INT: An economy driven solution to improve the device interconnection of the Internet of Things

This is based on the INT white paper version 2 released in April 2018

INT’s whitepaper is fairly high level and technical and relies on the reader to have an understanding of the technology in order to realize the implications of their proposed IoT solution. I thought it would therefore be a good idea to break it down for the rest of us that aren’t going to spend hours researching what everything means.

This is article is not in the same order as the white paper but rearranged into a flow that makes most sense to me.

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Blockchain technology has proved its value in finance and other fields, but we believe its best usage is in the field of IoT… At present, there are several issues with current development of IoT…

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There are some shortcomings in how implementing blockchain in the IoT field has been approached by other projects, namely the software made without thought of the hardware it is to incorporate which drives the hardware manufacturers to conform to the designs of the software. INT has taken the approach of hardware designed software. Allowing existing devices and the direction of the IoT ecosystem as it currently is to define the basis of the network while also marrying into it the needs of the future IoT ecosystem.

INT realizes that in order to actually be successful in the field of IoT, some solutions to the following issues have to be established.

Lack of standard with device hardware, communication protocol, data sharing and storage. If there is no standard language and standard storage of data, no cross communication or data usage will be possible. This also creates centralization as data is hosted on manufacturers servers.

Inefficiency in how IoT devices interact with the network. In current IoT devices, connection and authentication is done through cloud systems. This framework is slow, resource intensive and will not scale to future IoT device needs.

Cost of this model with cloud servers for data, large centralized servers for computing and the network devices is high. With the potential for tens of billions of devices, this model is very expensive.

Security of centralized systems offer single point of failure for large amounts of data with any security issue effecting the whole network.

Privacy protection is trusted in the hands of the centralized systems. These devices will be potentially transmitting all of our private information and we should therefore require rigorous privacy standards.

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INT uses this as the main points from which they look to build an IoT network. From that they define further what qualities would enable the above and create a future proof IoT network.

There will be a tremendous amount of devices connected to this network, from your light bulbs to your refrigerator to your car, all autonomously transacting together in an ever growing network in concert, creating an intelligent, seamless world of data transmission. The network must be able to support a myriad of uses and applications. Devices need to be able to interact with data, each other and other networks. The security of the network must be decentralized, resistant to malicious intent, and enable scaling. And ultimately, it must be easy for manufacturers and developers to make devices for the network.

In short, the network’s foundation must support:

• Scalability — How does it globally scale?

• Applicability — Does it have data transfer ability, fast, cheap transactions, smart contracts, privacy?

• Interoperability — Can it communicate with the outside world, other blockchains?

• Consensus — Will it gain consensus in a way that supports scalability and applicability?

• Developability — Will it be easy for manufactures to develop devices and interact with the network?

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In this structure, the uses and devices, both currently existing and whats in the foreseeable future, are the foundation points which define the network requirements. Ultimately success in this space will not be had unless you work with manufacturers to standardize and find requirements and then build a network to support it.

1. System Architecture

INT will employ a heterogeneous multi-chain framework which has a main, “Thearchy” chain that will serve as the anchor point, linking together many subchains and relaying information between them.

Each subchain will have a specific function whether it is a network of a specific device type, a state-less data storage chain, a smart contract based subchain, a subchain with fast and free transactions, one with private transactions or some other specific use. These will all be able to communicate with each other via the Thearchy chain, creating a network of subchains, a blockchain of blockchains.

Subchains can also be added to the network with the simple addition of nodes to support it without any need for hard forking or expensive network updates. Each subchain will have the ability to define it’s own needs and features, without forcing it’s constraints on the whole network. This ease of subchain addition allows infinite scaling with minimal network load.

This framework allows other networks to be added to the network with relative ease, whether it is an existing blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, or other networks like data servers or the greater Internet with the addition of relay nodes or an oracle of sorts.

Because these subchains run parallel to the Thearchy chain, issues within that network, like transaction congestion, are segregated to that subchain without effecting the whole network.

The Thearchy chain will inherently have very little functionality. It will primarily exist as block generator and relayer for subchains and chain to chain communication.

Nodes

There will be three tiers of nodes in the network, the Thearchy (main chain) nodes, the Supernodes (it is unclear at this time if the Thearchy (meta) nodes and the Supernodes will be combined in function) and the lower subchain nodes, with each subchain node only managing it’s chain’s transaction verification. All greater verification, large scale consensus and chain to chain communication will be handled through the Supernode and Thearchy node levels.

Each Supernode in the network will therefore maintain a table with software services and specifications on how to interact with each given subnetwork while operating as an abstraction layer to the hardware beneath it. This will allow devices and nodes outside of that subchain to interact with devices or services within that subchain without having to be programmed to do so for every chain or device type. The translators for the devices within that subchain, so to speak.

This node to node communication can be the requesting of computational power, network or device data, executing a transaction or smart contract on that chain or other service in return for payment. Like an node to node trading market.

