I/O Coin, 4 years in Blockchain. The story and achievements so far + future

10 min readMay 23, 2018

An overview

I/O Coin (since 2014) is currently in steadfast development, upgrading it’s open source blockchain protocol to host a fully private cryptocurrency. Enabling confidential, decentralized peer to peer digital payments. IOC currently fuels Dapps (decentralized applications) that take advantage of a full array of features, from encrypted document storage, encrypted transfer, identity storage to a fully encrypted messaging system and anonymous (stealth) transactions. All achieved without ICO.

Genesis Block in 2014

Since the rise of the Bitcoin network in 2009, countless developers have embarked in the creation of copycat cryptocurrencies. Many of these had no single purpose of existence, while a few others attempted to improve on the path that Satoshi had proposed within his bitcoin whitepaper. Proposals to improve on this technology have since emerged. Looking to improve Bitcoin with a more energy efficient cryptocurrency, Scott Nadal and Sunny King released a whitepaper for a proof of stake blockchain currency named Peercoin. Inspired by Sunny King, After years of POS proof of concept testing and blockchain penetration testing, the I/O Digital dev team lead by it’s founder Joel Bosh, devised a unique approach to POS and the first I/O Coin Genesis block was mined on July 23, 2014.

Fair launch

In looking at both protocols for the I/O Coin Blockchain, and refusing to ICO to facilitate adoption, the development team opted for a Fair Launch. To ensure fair distribution, I/O Coin was launched via X11 POW mining and after 14 days, the blockchain was successfully transitioned to its unique POS I/O. A volume controlled blockchain, enjoying almost instant transfers, 60 second block times and under 30 second confirmations. After almost 4 years of hard testing and 100% uptime, the development team was ready to tests its boundaries and pushed for a major upgrade. I/O Coin has 16,7 million coins and increasing with approx 4% per year with a max cap of 22 million. I/O Coin is a real community driven and non-for profit I/O Digital Foundation backed Open Source project that has raised the Blockchain bar setting ICO backed competition years behind with releasing their latest Blockchain upgrades.

DIONS — Decentralized Input/Output Name Server

Considering the risk of data bloating, security breaches and the lack of user friendly features, the development team knew that it would only be a matter of time before a single Blockchain would be a thing of the past. The team deployed a roadmap with aggressive goals and quickly proposed an upgrade to the main I/O Coin Blockchain, codenamed DIONS. The upgrade focus was to serve as an entry point registrar to the team’s proposed ecosystem. To make this all possible the core platform algorithm was upgraded to a new POS algorithm codenamed “CiPher”. This, along with staking and security enhancements to its core platform, advances on encrypted data, messaging and aliases to the blockchain. With all of these features being deployed alongside our decentralized GPG-like system, DIONS will prove to be successful in combining these three major components for a true user friendly and advanced blockchain platform. Users who help secure the I/O Coin Blockchain will earn IOC at a rate of 4% for Staking, transaction and registration Rewards.

Stealth, privacy and security

Following the successful launch of the DIONS project November 2017, the development team started to work on adding more privacy (DIONS v2) to the existing I/O coin eco-system. Early May 2018 they introduced “stealth addresses” and will integrate “ring signatures” as well according the roadmap.

I/O Digital Foundation

In 2016 the I/O Digital Foundation was created. I/O Digital Foundation is the official non for profit curator of the I/O Coin (IOC) Blockchain. The Foundation has an official board and byLaws and is registered in the Netherlands. More info: www.iodigital.io

Miami Bitcoin Conference

Last January I/O Digital was invited for a keynote and gold sponsor at the Miami Bitcoin conference. Founder Joel Bosh held an inspiring keynote about the project.

Security or not?

In this ICO flooded space you all are reading and experiencing, the legislation in crypto is hardening and intensifying. Many exchanges want written proof that a crypto currency is not considered to be a security according, for example, the Howey test, Reves Family Resemblance test and the Munchee Cease-And-Desist order. It is our belief that going forward, possible business partnerships may require legal documentation of I/O Coin’s status. A recent (may ’18) community funded effort lead us to hire a legal firm and do a very thorough investigation about the status of I/O Coin considering current legislation and how I/O Coin started and has been operating. This resulted in an 18 page legal memo that is available for usage. Having this document is extremely important and very valuable for things to (that could) come.

Existing LIVE features of the I/O Coin Blockchain

all features are accessible through the API as well. https://iodigital.io/api-documentation/

Intuitive and user friendly HTML5 wallet.
With user control of their private keys. Easy access to all features available. Making a transaction, sending messages, store a file and staking your I/O Coin has never been so easy!

File storage up to 2 MB per file (4 mb blocks)
With the ability to transfer ownership to another user

Decentralised Messaging Platform.
Secure AES256 encrypted messaging between two users (group messaging in roadmap)

Decentralised Alias system
To attach a file, send transactions or invite for chat. An Alias is attached to an IOC address.

Stealth addresses for more privacy in transactions
Stealth addresses are a convenient method of protecting the privacy of data and IOC receivers. For example, medical records could be uploaded and transferred without trace or a vendor may put his address for payment on a website or some other public site, but this may be an issue for the vendor with money payments to that address being on display for anyone to see. Stealth addresses protect privacy in this sense. It works by getting the payment sender to generate a one time address based on a single public Stealth address.

