Coinmarketcap places the Iota cryptocurrency in eighth place when it comes to value.