Nodes may be traditional server style nodes with high computational ability or STM32 type devices like Raspberry Pi or Arduino for simple transaction handling. The main server nodes may be used for fog computing or machine learning as well as verifying transactions and coordinating cross-chain transactions.

Consensus

The consensus mechanism must be able to handle a large amount of transactional volume from a wide variety of different transaction types and must therefore not be subject to the same failing points as current consensus structures.

To solve this, INT will use a two-tiered DPoS structure as the core of their new Double Chain Consensus Algorithm. This will separate the validation of transactions on the subchain level, from the computational load of block generation and pass the data to the Thearchy chain for block creation. This allows the subchains to be free of timed block creation enabling free-flowing transactional throughput.

As subchains collect and verify transactions, using a lighter, quicker DPoS, they are passed up to the supernodes which then further verify using a more rigorous DPoS within the Supernode pool. Once the block has been hashed, it is added to the Thearchy chain and broadcasted down to the subchain that it pertains to.

Supernodes in the block producers pool will be voted upon in a mass election by the users by staking your coins as a vote of trust. The Supernode selected to create a given block will be chosen at random from the pool and rewarded for the work done. (Yet to be confirmed: As is usual in these master/supernode frameworks, in order to encourage participation in the network and in voting, users who vote are rewarded part of the node reward proportional to the amount of coins staked. This means that there will be a block reward for anyone that holds coins and votes or maintains a node. Current Supernode staking requirements and reward structure are not known.)

It is from here that Supernodes will pass cross-chain transactions to other Supernodes.

By this design, the Thearchy chain will be a blockchain with each block pertaining to a certain subchain. Subchain transactions will not mix within blocks. Each block header will have an identifier specifying which subchain it belongs to. This will allow the nodes of the subchain to quickly pull transaction history from the Thearchy chain without the need to store the entire blockchain. This greatly reduces the storage capacity needed to be a node, therefore opening up the ability for smaller IoT devices to become validator nodes within the network.

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2. Token Economy and The Monetization of Resources

Token Economy

INT will be a two tier token structure (like Neo) with the INT token operating as a share of the INT network. INT will not be used in the settlement of the IoT network as the settlement of transactions or operations need to have a stable value measurement system to evaluate cost for given functions. INT will therefore use a gas system much like Ethereum which establishes gas costs for a given function and any gas paid above that is given as extra fee/reward for mining (used as a transaction priority fee). These functions will be divided into the following groups:

• Price tag type — pay market price for resource
• Metering type — pay according to amount of time, data or some other measure
• Competitive bidding type — bid for resource usage, priced by demand
• Cost per purchase — pay based on end use of resource

This will be further broken down within those sections as there will be complexities to the smart contracts involved in executing these transactions.

Work Reporting

We can not add functionality to existing devices but we can build a network that supports and encourages the sharing of data, devices and resources.

Given the consensus structure no ordinary validator nodes or IoT devices would have the ability to generate blocks and therefore would have no economic incentive to participate. To encourage the sharing of data and IoT device node participation in the network, INT creates a wage paying calculation that is separate from the traditional bookkeeping rewards. Through this work reporting structure, IoT devices can earn a “wage” by providing data and functions to the network.

This will be done in a specific transaction type where the IoT devices pack the details of the work done into a periodic report sent to the Thearchy nodes. Within a specific time period, all IoT devices in the network would report the work done. This will be inputted into a salary calculation algorithm and output a payment based on work done to each device in the network. The algorithm will be iteratively optimized by machine learning trends to battle data counterfeiting.

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3. Smart Contracts

Each subchain has the ability to design the requirements of the subnetwork from basic block time variable to more complex smart contract execution. Employing a turing complete, virtual machine based smart contract system like Ethereum would be resource intensive and limit the usability of IoT devices within that network. INT therefore created their own smart contract architecture called INT Contract.

Based on the well-known and lightweight language, JavaScript, these smart contracts will not be resource intensive allowing them to be executed directly on the operating systems of the IoT devices making them more applicable to the real-time needs of the ecosystem.

Also, being based in JavaScript, the learning and development costs associated with engineering these smart contracts will be much lower than that of a more customized language.

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4. Privacy

In order to protect user privacy they will employ their own Behavior Private Key (BPK) algorithm which is based on Zero-knowledge proofs. These allow you to prove something to a verifier (node) without telling the verifier anything about what you are proving. This will allow you or the node to share data or pass a transaction without revealing who you are or where the data comes from. This BPK system will also use unsupervised learning, strategy modeling and clustering behavior analysis to better disguise users by grouping together data and requests similar to the ring signature system used by Monero.

This BPK system will add to total security by preventing the ability of other users or bad actors to control or organize attack on a specific user, device or group of devices.

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5. Real World Data and Interoperability

Oracle

Having an IoT ecosystem without the ability to use or interact with real world data outside the network greatly cripples the capabilities of the network. It is easy to imagine scenarios where smart contracts require outside data to complete all conditions of the contract or IoT devices being used to update outside websites like weather or traffic. This requires the use of an automated tool to act as a reliable data transmitter between the Internet and the INT network for use in smart contracts. This Oracle will need to be decentralized and not dependent on human interaction while being able to combat counterfeiting of data.

