How is IOTA different from other Blockchain based cryptocurrencies?

The first word that pops in our mind just by hearing cryptocurrencies is the world famous blockchain platform. But, do you know that there is another tech platform enabling the development of cryptocurrencies known as Tangle.

There are a wide number of cryptos dictating Tangle, but, as the title indicates, we have a crypto IOTA developed on the Tangle platform. Now, the question is exactly why does the need for a new platform other than Blockchain arise and what distinct features does Tangle has to offer. We will now take a deep dive at the features and benefits of Tangle technology.

Knowing IOTA

IOTA is a ground-breaking new transaction settlement and data transfer cryptocurrency for the Internet of Things (IoT). It is developed on a new distributed ledger technology, the Tangle, which overpowers the inefficiencies of current Blockchain projects and introduces a new way to accomplish consensus in a decentralized peer – to – peer system. For the first time ever, using IOTA, people and machines can transfer money and/or data without any transaction fees in a system where there is no need of trust, permission, and decentralized environment. This means that even Nano – payments are possible without the need for a trusted intermediary of any kind.

IOTA is the absent puzzle part for the Machine Economy to fully develop and reach its true latent. IOTA is foreseen to be the public and permission-less support protocol for the IoT that allows true interoperability among all devices. One can trade IOTA with other cryptos or fiat money on any of the leading cryptocurrency exchange.

The Tangle Tech vis a vis Benefits

IOTA’s distributed ledger i.e. Tangle (DAG/Directed Acyclic Graph), does not consist of transactions assembled into blocks and stored in consecutive chains, but as a stream of individual transactions intertwined together.

Transaction Fees

In order to contribute to this network, a participant merely needs to accomplish a small amount of computational work that authenticates previous two transactions. Rather than producing a hierarchy of roles and responsibilities in the network, every user has the same incentives and rewards. In order to make a transaction in the Tangle, two previous transactions must be validated with the reward for doing so being the validation of your own transaction by some subsequent transaction. With this ‘pay-it-forward’ system of authentications, there is no need to propose financial rewards. Thus, transacting with IOTA is completely fee-free. IOTA to BTC exchange is available at all the leading crypto exchanges.

Security

To issue a transaction with IOTA, a minute amount of Proof-of-Work is required. Unlike Blockchain where Proof-of-Work is working as a decentralized lottery of sorts, in the Tangle this aids merely as a spam and sybil preclusion measure. As more and more transactions occur, more and more cumulative Proof-of-Work is added to the system making it more secure against attacks. The Tangle grows more secure as more activity is added. This is because necessitating a minute amount of Proof-of-Work makes it costly for an attacker to “outpace” the number of honest transactions. The cost to issue a transaction for an honest user is immaterial, but the cost for an attacker to overpower the collective quantity of honest transactions would be forbiddingly high.

Scalability

By syncing in line, the transaction issuance and authentication, IOTA is able to accomplish a meaningfully higher transaction quantity. In a Blockchain, because many miners are trying to add the next block to the chain, with noteworthy overlap between the transactions included in their own blocks, transactions are forced through a bottleneck – this is how the double-spend problem is fixed and how consensus is ultimately accomplished. However, the vast mainstream of users are not trying to fraud by double-spending their coins, yet they are forced through this bottleneck, however. Instead, IOTA lets all transactions through and cleans up any conflicting transactions using the “heaviest Tangle” rule.

Consensus

One common misunderstanding about the differences between Blockchain and the Tangle is how consensus is attained. Blockchain achieves consensus through the “longest chain” rule. With IOTA, consensus tails the heaviest Tangle rather than the longest chain. In the Tangle, because transaction issuance is strongly coupled with network authentication, transaction finality (commonly called “confirmation”) can be attained in a fraction of the time than it takes for Blockchain. The more activity there is in the Tangle, the more authentications occur, and the faster confirmation becomes.

Conclusion

Although, IOTA differs in its advantages over Blockchain tech. However, trading in IOTA is as easy as that of any other crypto. You can buy IOTA with credit card or swap Bitcoin to IOTA as per your preference. Live IOTA price chart is also available at CoinSwitch to monitor and plan your investments. Thus IOTA is as user-friendly as any other crypto could be but in addition to the benefits of Tangle technology.