IOST is a blockchain application platform supported by global first-tier dollar investment institutions such as Sequoia and Zhen, and developed for online service providers. After the main network was launched, IOST has officially become the top 4 DApp public chain platform in the world except Ethereum, EOS and Tron.

IOST achieves the goal of horizontal scaling and high throughput through the design of PoB consensus mechanism and the second layer expansion solution; provides third-party developers, creators and enterprises with a platform to realize value through the effective way of developing the community's own network. IOST is more decentralized than EOS based on the DPoS mechanism and is more scalable than the ETH smart contract platform.

IOST Team

The IOST project is developed by The Internet of Services Foundation, a non-profit organization located in Singapore. The IOST project team is currently mainly composed of R&D personnel focusing on blockchain distributed technology. Most of the members have graduated from world-leading universities such as Princeton, Stanford, MIT, Tsinghua University, and Peking University. They have more than three years of blockchain-related research experience. The IOST project currently has offices in Silicon Valley, New York, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo and Berlin.

IOST Project Advantages

IOST is a blockchain platform for distributed applications. Centralized platforms have long dominated, so people have forgotten that there is a better way to build Internet services. IOST is an effective way to develop the community's own network and can provide third-party developers, creators and enterprises with a platform to realize value. IOST's solution is actually to resolve triangular conflicts of scalability, rather than avoiding solving problems with the practice of sacrificing censorship resistance. While trying various scalability solutions, the IOST blockchain always maintains its censorship resistance, open participation and protection from malicious attacks. IOST is more decentralized than EOS and more scalable than ETH.

IOST has the following 5 characteristics:

1. Censorship Resistance
IOST allows developers to create applications and smart contracts for Censorship Resistance. If you enter a smart contract with other users, it is very important to know the rules and any records of the smart contract will not be tampered with at the expense of your interests.

2. Algorithm Election Committee
IOST blockchain uses algorithms to select verification committees to base their contributions to the community and tokens held, rather than using on-chain voting systems like most blockchains based on DPoS mechanisms.

3. Equal distribution of economic incentives
The Proof of Trust (PoB) consensus mechanism has a unique design that Servi will destroy itself. This means that after the node verifies and produces a block, the system will automatically clear the node's Servi balance. Therefore, all nodes will take turns verifying blocks in order of high or low confidence scores, while nodes with high confidence will be replaced continuously due to the destruction of Servi, which ensures equal block reward allocation.

4. Proof of credibility
Proof of Believability, IOST's original consensus mechanism

5. Capacity expansion
Improve scalability through protocol-level and layer-2 expansion solutions, including: state channels, shards and side chains.

Core technologies of IOST projects

PoB consensus mechanism

For IOST, PoB is a branch of the election. Although EOS's DPoS is relatively centralized, elections do not necessarily mean centralization. In some traditional consensus mechanisms, only one leader has the right to produce data in a time period, and DPoS is just a solution under the election of this large expansion branch. We can define the degree of decentralization to a certain extent as the distribution of block producers within a certain time unit. Our current internal test version adopts a two-tier qualifying model.

In order to avoid witch attacks, we still use token-based staking and election methods, that is, nodes qualified to participate in the consensus need to obtain a part of the Token resources.

In fact, it is not difficult to find that the truly implemented and secure public chains are all branches of PoW or PoS, because computing power or tokens are the only secure blockchain access mechanism. Now using any other consensus will face security issues: whether it can be forged, whether it is submitted in a centralized manner, whether the consensus is based on whether the data can be proven on the chain rather than occurring off the chain, whether a new node joining the network can participate in the consensus, etc. Similarly, PoB is also one of the branches of PoS, and the first layer of access is also based on Token. You need to obtain more than a certain number of Token pledge votes in the community (currently 2.1 million IOSTs) to be eligible to participate in the consensus.

The second layer is the real core part of PoB, where the nodes that produce blocks will be truly generated. At this level, we hope to achieve two goals. On the one hand, block producers need to force rapid changes to achieve better decentralization, and on the other hand, we hope to encourage nodes to contribute to the network while competing with each other.

To achieve these goals, each trusted node will have a point, Servi. Servi can only accumulate network behaviors such as verification transactions and packaging transactions. At the same time, the number of authorized tokens will be converted to Servi in ​​proportion to each time period. They need to compete to become participating in block generation. Each node selected for block generation needs to consume Servi and will receive token incentives provided by the foundation.

At the same time, we will rotate the block nodes at a relatively high frequency. This will lead to two results. The first is that every time a block is generated, it requires servi to consume, so that other people who have not selected will have more servi and will have a greater chance of being selected next time. Secondly, all nodes need to contribute to the network to obtain more Servi and have more opportunities to allocate rewards to nodes.

IOST's PoB consensus mechanism makes the entry threshold for IOST to become an alternative node lower, and more community members can participate in the election. At the same time, by rotating blocks at high frequency, the liquidity of the IOST's primary block generation node will be very high, and greatly reduce the network size and make the consensus reach faster. IOST's original PoB consensus mechanism not only greatly enhances the expansion performance of the IOST blockchain, but also has a much higher degree of decentralization than the DPoS mechanism based on a small number of super nodes and alternative nodes adopted by EOS, achieving better community autonomy and ensuring higher security.