Have to disagree when you say the risk is low.
Blockchain technology it self is in experimental phase. Bitcoin exists for some years now and it is still finding its path.
IOTA guys arrived and decided to do a completely new thing, so they can be "better". So this is even more experimental. Risk is very high.
Have you seen their official desktop wallet? Until today I still cannot see my tokens there (although the explorer shows me they are indeed there). Hope I will be able to transfer them out.
And of course, the whole seed generator crisis... Yes, the users were naive by using an online generator, but come on... How come they don't have a seed generator integrated?
Also, you saw how they reacted to this issue? They pointed the finger to the users. Zero support. Community treated as garbage. Shameless.
These guys sound like those geniuses that are very intelligent and have incredible ideas, but at the end they fail because they cannot interact with the society.
Without the community, a project is zero and they don't care about the community. You can feel this in any interview they gave.
I know it's not Blockchain. What I mean is that it is a technology even more experimental than Blockchain.
I believe at this moment these partnerships don't mean nothing special, as the technology is far from being used in real life. Maybe they are doing some testing to see if it works. If the tests fail or another better alternative comes, I'm sure the partnership is dropped.
Don't get me wrong, I have invested in IOTA and at the beginning it was because of all the reasons you mentioned, but since then I feel disappointed, specially with the team. You can even be cold and say that they don't give a shit about the average Joe because their main clients are Business Partners but... I still believe that is not the correct approach, the average Joe at the end of the day will be the end user.
The Internet of Things is the future, not necessarily IOTA, there are already many alternatives, specially in Asia. Let's see what the future brings.
I am a believer in IOTA. But it won't start working properly until it builds a community and gains some trust. And I agree they are not working hard right now to use headstart with "blockless blockchain" (they need to get a new term for this). Their activity from GitHub is weak, and that is why new projects like nano get a lot of space.
Tangles scalability beats blockchain in every aspect.
Most interesting for me is the futuristic thinking and implementing in autonomous vehicles, smart houses, etc.
I haven't checked it up, but the code repository and coding activity is something I tend to look at, either if it's to choose or recommend some piece of software or investing in crypto currencies. Like, Bitconnect - well, it would suffice to check their web site to see that it was a scam, but I didn't do that, I went right to the code repository and it was clearly signalling "stay away" :-)
Weak coding activity is a very strong alarm signal. Maybe the original developers have lost faith in the project. Maybe the original developers - now probably quite rich developers - care more about enjoying their new wealth than coding. Maybe the whole thing was just a scam to earn money.
I've seen many warning signals when it comes to IOTA - I can't say I've followed up and verified all the warning signals, it may very well be that it's all constructed FUD from people that for different reasons don't want anyone to believe in IOTA ... but, I'm wary, I don't have much faith in the project, and I hold no IOTA (though I lended some money to a friend investing in IOTA while it was hot - I think he did manage to earn quite much on it).
I feel they don't understand the concept of community and they don't want to understand. Their direct client is Enterprises, but they forget the end users are us.
To be honest, the futuristic thinking was already done before IOTA existed, probably even before any crypto related tech.
Admittedly IOTA is a work in progress. The current official GUI wallet is not very user friendly to use. However the trinity wallet that will be coming out soon will really make IOTA much nicer to use, and alleviate a lot of complaints.
I'm wondering about the security against attacks - as far as I've understod, there is some PoW going on, every node in the network does efficiently mine their own transactions and also has to verify (at least) the same amount of transactions made by others. And the difficulty rating is constant.
To me, it seems pretty obvious that a future super computer (doesn't need to be a quantum computer) should be able to do some "51%-attack" and rewrite the history.
Also, the though that embedded devices with limited CPU resources and limited batteries should be doing PoW ... that sounds rather inelegant to me.
The biggest issue me and my friends faced was finding exchanges that actually traded IOTA! Would have loved to pick some up, but just became frustrating that access was so limited. I think they have a great blockchain and tons of practical applications.
