What is IOTA and What is the Tangle
This post will cover the high level of the IOTA network, with an attempt made to avoid the technical jargon normally associated with Crypto-Currencies.
This post is for those who don't know what IOTA is, but want to avoid the nitty-gritty of the Whitepaper
What is IOTA
The iota network is an asynchronous system which can process many transactions quickly without fees bypassing the traditional methods used by the likes of Bitcoin being the Blockchain.
It enables tiny transactions to be made without costing anything in transmission costs (unlike Ethereum's GAS or Bitcoin's Transaction Fees).
When you see the IOTA token being valued on an exchange, it is actually a representation of 1 Million IOTA. As a single IOTA is so cheap, that its not worth selling them on their own. However don't let that stop you from sending a tip or payment to someone for 1 IOTA (which at the time of writing is 0.00000396 USD)
When IOTA was released, all of the tokens were created. Since then, no more tokens have been generated. So the supply of IOTA is finite, and is not increasing.
How are Transactions Free
So the network uses an ingenious method of adding transactions. Rather than utilising processing fees, it requires the device who is requesting it to be added to verify two other transactions. Which for those transactions to be added, they have to verify two. So in principle, the more transactions being added to the network, the faster it gets, instead of it getting slower!
In practice, it is still having some teething problems, which your results may vary.
What is a node
Nodes are entities that issue and validate transactions in the IOTA tangle. Essentially anyone can be a node, but unlike the other Crypto-Mining systems, you do not get a reward for becoming a node, nor do you get anything in return for processing transactions.
What is the Tangle
The tangle is essentially IOTA's way of storing transactions in the Ledger. This exists in each node, and unlike the traditional blockchain, each node does not have the entire history of transactions. Furthermore, old transactions are actually deleted from the tangle on a scheduled basis to keep the network running speedily!
Using some mathematical wizardry they have managed to accomplish this! Quite astounding actually!
You can check out the tangle growing in real-time here
IOTA Live Tangle
If you want to find out the more technical information, you might want to prepare your brain, as the whitepaper in the Resources link is quite intimidating. Due to the features that are supplied, it leads to a very complex system.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them and I will give it a hearty attempt to try and answer for you.