The IOTA Foundation has achieved a significant milestone by successfully completing the European Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) program. This project, funded by the European Commission, aimed to develop innovative solutions using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) and its future iteration, EUROPEUM-EDIC.
Building on IOTA’s Tangle Technology
The IOTA solution leverages the IOTA Tangle, a unique DLT protocol known for its feeless transactions and scalability. This PCP journey began in 2020, with IOTA being selected as one of seven projects from over 30 applicants. Partnering with organizations like Digimarc and Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya, IOTA focused on building prototypes for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Management and Digital Product Passports (DPPs).
Key Innovations Demonstrated
The project served as a valuable platform for IOTA to showcase its technological advancements in several areas:
- Scalability: IOTA successfully demonstrated the Tangle’s ability to handle large transaction volumes under diverse conditions. This included a test environment simulating 30 EU member states, each with a Decentralized Coordinator node, resulting in a network of roughly 100 nodes across different geographical regions. Furthermore, the Tangle Tree sharding concept, where the Tangle is divided into smaller branches, showed potential for exponential scalability, reaching approximately 90,000 confirmed transactions per second.
- Sustainability: IOTA developed a novel methodology to assess energy consumption within the Tangle network. This analysis revealed that energy usage scales logarithmically with transaction volume, significantly slower than linear growth. Additionally, IOTA demonstrated a single Stardust Tangle instance consuming less energy compared to other solutions like Hyperledger Besu used by EBSI. This efficiency is achieved by deploying more nodes that process only specific portions of the Tangle Tree, reducing the load on individual nodes and enabling the use of low-powered, renewable energy sources.
- Security and Privacy: IOTA prioritized security and privacy by aligning with recommendations from leading organizations like CISA, NSA, and NIST. A Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic roadmap was developed, with prototypes utilizing CRYSTALS-Dilithium signatures for post-quantum cryptography. Cybersecurity assessments were conducted, ensuring compliance with NIST-800 standards and data protection regulations.
- Object Identification and Data Processing: The IOTA solution utilizes an auditable item graph to track objects and their historical data. This graph consists of digital twins linked to the Tangle ledger, allowing for verifiable information about physical or digital objects. It also integrates with existing data standards like schema.org and GS1 Web Vocabulary, enhancing interoperability with external systems.
Beyond EBSI: Looking to the Future
With the PCP completed, IOTA remains committed to further developing its solutions. An IOTA-EBSI Sandbox has been established to refine the pilot use cases, providing a platform for EU member states and EBSI projects to experiment and explore their functionalities. Additionally, IOTA aims to partner with EUROPEUM-EDIC, the successor to EBSI, and contribute its PCP results, including the DPP and IPR Management prototypes, to strengthen the European blockchain ecosystem.
Commercialization Efforts Underway
IOTA is actively pursuing commercial adoption of its solutions. Discussions are underway with partners, governments, and governmental agencies to translate PCP use cases into commercially viable products. This follows the recent announcement of the Eviden Digital Passport Solution, which employs IOTA technology to track the lifecycle of automotive batteries, marking the first market-ready DPP solution built on IOTA.
The successful completion of the European Blockchain PCP program signifies IOTA’s significant contribution towards a robust and sustainable blockchain future for Europe. This initiative aligns with IOTA’s goals of fostering innovation and advancing Europe’s digital infrastructure.