Binance gave me issues at first is discontinued trying. Settled on a smaller more mainstream cryptos, BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, and STEEM. Looked at XRP and DASH but opted to hols my LTC rather than trade it out.
I like Iota in the aspect that there are no fees to use it. I think eliminating, or at least lowering fees, is the main barrier that keeps sideliners from using crypto as actual currency.
The tangle idea, isn't it something similar to sharding? Sharding is on the road map of both Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash - and probably many others as well.
As far as I've understood, every node needs to keep the full transaction history of all the tokens they have, meaning it may not scale with time (an anecdote - in my previous workplace we built up new software from scratch to replace the old one, and we did extensive stress testing, I don't remember, think we got 1000 TPS which was rather good as we would only expect something like 50-100 TPS during traffic peaks - however, all the stress testing was done with a hierarchical product catalogue that was just two levels deep and contained dozens of items - as soon as we went live we observed mediocre performance - our software didn't scale when the catalogue was many levels deep and had thousands of products).
"As far as I've understood, every node needs to keep the full transaction history of all the tokens they have, meaning it may not scale with time"
In IOTA there are a couple different type of nodes. The most prevelent right now being full nodes. Full nodes receive and record all incoming transactions, however they preform what is called a "snapshot" every now and then, which erases all data accept the addresses that currently have value. After each snapshot, the database stored on full nodes right now is only around 20MB.
Perma-nodes (not out yet) will store the entire history of the tangle. This is what will allow all transactions to be undeniably verified forever.
Swarm-nodes (not out yet) will consist of multiple machines that don't have the capacity to store the entire tangle on their own, each storing a part of it, and working together to act like one perma-node.
These techniques used together will allow all data for IOTA to be stored efficiently over time. It is possible that perma/swarm nodes might be payed a small fee for storing information permanently.
Have to disagree when you say the risk is low.
Blockchain technology it self is in experimental phase. Bitcoin exists for some years now and it is still finding its path.
IOTA guys arrived and decided to do a completely new thing, so they can be "better". So this is even more experimental. Risk is very high.
Have you seen their official desktop wallet? Until today I still cannot see my tokens there (although the explorer shows me they are indeed there). Hope I will be able to transfer them out.
And of course, the whole seed generator crisis... Yes, the users were naive by using an online generator, but come on... How come they don't have a seed generator integrated?
Also, you saw how they reacted to this issue? They pointed the finger to the users. Zero support. Community treated as garbage. Shameless.
These guys sound like those geniuses that are very intelligent and have incredible ideas, but at the end they fail because they cannot interact with the society.
Without the community, a project is zero and they don't care about the community. You can feel this in any interview they gave.
ts not blockchain i thinkI
I know it's not Blockchain. What I mean is that it is a technology even more experimental than Blockchain.
I believe at this moment these partnerships don't mean nothing special, as the technology is far from being used in real life. Maybe they are doing some testing to see if it works. If the tests fail or another better alternative comes, I'm sure the partnership is dropped.
Don't get me wrong, I have invested in IOTA and at the beginning it was because of all the reasons you mentioned, but since then I feel disappointed, specially with the team. You can even be cold and say that they don't give a shit about the average Joe because their main clients are Business Partners but... I still believe that is not the correct approach, the average Joe at the end of the day will be the end user.
The Internet of Things is the future, not necessarily IOTA, there are already many alternatives, specially in Asia. Let's see what the future brings.
I am a believer in IOTA. But it won't start working properly until it builds a community and gains some trust. And I agree they are not working hard right now to use headstart with "blockless blockchain" (they need to get a new term for this). Their activity from GitHub is weak, and that is why new projects like nano get a lot of space.
Tangles scalability beats blockchain in every aspect.
Most interesting for me is the futuristic thinking and implementing in autonomous vehicles, smart houses, etc.