Features on short-term roadmap

The latest roadmap and information can be found at https://iodigital.io/roadmap/

Ring signatures
Ring signatures (first introduced by Rivest, Shamir & Tauman in 2001 [1]) are planned for Q2 in conjunction with stealth addresses allowing for any collection of public keys a signature to be created such that it is not feasible to determine which key was used in the construction of the signature. A restriction on the practical use of ring signatures is the way that the ring signature grows in size in many algorithms essentially linearly with the number of keys. However recent algorithms have been proposed which involve sub-linear and constant size growth.

Ring signatures can be viewed as the complement to stealth addresses in that a user may sign a transaction and any observer will not be able to feasibly determine who from the ring signed the transaction. Thus the system will move towards providing a powerful resource for complete IOC and document transfer anonymity.

Ballots
With our secure channel mechanism comes the possibility for secret voting. Ballots may be called by anyone with regard to anything at all from potential new projects and directions in the peer to peer network to matters relating to private groups. A vote may be called by establishing what we term a Ballot box alias. Which may be functionally an alias or designated group.

Group messaging
The current system provides encrypted peer to peer communications. The next important step in this direction is the extension to groups of members. Recent events concerning some well known encrypted group message platforms have proven yet again that it is essential that more and better alternatives are created to provide a means for people to discuss political or technological views for example without fear of clamp downs, repression or unauthorised disclosure of the messages to state governments or regimes.

Scientific computation
One area of interest that we are currently investigating is that of helping to improve understanding of cancer development and possible treatments. Of particular interest are proteins that have marked distribution changes or mutations in cancers. Staking “power” that is not used could be utilised and helping scientific computation.

Graduated staking
Along with the desire to promote network security comes the need to recognise nodes with consistent high levels of long term staking commitment. By means of enhanced rewards directed at the behavioural characteristics of such peers we strongly encourage other peers to aspire to follow suit, in turn to the benefit of all of the network.

The enhanced benefits for strong staking will involve gradation which will involve a policy of enhancing alias and communication related fees accrued on the network to reward these Sentinel nodes. Potential rewards will involve block voting rights awarded again in a graduated manner. As described above Ballots are already a feature we have. We anticipate certain types of ballot reserved by consensus which may be more appropriate for the
domain of public and general elections.

It is clearly advantageous and to the benefit of the entire network to have a graduated staking reward policy. This is currently under test and will be introduced and fully documented in Q3 or Q4.

Chameleon

Sidechain and interoperability technology. Research and prototyping of a mechanism allowing heterogenous networks of entities with different protocols and API specifications allowing them to transparently interoperate without the need for central provisioning. What we termed a connection patch was developed allowing transaction information to be published directly between different peer to peer networks that were integrated using a minimal API.

In practice we tested with two different networks, together with the connection patch. Transactions were published to an addresses in the connection patch and matches from the other network result in funds being exchanged with the connection patch. As a result, services were available for each user in the other’s network. Again, the test took place for two heterogeneous peer to peer networks but by using the network adapter API more networks could be added.

We investigated the potential for further services within the connection patch itself such as being able to handle more data oriented networks for example which would provide a effective demonstration of service specialisation and interoperability as well as for example policy voting within the connection layer itself.

The first results of this led us to investigate refining and extending what began as a proof of concept. The result grew into the Chameleon project. This is currently under development and planned for initial release later this year.

API

With the release of the API documentation (https://iodigital.io/api-documentation/) any business or proof of concept that wants to utilize I/O data storage capabilities for their application or game can now start developing and start using the I/O Coin Blockchain.

Reward for the “stakers”

If you have I/O Coin in your wallet, you can use these to help the network and put them to “work”. Click “stake” and you will earn an average of 4% rewards. I/O Coin has a great extra incentive for stakers. All data storage features are fueled by I/O Coin (IOC) and fees paid to use the storage / messaging features are redistributed to the stakers in the network. An example of a “star battle game” being developed by making use of the Blockchain is http://stario.switchingbrains.com/

I/O Coin has a strong staking community all over the world with an average staking weight of 45% — 50% of all existing coins staking.

Whitepaper

We have updated the initial whitepaper (2015) with a new one explaining all existing and future features of the IOC roadmap.

The English white paper can be downloaded here (pdf)
Chinese version / 中文版: 下载
Spanish version / Version en español: descargar

Exchanges

Exchanges;
Bittrex: https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-IOC
Qiex: https://www.qiex.com/exchange/ioc_btc
Blockbid: soon

Exhange services;
XChange.me
Coinswitch
IndaCoin

Socials

Twitter: https://twitter.com/io_coin
Facebook: https://facebook.com/iodigitalblockchain
Telegram: https://t.me/iodigital
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IODigitalCurrency/

Privacy by design

2018 will be a special year for I/O Digital with all those new features coming to their Blockchain. Protecting privacy and the right to own your personal data is very important these days and communications must always be secure and trustworthy..By facilitating this with the I/O Coin Blockchain features the team strongly believes they can make a positive change for many businesses / individuals and contribute greatly in the Blockchain ecosystem.

Our goals are to create a secure and privacy respecting Blockchain that can be used by any industry that seeks to utilize Blockchain data and messaging capabilities for their application, business or idea. With using the available API, anybody can now start to connect to the I/O Coin Blockchain.