Aim
The IOST project aims to be a secure and decentralized blockchain app platform that offers a sharding architecture and consensus mechanism able to handle up to 100,000 transactions per second. IOST stands for Internet of Service Token. The aim of the IOS team is to offer a platform able to host Dapps and smart contracts with the ability to support a massive number of users.
Complete Framework
IOST(Internet Of Services Token) aims to provide a complete framework for the deployment of Smart Contracts, Dapps, Data storage, as well as voting and feedback systems. IOST makes it possible for Smart Contracts to be developed using any mainstream programming language, as contrary to other platforms which only work with one language. Programming Smart Contracts on the Ethereum platform using Solidity is reserved for a selected few, while there is an ocean of C#, Java, js developers ready to start playing with their IOST tech.
Summary
IOS is another smart contract platform aiming to compete with more established names as Ethereum, EOS, NEO and others. IOS consensus model is comparable to EOS’ Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) in that Proof of Believability (PoB) presents a more energy efficient protocol that promotes scaling of the Blockchain leaning towards a more centralized approach with more powerful nodes having a higher reputation.
The Proof-of-Believability consensus protocol uses an intra-shard Believable-First approach. The protocol divides all validators into two groups, a believable league and a normal league. Believable validators process transactions quickly in the first phase. Afterwards, normal validators sample and verify the transactions in the second phase to provide finality and ensure verifiability. The chance of a node being elected into the believable league is determined by believability score which is calculated by multiple factors (e.g., token balance, contributions to the community, reviews, etc). One with higher believability score is more likely to be elected into the believable league. Believable validators follow the procedures to decide the set of committed transactions and their order, as well as process them in order. Believable validators also form smaller groups – one validator per group. Transactions will be randomly distributed among these believable validators. Consequently, they produce smaller blocks with extremely low latency.
Thanks to the DRP, it is not difficult to implement efficient distributed sharding. However, the protocol only works well without malicious or failure nodes, since it is performed by validators collectively. Therefore, the team has to design backup protocols for scenarios with malicious or failure nodes. In short, the Efficient Distributed Sharding Technologydynamically partitions the network into subspaces by randomly assigning different nodes to work together. This results in a system that works more swiftly and efficiently than many of its competitors.
As opposed to traditional protocols like Proof Of Work, IOST proposes a different approach, called Distributed Randomness Protocol (DRP), where a client communicates with a set of servers to generate an unforgeable, uniformly random value through non-interactive zero-knowledge proof (NIZK) and publicly verifiable secret sharing (PVSS). In a certain protocol run, before the protocol finishes and the final random output is revealed, no entity in the protocol is able to learn any information about the final output, which makes sure a dishonest client is not able to try multiple runs to generate the random number that favors the dishonest client.
The protocol consists of two phases – randomness generation and randomness verification. It works as follows. Initially, the client starts a protocol run by broadcasting to all the servers a message including a randomly generated balanced grouping. In the first phase, each server generates a random input value and creates shares only for other members of the same group using PVSS. Upon receiving encrypted shares with the NIZK proofs from all the servers (or timeout), the client chooses a subset of server inputs from each group. This allows the client to fix each group’s secret and the output of the protocol. In the second phase, the servers decrypt and send their shares to the client as soon as the client receives a sign-off on input values in a global run of collective signature. Then the client combines the recovered group secrets to reveal the final random output.
The infrastructure of IOSChain is similar to existing well-known blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, where nodes disseminate data through gossip protocol. The system split its data and state into shards. Each node is responsible for one shard of the system. Unspent transactions (UTXOs) are stored in the memory of the nodes in the corresponding shards. This makes several questions pop up:
-How to divide the system into shards?
-How to reach consensus in each shard?
-How to perform inter-shard transactions?
The IOST platform has found a way around those challenges, which will be explained in the next tabs.
Trezor
Trezor is also one of the renowned hardware wallets, which can be connected to your laptop like a USB, and you can store and receive digital assets which include IOST. Installing is really simple. To properly install it users should attach the unit to the computer. After that continue with installing the bridge which allows the Trezor to join with the computer. The first step is to connect the Trezor to device’s USB slot with the cable given in the box. After that, go to myTrezor.com and proceed with installing the browser extension. Trezor can also be used on Android or an iPhone, or on a Windows or Mac computer. Now, initiate the extension and myTrezor will direct you to pick a PIN. After this, you will notice nine buttons but the numbers are hidden. After this, users should check the Trezor’s screen to recognize which numbers are in which place because it switches every time. Now set the PIN. Shortly after, Trezor should present a 24-word wallet “seed”. In short, one word at a time. Note down this seed and save it carefully. If your Trezor device malfunctions or is lost, you can utilize the seed to reconstruct the complete wallet. This video explains how to set up your trezor quite well.
Trust Wallet
IOST is supported on Trust Wallet.
Trust was acquired by the largest exchange in the world, Binance on July 2018, which is an easy to operate ERC20 token specific wallet, of which IOST is an integral part. Trust wallet is relatively safe and convenient, hence can be used by all sorts of users, be it beginners, intermediaries or experts. Trust wallet is high on security as well, which makes it one of the best IOST wallets iOS, as it supports both Android and iOS.
MEW
MyEtherWallet (MEW) is an open-source, which has been rising rapidly since its release in 2015 as it supports Ethereum and all ERC20 tokens. Even though you have to create the wallet through the web, the critical information will be stored i your computer, not on the MEW servers. The MEW wallet can be used in tandem with other wallets like Trezor, Ledger, etc. You can even make transactions offline which is considered more secure as compared to the online server.
The wallet offers a brilliant combination of speed, trustworthiness and simplicity, making it the most popular online wallet for ether and any ERC20-based tokens.
Simply visit myetherwallet.com and set up your wallet with a method of your choosing, just make sure to store your private key somewhere safe. It's wise to have it written down on paper in case your PC/notebook malfunctions.
The only downside to using an online wallet like MEW is that there are literally hundreds of phishing scams out there to get your eth, so you better double check the address everytime and make sure to watch out for any malicious activity on your browser or PC.
