Category: IOTA

The IOTA Foundation announced a major contribution to the Imperial College. The non-profit organization based in Europe donated £1 million to the world-renown academic institution to research potential improvements to the circular economy supported by decentralized ledger technology (DLT).

Related Reading | Why IOTA Was Chosen By The European Union To Develop Blockchain Solutions

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the circular economy contemplates a transformation of the world’s economic model to reduce or eliminate the production of waste. Thus, economic agents would adopt a “system solution framework” to prevent negative impacts on the environment.

The ultimate goal would be for humans to reduce waste and pollution from the production and supply chain and aid “nature to regenerate” itself. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation explains it as follows:

A circular economy decouples economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. It is a resilient system that is good for business, people and the environment.

In that sense, the IOTA Foundation and the Imperial College will collaborate to create an entity that will conduct research to promote the circular economy. Called the I3-LAB or Imperial-IOTA-Infrastructures Lab, the research facility will be located within the Dyson School of Design Engineering in London.

The lab will be comprised of prestigious academic faculty from this engineering school, including Professor of Cyber-Physical Systems and Deputy Director of the Dyson Robert Shorten. With a specialization in smart mobility, smart cities, sharing economy, and DLT, Shorten seems the right person to lead the initiative.

Via his Twitter account, IOTA founder Dominik Schiener stated the following while celebrating the crypto industry’s influence to improve issues that affect people while creating real-world use cases:

Many of us have joined crypto because we truly believe in the positive impact that we can have. We are here to decentralize, to empower and to create opportunities for everyone. Let’s use the money, knowledge and communities we have to accelerate that impact.

IOTA Makes Push To Support Sustainable Economy

As Schiener clarified, the developments that will come out of this Circular Economy Lab will be open source and everyone will have access. In that sense, he invited the IOTA community to take part in the initiative and added:

This will be the first of many philanthropic activities from the IOTA Foundation. Let’s accelerate our impact, together.

The Foundation also revealed that its contribution to the Imperial College will support doctoral studentships, and postdoctoral fellowships for those researchers interested in topics related to sustainable business models, tokenization, and more.

The non-profit organization also claimed that selected projects will require cooperation between researchers, local entrepreneurs, and authorities. Thus, DLT will be leveraged to resolve a wide variety of environmental challenges. Peter Cheung, Head of the Dyson School of Design Engineering said:

We are incredibly grateful to the IOTA Foundation for their support. Innovation in sustainable growth is one of the key research themes for the Dyson School and this grant will bring new impetus to research on the technological drivers of the circular economy.

Related Reading | IOTA to Release Smart Contract Network ‘Assembly’ And Distribute ASMB Token

As of press time, MIOTA trades at $0.87 with sideways movement in the past 24 hours. The cryptocurrency has been following the general trend in the crypto market as it revisits support after BTC’s price was rejected at critical resistance.

MIOTA moving sideways in the 4-hour chart. Source: MIOTAUSDT Tradingview

IOTA was selected as one of the projects that will take part in the European Union Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement. The platform will be competing with four projects in a second round for this EU program for a chance at improving the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI).

Related Reading | IOTA Smart Contracts Enter Beta Phase To Circumvent Network Flaws

Announced by the IOTA Foundation (IF), the network has reached stage two out of three after it was selected from around 35 applicants. This second phase will last around six months, per the announcement, and will have a special focus on research, development, and lab testing.

The IOTA Foundation will receive support from the European Commission in order to investigate and develop “blockchain innovations in the context of testing how future evolutions of EBSI could evolve towards a more scalable, energy-efficient, secure and interoperable architecture”.

In that sense, the IOTA Foundation revealed that it will partner with Software AG to implement the developed solution. After, the EU Commission will launch an evaluation phase to test the results of its program’s second phase and the progress each participant has accomplished. The IF added the following:

(…) based on this evaluation, a minimum of three projects will be selected to move on to Phase 2B, final solutions development and field testing, which is expected to last another year.

Therefore, the non-profit organization will start testing blockchain solutions based on IOTA, specifically they will test a use case for digital product passports for digital waste recycling and a cross-border management of IP rights, the announcement said. Besides Software AG, the IF will rely on other partners and will attempt to growth its partner network.

In the past, the organization has worked with major companies from around the world to help them develop multiple use cases. This includes software giant IBM, Dell Technologies, Jaguar Land Rover, and others.

IOTA To Power EU Supported Blockchain Solutions?

In its final stage, the EU program will require projects to field test the capabilities of their proposals. The IF claimed to be “excited” about its role on this European driven initiative and added:

We very much support the strategic focus placed by the European Commission on blockchain and distributed ledger technology as a driver for innovation and growth. We are privileged to be part of this pre-commercial procurement procedure to develop a Europe-wide infrastructure based on blockchain and DLT for use in public services (…).

IOTA will dedicate resources to develop solutions and use cases on Scalability, and the implementation of sharding on the EBSI infrastructure. The objective is to improve the protocol’s scale capabilities to onboard and support the users that will leverage the EBSI network.

The IF will attempt to develop its sharding solution with a “root network” approach. In other words, a main network will be connected to a series of leaf or branch smaller networks. In addition, the organization will work on its consensus and governance mechanism, its interoperability, and potential to implement identity solutions.

Related Reading | IOTA to Release Smart Contract Network ‘Assembly’ And Distribute ASMB Token

At the time of writing, IOTA trades at $1,11 with a 1.9% loss in 24 hours.

MIOTA with small gains on the 4-hour chart. Source: MIOTAUSDT Tradingview