We've all become increasingly reliant on location-verification technologies over the past 5 years with the increase in IoT-interconnected devices, many of which utilize your current location as an essential aspect of it's platform. Right now, location verification is mostly done through the GPS via your cell phone through a variety of different mechanisms, but there there are an increasing number of location-reliant IoT technologies that have also become popular. The GPS in your car for example, trackable suitcases, trackable implants on pets just to name a few. The number of interconnected devices is due to balloon on an exponential level in the next 10 years.

GPS technologies, while accurate most of the time, has been having an increasing number of issues that ought to concern us all. Jamming and cyberattacks have become increasingly common. But the other issue we have to consider is who is receiving our location data, and location data of things we want to track e.g. parcels. We're all used to something a simple as a calculator app on our cellphones now insisting on access to all contacts, photos, location data, camera, among other things. Why do all these applications need so much personal information? The obvious answer is that they want to monetize it in some way, or allow other parties to use it for their purposes. Giving the app access to your personal data that they don't actually need is one thing. When that party gives access to your data to other parties they authorize that's another. But what about when one of these parties gets hacked, and your information is exposed to companies, and your data is exposed to companies you never wanted to give your information to to begin with?

The solution of course is to avoid centralization, and instead gather, verify, store and distribute data from in a decentralized manner, while keeping all information encrypted in order to ensure privacy. But that's not so simple of a solution as it may seem, and accuracy & centralization typically can't be assured via decentralized location oracles.

XY Oracle Network

As previously mentioned, accuracy of location data typically cannot be assured via decentralized location oracles. But XY Oracle Network, also known as XYO Network, claims they can do just that. As they note in their whitepaper, "With a physical network comprised of untrusted nodes it is possible to determine the certainty of data that has been provided by edge nodes based on a zeroknowledge proof that two or more pieces of data originated from the same source".

So how are they able to do this exactly? Let's start with the basics of how their oracle network functions. There are 4 primary components:

Sentinels - Data gatherers that observe data information and vouch for the accuracy of location data by producing temporal ledgers

Bridges - Data transcribers or relayers from the temporal ledgers produced by the Sentinels to the Archivisits that store the data

Archivists - Data storers that location information in a decentralized manner, and they are also responsible for both indexing their ledgers and retrieving data when requested, which they get paid for in XYO tokens 

Diviners - Answer aggregators that find the most accurate data for a given query to relay is back to the issuer. They interact direct with the Archivists that store the the data. This component of the XY Oracle Network is the most sophisticated and hardest to grasp of the four.

Together these 4 components of the XY Oracle Network work together to create a location oracle resistant to attack that is able to return location data, while also ensuring privacy, safety, and anonymity of the individual or whatever is being tracked.

Use Cases

There's an abundant need for decentralized location verification already, but the need for it will be even more pronounced in a few years time and there are more IoT connected devices requiring location data to operate. But lets take a look at a few example of how this technology would be highly useful today.

Their whitepaper gives a few examples, such as for parcel tracking, allowing the user to pay upon verified delivery of a parcel, instead of having to pay upfront. Expanding on this idea though, it's really not just limited to delivery of Amazon parcels though. Logistics overall is a massive industry, and consumer parcels are only a very small part of that. The XY Oracle Network can be utilized for much larger international (or domestic shipments) between businesses for example. With any given shipment there is a shipper and consignee. The buyer is typically the consignee, or they designate one of their behalf. Sometimes they act as the shipper as well, although sometimes the seller acts as the shipper.

But before any B2B shipment is done, something known as 'terms of sale' is established outlining what aspects of the overall shipment each party is responsible for. The most common terms of sale utilized are outlined as part of Incoterms 2010. The case of the parcel shipment above is an example of DDP (Deliver Duty Paid), but this is not a typical incoterm utilized by businesses, although it does happen from time to time. EXW (Exworks), DAP (Delivered at Place), FOB (Freight on Board), CIF (Costs, Insurance, Freight), and FCA (Free Carrier), are all much more common. These terms all denote exact when the responsibility and/or liability transfers from the seller to the buyer. The XY Oracle Network could be utilized in ALL these cases so that the moment a key thing happens (e.g. Freight Loaded onto steamship line in case of FOB), the payment can be transferred from the buyer to the seller securely and safely.

Why is this a problem? Under the current system, either the seller has to trust the buyer to pay after the seller completes their work by extending the buyer a line of credit (which they aren't always able to collect on), or the buyer has to pre-pay the seller, before the seller completes the tasks they are obliged to do. The seller unfortunately has no assurances the buyer will complete what they agreed to, as the buyer can easily run off with their money with no recourse. This happens more than you might think even in North America & Europe, but it happens all the time in China, with the seller going MIA after the buyer sends them the money. The buyer has no practical recourse in these case to recoup their funds.

By tracking a shipment via the XY Oracle Network, the buyer can safely rest assured they will get the product they ordered (subject to something happening to the cargo while it's under their control), and the seller can safely know they'll receive their money as soon as they deliver the goods to the designated place.

Another possible use case would be for the tracking of suitcases. Suitcases get lost all the time in airports. When an individual gets to the destination airport, they'll easily be able to see if the suitcase made it on the plane with them or not, or if it got rerouted onto different plane(s).

In both these cases, it's important that the location data stay private, something that can be assured through the XYO Oracle Network.

Let me know your thoughts below!