I haven't checked it up, but the code repository and coding activity is something I tend to look at, either if it's to choose or recommend some piece of software or investing in crypto currencies. Like, Bitconnect - well, it would suffice to check their web site to see that it was a scam, but I didn't do that, I went right to the code repository and it was clearly signalling "stay away" :-)
Weak coding activity is a very strong alarm signal. Maybe the original developers have lost faith in the project. Maybe the original developers - now probably quite rich developers - care more about enjoying their new wealth than coding. Maybe the whole thing was just a scam to earn money.
I've seen many warning signals when it comes to IOTA - I can't say I've followed up and verified all the warning signals, it may very well be that it's all constructed FUD from people that for different reasons don't want anyone to believe in IOTA ... but, I'm wary, I don't have much faith in the project, and I hold no IOTA (though I lended some money to a friend investing in IOTA while it was hot - I think he did manage to earn quite much on it).
I feel they don't understand the concept of community and they don't want to understand. Their direct client is Enterprises, but they forget the end users are us.
To be honest, the futuristic thinking was already done before IOTA existed, probably even before any crypto related tech.
IOTA is a strange one team is good but there wallet its a bit turn off. but the technology is a good start am on the fence atm
Admittedly IOTA is a work in progress. The current official GUI wallet is not very user friendly to use. However the trinity wallet that will be coming out soon will really make IOTA much nicer to use, and alleviate a lot of complaints.
good that's the only reason I do not own more IOTA but if there's a better wallet I'll probably buy more
I'm wondering about the security against attacks - as far as I've understod, there is some PoW going on, every node in the network does efficiently mine their own transactions and also has to verify (at least) the same amount of transactions made by others. And the difficulty rating is constant.
To me, it seems pretty obvious that a future super computer (doesn't need to be a quantum computer) should be able to do some "51%-attack" and rewrite the history.
Also, the though that embedded devices with limited CPU resources and limited batteries should be doing PoW ... that sounds rather inelegant to me.
iota is a white paper project by smug so called scientists money grab and nothing proven in the real world leeuw is far away
The biggest issue me and my friends faced was finding exchanges that actually traded IOTA! Would have loved to pick some up, but just became frustrating that access was so limited. I think they have a great blockchain and tons of practical applications.
Binance and Bitfinex? Pretty easy?
Bitfinex doesn't handle US based customers:
https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/227
Binance gave me issues at first is discontinued trying. Settled on a smaller more mainstream cryptos, BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, and STEEM. Looked at XRP and DASH but opted to hols my LTC rather than trade it out.
Supposedly the new IXI module coming out soon will make it a lot easier for exchanges to add support for IOTA.
I like Iota in the aspect that there are no fees to use it. I think eliminating, or at least lowering fees, is the main barrier that keeps sideliners from using crypto as actual currency.
The tangle idea, isn't it something similar to sharding? Sharding is on the road map of both Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash - and probably many others as well.
As far as I've understood, every node needs to keep the full transaction history of all the tokens they have, meaning it may not scale with time (an anecdote - in my previous workplace we built up new software from scratch to replace the old one, and we did extensive stress testing, I don't remember, think we got 1000 TPS which was rather good as we would only expect something like 50-100 TPS during traffic peaks - however, all the stress testing was done with a hierarchical product catalogue that was just two levels deep and contained dozens of items - as soon as we went live we observed mediocre performance - our software didn't scale when the catalogue was many levels deep and had thousands of products).
"As far as I've understood, every node needs to keep the full transaction history of all the tokens they have, meaning it may not scale with time"
In IOTA there are a couple different type of nodes. The most prevelent right now being full nodes. Full nodes receive and record all incoming transactions, however they preform what is called a "snapshot" every now and then, which erases all data accept the addresses that currently have value. After each snapshot, the database stored on full nodes right now is only around 20MB.
Perma-nodes (not out yet) will store the entire history of the tangle. This is what will allow all transactions to be undeniably verified forever.
Swarm-nodes (not out yet) will consist of multiple machines that don't have the capacity to store the entire tangle on their own, each storing a part of it, and working together to act like one perma-node.
These techniques used together will allow all data for IOTA to be stored efficiently over time. It is possible that perma/swarm nodes might be payed a small fee for storing information permanently.