Written by: Haotian
How to understand the 2.0 white paper released by @iotex_io, a seven-year-old IoT concept chain? In short: IoTeX has upgraded from the narrative of the digital payment settlement layer on the chain to a modular universal layer dedicated to serving AI+DePIN. Its years of experience in payment, ledger, and hardware device connection have finally formed a synergy under the new trend of DePIN? Next, let me talk about my understanding:
If you are familiar with the development history of IoTeX, you will find that IoTex1.0 has evolved from a global payment layer at the beginning to a solution for hardware device data ownership and privacy. Although the main narrative has changed, it has always been centered around hardware devices and data sovereignty.
The AI+DePIN track is currently hot. AI itself is aimed at data training of large models, distributed computing power involves the proof of work problem of hardware devices, and distributed reasoning is directly related to the verifiability of data sources. DePIN itself mainly solves the network framework problem of how distributed hardware devices can collaborate, etc. Obviously, these are the directions that IoTeX has been committed to developing over the past few years, so it is not surprising that IoTeX2.0 is positioned as a modular DePIN network general architecture layer for brand upgrades.
Specifically, IoTeX2.0 defines a universal modular network architecture for the entire DePIN industry, which mainly includes:
1) Modular Security Pool Layer (MSP), based on the token staking model, provides a "security consensus mechanism" for projects participating in the IoTeX DePIN network stack;
2) Modular DePIN architecture layer (DIMs), as a general DePIN technology stack layer, provides many basic functional layers such as RPC, Data Availability, Hardware SDK, identity, Sequencer, Storage, etc., which allows relevant developers to directly enjoy the DePIN network architecture with full functions, which is equivalent to the DePIN Stack convenient development stack layer like OP Stack;
3) DePIN application layer. At the top of the DePIN Stack, a rich DePIN landing application layer will be presented. In addition to directly building DePIN applications, project parties can also directly create DePIN L2 sovereign chains based on IoTeX L1.
It should be said that IoTeX2.0 envisions a very complete and complex DePIN general layer service solution, which has a flavor of "DePIN as a Service", and the unified consensus layer, unified Stack layer, unified DID identity layer, unified DA layer, etc. provided by the IoTex chain are all part of the solution.
The question is, why is IoTex2.0 confident that it can redefine the entire DePIN industry? The content of the white paper is relatively complex and covers a wide range of areas. I will mainly select three key technical details to illustrate.
1) W3bstream Multi-Prover System Verification Solution: We define the on-chain and off-chain worlds as the virtual world and the physical world respectively. The data in the on-chain virtual world must be deterministic and verifiable, while the data source of the off-chain physical world is full of complexity and unknowns. How can the off-chain hardware devices effectively prove their workload and detect and screen out deceptive Sybil devices?
The W3bstream architecture aims to solve the "Proof of real-world activity" problem and allow off-chain hardware devices to prove the validity of their workload to the on-chain Verifier through four Prover methods: ZKPs, TEEs, SMPCs, and BYOP.
In simple terms: ZKP zero-knowledge proof is a common end-to-end trusted verification method based on zk-SNARKs; TEE directly builds an Enclave isolation environment on the hardware side to establish a trusted connection. W3bstream is like a data transmission and reception dispatch center that verifies, cleans, processes, and stores data according to unified standards, which is equivalent to converting complex off-chain data into verifiable on-chain deterministic data.
2) ioID unified identity identification solution: Usually, in a pure on-chain environment, unique addresses and hash values as well as NFTs, SBTs, etc. can be used to ensure traceability of sources. However, in the DePIN application environment, the communication and interaction between people and machines, as well as between machines, is a big challenge. To solve this problem, ioTex2.0 builds a DID identity layer.
ioTex mainly uses SSI autonomous identity identification and VCs verifiable credentials to complete an identity registration and verification identification system, building a unique DID identity for all hardware devices participating in DePIN distributed collaboration, and then can trace, verify and incentivize the contributions of hardware device providers based on the data management system.
3) ioConnect unified hardware device abstract SDK solution: Due to the great diversity of DePIN hardware devices, a unified standard is needed to measure the workload of different hardware. Therefore, IoTex2.0 abstracts a unified hardware SDK solution.
For example, different hardware devices and platforms such as ESP32 control chip, Arduino open source electronic prototyping platform, STM32 semiconductor controller, Raspberry PI single-board computer can be directly and uncontroversially linked to the DePIN contribution network through a unified SDK solution.
that's all.
In general, after the upgrade, ioTeX2.0 is to become a unified DePIN network architecture infrastructure. Whether it can succeed is still unknown. Whether the DePIN track can become the main bull market as everyone wishes is still in the making. But letting an old chain that has been working on trusted communications and privacy data solutions for hardware devices for seven years take the lead in doing this is at least worth looking forward to.