The INT shell will develop tools similar to an Oracle that will allow smart contract modules to query software or hardware for data outside of the INT network.

Interoperability

Interoperability defines the ability of each subchain network to interact with another subchain networks. Within the INT network, subchains may define their own assets/tokens for use within that subnetwork. These could be a value exchange token like Bitcoin or Zcash or an ownership token that would apply to assets/devices within that subchain network. There maybe a scenario where you want to sell your data within one subchain and be paid on another via a private and anonymous currency, or maybe a smart contract that relies on data from several other subchains.

INT’s cross-chain interoperability protocol will be defined in two parts: Cross-Chain Asset Exchange protocol and Cross-Chain Distributed Transaction protocol.

• Cross-Chain Asset Exchange: Similar to what many call “Atomic Swaps”, Cross-Chain Asset Exchange will enable a transaction on one chain to facilitate a transaction on another. This may be a simple IoT device reading triggering another device on another subchain, a trade from one token to another (i.e. Bitcoin for Zcash), data on one chain for token on another (i.e. selling data on one chain for payment on another), transferring asset ownership for payment, or any transaction between 2 subchains. These transactions can be made between subchains within the INT network or by a subchain to outside network (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, etc.) by the use of the INT relay nodes.

• Cross-Chain Distributed Transaction protocol: This is the use of multiple subchains contributing to steps in a smart contract. This is an extension of the Asset Exchange protocol where a simple transaction is replaced with a smart contract that requires input from several other subchains in order to execute. This is what will enable larger scale IoT driven action in real world scenarios for example, your car GPS signaling that it is heading home, temperature sensors at your house triggering your heater to turn on to your desired temperature given the weather and to turn on the tea kettle so the water will be ready by the time you get home. These cross-chain smart contracts will get more complex as the network and subchain diversity grows, eventually becoming the smart contract web of DAPPs which the IoT ecosystem is suspended upon.

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6. Communication Protocol

The INT P2P architecture will use DHT to organize network nodes and will utilize both TCP/IP and UDP/IP as the basis of their communication protocols. This will allow IoT devices to be able to seamlessly integrate with the INT network, even in highly mobile or bad connection environments.

DHT networks are decentralized networks of distributed hash tables. These are used as lookup tables for key pairs so that nodes can efficiently retrieve values associated with a given key. This can be used to maintain a list of node addresses and public keys (Thearchy nodes, supernodes), IoT devices and their associated keys as well as distributed file systems and peer to peer information sharing. This will be the keystone of the node network and IoT device information transfer.

TCP/IP and UDP/IP are both protocols used for sending data packets through the internet. TCP is the most commonly used protocol on the internet and is about data transmission reliability. It relies on a system of handshakes and error checking at the expense of complexity and time intensive checks on connection and data validity. This is very useful in many cases but causes issues when operating with highly mobile devices connecting to the network (phones, vehicles) and devices in bad connection environments.

UDP is a much more lightweight protocol, using the same data packet but throwing out all the error checking and back and forth communication out in favor of a simple, one time data bullet heading for the node. There is no check to see if it is listening or if it received it. It the node misses it, the device won’t resend it, it will just send the next packet and so on. This is best for things like live broadcasting and high volume (multiple transactions per minute) data readings where missed information isn’t a large impact.

The integration of both these protocols will allow all devices to communicate with the network and seamlessly switch between the protocols which best suits the purpose at the time.

In one of the latest weekly updates they also hinted at mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). MANET is a continuously self-configuring, infrastructure-less, network of mobile devices connected wirelessly. This is much more complex than the above networks where each device has a defined path to route data. In a MANET, each device must forward traffic unrelated to it’s own use and, therefore, act like a router for the devices that are connected to it. These networks may operate by themselves or be connected to the internet. They don’t specify their intentions with this area of development but it has some interesting applications in nullifying the impact of devices moving in and out of network connection by being connected to one another and storing the data of their peers or by creating a node network to allow nodes to distribute traffic automatically and other more complex networks of sensors that begin to act like an artificial intelligence.

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7. DAPPs

With the growth of IoT devices at geometrical progression as well as the improvement in the level of intelligence of machines, there will be an increasing number of automatically running IoT DAPPs to be installed on smart devices and real-time, credible automatic data exchange and automatic transaction will be implemented between machines and between human and machine via the distributed IoT DAPPs.

INT DAPPs will essentially be standardized collections of Cross-Chain smart contracts set up to do specific functions. These DAPPs can be created by manufacturers to facilitate more complex cause-effect IoT actions without the need for human interaction or centralized processing. These may also utilize the node network as a computation network lending to data processing and intelligent decision making based on real-time IoT data. These DAPPs will grow to have endless ability as the network grows and more IoT devices are on the network.