Dear Ilham Laabab

many people use Distributed Ledger and Blockchain synonymously. For example, also Corda calls itself a Blockchain though it does not come with a block data structure.

I personally interpret Distributed Ledgers as a superset of blockchains - which mainly do not have to come with a block structure for data. My colleagues and I formalized our understanding of Distributed Ledgers in a CCS'21 publication: A Security Framework for Distributed Ledgers.

Cheers,

Mike

Dear Ilham Laabab,

The data presented below should provide some highlights:

How can "IOTA" crypto currency work without a blockchain?

IOTA is a new crypto currency that is supposed to be scalable and works without blockchain. Experts (incl. Microsoft) allegedly say it is not a scam, but I don't understand - can someone explain?

• If IOTA does not have a blockchain, how does it keep the balances safe?
• If 1 IOTA is sent from A to B on day 0, from B to C on day 365, and from B to C on day 730, and if there is no blockchain (=ledger of transactions), how do we know that the IOTA really belongs to C and not still to A? In other words, if A claims on day 730 that he still possesses 1 IOTA, how can he be proven wrong?
• Conversely to previous bullet, if I own 1 IOTA and do nothing with it for 2 years, how can I be sure (guaranteed) that the IOTA still belongs to me after 2 years, how to make sure that nobody messed around and steals my IOTA? I could not prove that I am the legal owner if there is no blockchain, could I?

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https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4a15gm/how_can_iota_crypto_currency_work_without_a/

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How IOTA makes bright future for Internet of Things

The recent boom in the cryptocurrency market proved one more time that decentralization is a real thing and our society will get to that point sooner or later. For a long time I believed that blockchain is a revolutionary system that will change our lives, starting from cryptocurrency and changing the old banking system. When I heard about IOTA I realized that there is no end and even blockchain won't rule forever.

In this article I tried to collect the most relevant information, how IOTA will change the economy of Internet of Things (IoT). We hear many news about self-driving cars, smart fridges and intelligent drones but very few from behind the scenes. I will try to connect as many dots as possible to give you a quick overview to upcoming future.

https://medium.com/@MartinRosulek/how-iota-makes-future-for-internet-of-things-af14fd77d2a3

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Blockchain Wars: IOTA's Tangle Takes on Ethereum

By

JOE LIEBKIND

Updated January 02, 2018

The blockchain craze continues unabated as more companies create new applications faster than ever. The architecture made popular by bitcoin and its contemporaries has proven to be a useful tool that offers better security and transparency, leading to its growing adoption in several industries thanks to its effective communications and public ledger.

Even so, blockchain’s meteoric rise has not been without speed bumps, and there have been instances where it has shown weaknesses that could prove to be major challenges down the road.

In an industry such as the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain’s capabilities have proven to be a particularly strong fit. Interconnected devices require rapid and transparent verification of data, something blockchain’s ledger can handle exceptionally well. However, some have complained that blockchain’s somewhat rigid architecture makes it well-suited for robustly storing small amounts of data. This means it’s not truly scalable for things such as big data storage that has come to be synonymous with IoT.

This and other concerns led a team of developers to launch IOTA, a cryptocurrency platform designed for the demanding IoT ecosystem. With a twist on the traditional blockchain the company calls Tangle, IOTA claims to provide zero-fee transactions, as well as a unique verification process that resolves many of the scalability problems associated with bitcoin.

Tangle is attempting to position itself as a viable alternative to the Ethereum blockchain, which is still the gold standard for most applications built on the architecture. Regardless, new Ethereum-based solutions for IoT could render the discussion moot, offering a better way for IoT to function.

Storage Versus Streaming

One of the biggest points of contention between supporters of blockchain and Tangle is the former’s capacity for data storage. IoT systems create massive amounts of data to parse and store, and most existing blockchains simply cannot handle the load. Indeed, the technology is meant to offer strong, secure storage for limited amounts of data.

Detractors argue that this philosophy is incompatible with IoT design, and proffer that Tangle delivers a better solution thanks to its take on mining. With IOTA, every transaction requires the user to verify two other, random transactions, creating a tangled ledger that reduces the need for mining and theoretically removes any fees. This makes it a useful infrastructure for IoT devices that require micro and nano-transactions to process data being communicated, without raising overheads.

In this sense, Tangle architecture does exhibit notable advantages over blockchain. Transaction processing in blockchain means that much larger block sizes and volumes will take significantly longer to process as they must be completely verified to be appended to the chain.

For an IoT platform, this could represent prohibitive costs, and a lack of functionality due to longer processing times. However, some blockchain-based applications could present a third option using Ethereum’s blockchain, helping to resolve many of the system’s issues with data storage.

https://www.investopedia.com/news/blockchain-vs-blockless-can-iota-take-ethereum/

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Dear Ilham Laabab,

Personally, I think its better to start with basics and some selected links are within, hope that it gives you some highlights:

Bitcoin has inspired numerous powerful projects that have built on the vision of distributed books. These projects tackle a wide array of different problems in technology and society, so far none of them have the ability to provide real-time micro-transactions that are required by the sheer magnitude of this economy. This is due to a fee structure that makes these transactions too costly as well as current blockchain incarnations not being able to scale to a high number of transactions per second, withstand unstable infrastructure or running on extremely lightweight hardware.

The number of connected devices that will permeate our modern landscape in the coming decade is estimated to be 50 billion.

Meaning of IOTA

IOTA is a cryptocurrency designed for the Internet of Things. IOTA was designed to help machines communicate and settle transactions without fees. This would allow the Internet of Things to exist.

How does IOTA do this? After all, don’t all digital currencies struggle with transaction fees?

IOTA is actually different than any digital currency. Instead of using a blockchain, it uses a distributed ledger referred to as “The Tangle.”

IOTA is the missing puzzle piece for the Machine Economy to fully emerge and reach its desired potential. We envision IOTA to be the public, permissionless backbone for the Internet of Things that enables true interoperability between all devices.

IOTA has a range of features that are uniquely enabled due to its architecture:

• Scalability: IOTA can achieve high transaction throughput thanks to parallelized validation of transactions with no limit as to the number of transactions that can be confirmed in a certain interval
• No Transaction Fees: IOTA has no transaction fees.
• Decentralization: IOTA has no miners. Every participant in the network that is making a transaction, actively participates in the consensus. As such, IOTA is more decentralized than any Blockchain.
• Quantum-immunity: IOTA utilized a newly designed trinary hash function called Curl, which is quantum immune (Winternitz signatures)

In the following sections, we will take a deep dive into some of the important features and principles behind IOTA through links.

https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/innovation/articles/iota-explained.html

https://kriptomat.io/cryptocurrencies/iota/what-is-iota/

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9781003138082-16/blockchain-versus-iota-tangle-internet-things-igiri-deepshikha-bhargava-udanor-sowah

Article Iota Tangle: A cryptocurrency to communicate Internet of Things data

https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2768/p2.pdf