A future day with IOTA
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Preface: IOTA is more than a crypto-currency. It is a complete overhaul of known distributed ledger technology (DLT) that offers a complete range functionalities — from currency over data-anchoring to smart contracts, NFTs, and many more), all on a fast, feeless and green base-layer. As of today, many parts of IOTA are approaching advanced beta-states and many industry and research projects progress quickly. In this article we want to have some fun: Imagine a future, in which IOTA is fully incorporated into everyday technology. We follow our protagonist through a typical day and see in how many ways IOTA technology improves his life. Each IOTA technology and use-case is highlighted, with additional information in the footnotes. Morning 8:15 am, the alarm bell rings. “Yes, almost weekend!” – Toms first conscious thought as he rolls out of bed. Tonight´s the night: He and the boys will go out to watch the greatest fight-event of the year: Connor McGregor vs Dustin Poirier 7. Everybody already bought their ticket-NFTs 1 directly from their IOTA wallets 2 via a ticket-vendor plug-in and they are ready to go. Well, almost. A final weekday has to be handled before that. Since he started working from home, Tom enjoys some morning-shopping at the local farmer´s market before work. His tokenized autonomous car 3 is already waiting in front of the house. He owns 400 of a total of 1200 colored IOTA-tokens that represent ownership of the vehicle. Its autonomous taxi-services earn him some good extra cash at times of the day, where he doesn’t need it himself anyway. As he approaches, the car greets him with Darth Vader´s voice: “Verify identity please” Toms smart-phone vibrates and shows a pop-up notification “Press here to verify yourself with IOTA Identity 4”. As he confirms, his identity wallet proves to the cars, that he is indeed authorized to use it. The driver´s door opens by itself. “Welcome on board Tom! I hope you had a good night.”, Vader greets him. “Sure, hope you too.” Tom answers and adds “Bring me to the farmer´s market. Also enable data-earning 5 on the way.” “Data-earning enabled. Expected income today is 300 Ki 6” the car responds. “Nice, that’s half a battery! I see you need to recharge too.” The car confirms: “That is correct. I negotiated with an autonomous solar-panel 7 near the farmer´s market. The sun is shining but its owners are not at home, a real bargain”. “OK perfect, then let´s go!” Fully autonomous cars were finally allowed inside cities, after the internet of things (IoT) really took off. Even individual reflector-posts now have sensors and their own decentralized identity to help autonomous cars navigate the complex city environment. 8 As soon as they arrive at the market, Tom is greeted by his favorite farmer lady: “Hey Tom, how are you today?”. “Yeah I´m doing well Lauren, how is the self-made Guacamole?”. Lauren responds in her usual, snippy way: “Delicious of course, best in the world. What else do you expect me to say?” “Ok nice, I would have one." She replies by showing him a QR code 9. As Tom scans the code he gets another pop-up on his smart-phone. “Do you want to verify your identity to “Lauren FamerGirl”?”. He confirms and immediately gets one more pop-up: “Thanks for being a faithful customer! This is your 20th visit, which grants you one free item from our shop 10!”. “Haha check this out Lauren, I´m a faithful customer! So now give me that Guacamole!” “Well sure, here you go. But you still need to pay for the rest! Please confirm.” Tom confirms the final buy-order of groceries and leaves. A final work day is awaiting before weekend can start. *** Footnotes: 1: IOTA Digital Assets and NFTs IOTA offers feeless NFTs and digital assets. With a simple 1-click function in a suitable wallet, individual IOTA tokens or a batch of tokens can be assigned with a non-fungible number. This unique number enables the representation of physical or digital goods (real-estate, cars, stocks, stable-coins, etc) on the Tangle. https://blog.iota.org/tokenization-on-the-tangle-iota-digital-assets-framework/ 2: Firefly wallet Firefly is the current official IOTA wallet for humans. It is highly modular and can be extended with plug-ins from third parties in the future. A security design called Stronghold disconnects the Seed (private key) that controls the tokens fundamentally from all other modules, making it very safe to use. https://blog.iota.org/iota-stronghold-6ce55d311d7c/ 3: Tokenized economy A concept in which physical goods like houses or cars are represented by tokens on a distributed ledger (i.e. a blockchain or IOTAs Tangle). This enables fractional ownership and quick trading in otherwise illiquid markets such as real-estate. 4: IOTA Identity IOTA enables feeless decentralized identities (DID) on the main-layer (layer 1). A DID is a public- and private key pair, which allows the owner of the private key to proof their identity by controlling the public key. A large use-case comes in when a DID gets enriched by verifiable credentials from trusted third parties like governments, universities, etc, that confirm information like age, place of residency or diplomas. DID enables safe and highly private log-ins, account creation and brings back power over data back to the user. https://www.iota.org/solutions/digital-identity 5: Data earnings A use-case first researched by Jaguar Landrover based on IOTA. Cars will collect data over traffic, potholes, car performance, etc. and trade them on data-marketplaces for money. https://blog.iota.org/earn-as-you-drive-with-jaguar-land-rover-and-iota-3c744d8c0cba/ 6: IOTA token chart The IOTA token supply is completely fixed since its creation (0% inflation). Usual trading denomination nowadays is MIOTA (Mega IOTA or Mi = 1 million IOTA token) 7: Autonomous electricity-market by EU2020 project CityXChange CityXChange is a EU research project that builds an autonomous electricity market based on IOTA. Machines, such as cars, negotiate with and automatically pay energy-positive houses, solar-panels, etc. in order to recharge themselves. This project is actively tested in 6 European cities as of today. https://blog.iota.org/iota-cityxchange-community-update-85f43894bcca/ 8: Autonomous reflector-posts to help autonomous cars in Projekt Alfried (Germany) The German government funded “Projekt Alfried” aims at fascilitating higher levels of autonomous driving in cities by including autonomous reflector-posts into security. Each post gets its own DID and communicates with cars and other sensors about environmental factors. https://www.etogruppe.com/en/news/news-from-eto/project-alfried-will-be-built-on-iota-chrysalis.html 9: QR-scan for quick IOTA payment Retail IOTA payments can be done via established QR-code scanning with payment confirmation in a wallet app. https://ecosystem.iota.org/projects/tangle-frost-qr-code 10: Identity-based customer loyalty bonus One of many ideas enabled by IOTA identity. Every log-in at a shop confirms that a specific person showed up (without necessarily buying something). After a certain amount of log-ins, small perks are granted. Could also be used for gyms, lectures at universities and many more. Medium: https://medium.com/@linus.naumann/a-future-day-with-iota-part-i-239c16a011f3 submitted by /u/Linus_Naumann |
