According to the IOTA Foundation blog, the IOTA Foundation’s ‘Beyond the Chain’ workshop, held at Trinity College Dublin on May 31, 2024, comprehensively explored how directed acyclic graph (DAG) technology can solve the inherent limitations of existing blockchains.
Insights from the workshop
The workshop was part of the IEEE Blockchain International Conference. CryptocurrencyThe event, which ran from May 27 to May 31, 2024, featured several IOTA Foundation members and attracted a large audience despite being held on the last day of the conference.
Keynote by Shai Wyborski
Kaspa researcher Shai Wyborski gave a keynote speech highlighting the efficiency and scalability benefits of moving from traditional blockchains to a DAG structure. He highlighted the drawbacks of blockchains, namely high orphan rates and poor performance.
Wyborski discussed various blockDAG implementations such as SPECTRE, Tangle, and GHOSTDAG that achieve scalable and secure consensus through topological alignment. He also introduced parameter-less protocols such as DAGKnight that dynamically adapt to network conditions to improve confirmation times and network performance.
The keynote concluded with discussions on creating rational miner incentives, exploring novel fee market models within the DAG structure, and solving scalability through innovative consensus mechanisms.
Interactive Session
Following the keynote address, the workshop featured four interactive sessions based on research papers submitted to the event.
Secure transmission of immutable data for IoT services
Andreas Baumgartner from Chemnitz University of Technology presented a paper on secure data transmission for low-power, long-range IoT services using DAG-based DLT IOTA Streams on top of the LoRaWAN protocol. The paper proposes a network layer that enables low-power IoT services, addressing challenges such as small payload sizes and duty cycle regulation.
Shared Object of Sui Smart Contract
Roman Overko of the IOTA Foundation discussed his research on shared objects in Sui smart contracts. The paper explored the unique features of the Sui platform that distinguish shared objects from owned objects, and analyzed the transaction frequency and contention level related to shared objects.
Name Management with IOTA
Teppei Okada of Ritsumeikan University presented a method to prevent content poisoning attacks in information-centric networking (ICN) using IOTA’s distributed ledger technology. The paper proposed managing content names with IOTA to prevent tampering with content registered in the system.
Systematization of knowledge: DAG-based consensus protocol
Mayank Raikwar of the University of Oslo and Nikita Polyanskii and Sebastian Mueller of the IOTA Foundation provided an overview of DAG-based consensus protocols. Their paper evaluated the performance impact of these protocols and the tradeoffs for consistency, availability, and partition tolerance.
Future outlook
The ‘Beyond the Chain’ workshop highlighted the potential of DAG-based DLT to overcome the limitations of existing blockchains. The event emphasized the importance of continued research and development in this area. The next workshop is scheduled to be held at the University of Pisa in June 2025.
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