IOTA and the Machine Economy

The Machine Economy (and similarly, Industry 4.0 or Web3) may just sound like buzzwords to try and grab your attention. However, IOTA’s audacious vision and impact in this space will become unquestionably real, in the not too distant future.

IOTA has marketed itself as the backbone of IOT, though it may be more apt to describe it as the backbone of the machine economy. It will act as a trust layer, automation enabler and will provide the infrastructure for the semantic web on which the machine economy will run.

The Foundation and Ecosystem

The IOTA Foundation is a non-profit, set up in 2017 in Berlin, Germany. By having a non-profit foundation behind it, IOTA is attractive as a neutral territory where many competing participants can utilize the same network. The IOTA ecosystem is an essential component, where there is a thriving community and many industrial and government partners.

Distributed Ledger Technology

IOTA is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), it provides a way for multiple participants in the network to transact value and data through the shared ledger. The data structure of IOTA’s ledger is called the Tangle, its public network is permissionless, meaning that anything can participate without requiring permission to join.

The public network is home to the IOTA cryptocurrency. IOTA can also be set up as a private network, which can be useful for companies if they simply would not benefit from posting all of their data on the public network. IOTA plans to make the public and private versions seamless and interoperable, so for example smart contracts could be run in either environment.