Today, every piece of content and media you have is living somewhere owned by somebody, Your data is inside Facebook, your photos are inside a Google server or an Apple server.
If someone creates a new Pokemon card game online, the characters are “living and owned by a certain company in a certain format”. They own the data, they own your data. You think you own the Pokemon card. Do you?
If you have the ability to give the owners control over their own data by attaching the data to their private key and the possibility to transfer the ownership of this data (Pokemon card) to another user without centralised authority that would definitely be a great use case for Blockchain. By owning and controlling your private key through the HTML5 wallet or API, you own the data that is stored. The data is signed with your key, your signature. You own and control the data. This is exactly what is possible with the IOC Blockchain.
www.iocoin.io and www.iodigital.io
Data in a Blockchain can be anything. Think of paintings and have people storing the unique “fingerprint” of the painting in a Blockchain making them own the “fingerprint” and prove in IP conflicts that they were the first one to create it (proof of ownership services).
Gaming on Blockchain with Unity3D and IO
Currently a development team is creating a decentralised interplanetary battle, conquer and harvest game using the I/O Coin Blockchain to store achievements, ownership and other game data. If you like Crypto Kitties and Command and Conquer, this will be your game to play. This is just one of the examples possible with the I/O Coin Blockchain combined with Unity3D game development framework.
The IOC Blockchain is capable of storing 2 MB data in a block. The team created API documentation (https://iodigital.io/api-documentation/) where developers can interact with the IOC Blockchain and features provided.
Where did I/O Coin start and what is the future
Lets start with a little background story about the start of I/O Coin. In 2014 I/O Coin (IOC) was launched with a 2-week X11 protocol mining period. After the two weeks the protocol switched from mining to staking. There was no ICO or pre-mine where launch and distribution was fair. When starting the I/O Coin project the team focussed on the core technology: the Blockchain. This was back in the days where Blockchain was not a hype and ICO’s or pre-mine considered to be a scam.
The team quickly acknowledged the fact that Blockchain will be a game changer in the future for decentralised storage of “data”. A game changer that has the potential to disrupt many industries.
With the initial publication of the DIONS white paper (Decentralised Input Output Name Server) in 2015, the team embarked on a mission to create the possibility to store data in the IOC Blockchain attached to a private key and human readable Alias so people uploading the data would really own the data themselves. Data can be anything. There was no focus on a niche market but rather all industries that want to benefit from adding their data to a Blockchain without them owning and maintaining the core technology.
To have people easily use the Blockchain data features of IOC, the team knew that a great wallet system would be needed. Easy install, easy usage. The all new HTML5 wallet was born that would be interacting with the IOC Blockchain. That said the IOC Blockchain is a Proof of Stake based Blockchain and people need to have their wallet open and set to “staking” to secure the network. By doing that they earn a 4% annual reward on their IOC stored securely in their wallet. With the launch of the DIONS upgrade, it would be required for companies using the Blockchain for data services to pay for those services in IOC.
The payments done by those companies are also redistributed to the wallets that stake. So a staker gets the 4% staking reward + data fees. This incentivised the stakers even more to secure the network. This is why the IOC Blockchain has a staking average of 50% (this means 50% of all existing coins are held in wallets and used for staking).
User friendly interface to use the services
During development the team quickly saw new opportunities arise other than adding data to a Blockchain. A secure messaging system was added to the roadmap as well making it even harder to deliver the Blockchain upgrade in time.
When creating new Blockchain technology it is always hard to predict what you will encounter during development. The initial one year development planning soon became a two year mission to enable data features on the IOC Blockchain. At the end of 2017, the I/O Coin Blockchain hard forked to the new DIONS protocol supporting the data features and the team released the all new HTML5 wallet system where people can use the friendly interface to send/receive IOC transactions, register an alias, setup a secure communication channel with another wallet and upload/download files to the Blockchain.
The initial launch (fork) was challenging. Immediately after launch (and just before) the IOC Blockchain experienced stability issues. After releasing multiple wallet upgrades the Blockchain stabilised and has been stable ever since. Staking percentage is approx. 50% with hundreds of wallets around the world which is very good.
With the launch of the DIONS upgrade the team managed to have an unique proposition in the Blockchain eco system with features and possibilities not many projects are able to show for.
Release of new white paper & roadmap
Because the initial white paper was not sufficient anymore to explain what features are created, the IOC team delivered a new white paper january 2018. https://iodigital.io/roadmap This white paper explains all the current data features in detail and sets a roadmap for 2018 where the focus will be stealth and privacy.
Businesses that want to use Blockchain services to store their sensitive data want to be sure their data is securely stored and personal data is private. With implementing the stealth and ring signature features Q2 2018, IOC will answer to this requirement opening up the IOC Blockchain for a bigger use case.
Use the IOC Blockchain for your Proof of Concept
With the release of the DIONS upgrade, businesses are now able to use the IOC Blockchain to store data in a secure and fully decentralised Blockchain.
The first thing the project team of a company must ask themselves is how to utilise Blockchain technology and how it can contribute / benefit their existing or new services. Why store data de-central, why in a Blockchain?
Blockchain is not the holy grail for every storage need. Why is decentralisation worthwhile in the data use case?
Check your Proof of Concept, interact with other developers
If you have an idea, proof of concept and want to check with the developers community or IOC team if this idea is viable on the IOC Blockchain, you can get in contact through Telegram (https://t.me/iodigitaldevelopers) or through contact form on www.iodigital.io/contact-us
Keynote of I/O Digital at the Miami Bitcoin Conference
Last January I/O Digital was gold sponsor of the Miami BTC conference and held a 20 minute keynote speech about the history and future of IOC.
