[ENG] Hashed People: Peter and Zhuopeng, Co-founders of IoT Chain

Hashed Post had a depth interview with IoT Chain's founders, Peter Lyu Xinhao and Xie Zhuopeng while they were in Korea. We talked about their visions and how they want to use IoT(Internet of Things) with blockchain technology in the future. Peter and Zhuopeng answered all below questions for Hashed Post.

Can you briefly introduce yourself for Hashed Post, including your history?

Hello, I am Peter Lyu, co-founder of IoT Chain. I have been participating in Bitcoin field since 2013 and translated the first Chinese blockchain book 'Mastering Bitcoin'. I have established the blockchain team at Xiaomi to solve the problem of isolated data islands in digital marketing. I have been actively pushing forward the blockchain technology application and development worldwide.

Zhuopeng is the co-founder and CEO of IoT Chain. He has been engaged in smart hardware field for 4 years and has profoundly studied blockchain for 3 years. He has participated in designing smart lighting architecture for several lighting companies at home and abroad. Besides, he has taken part in many designs of smart hardware architecture. 

Peter Lyu Xinhao (left) & Xie Zhuopeng (right), co-founders of IoT Chain

How and why did you start IoT Chain?

We started IoT chain to bring a better environment for IoT industry. As a high-security lite IoT OS, IoT chain aims to implement impenetrable security in our Internet of Things network, to give control of data back to its rightful owner, to provide unparalleled stability and speed for data transfer and promote the development of artificial intelligence through user data.

IoT Chain (ITC) is developed as a lite operating system using the blockchain concept and implementing PBFT, DAG, SPV and CPS technology, allowing data to be layered and stored in a decentralised manner and providing protection with the combined strength of the millions of IoT nodes within the network.

The technology will result in an economy of sharing for Internet of Things (IoT) devices in a decentralized and energy efficient environment while producing a wealth of valuable user data which can be used as fuel for the development of AI with users rewarded for providing this fuel.

Under this network, the interconnection of IoT devices of a home, a business or even a city can truly flourish without worry of transfer congestion, malicious attacks or losing privacy. The implementation and monetization of ITC is not just a concept but has very real applications in the near future.

IoT Chain, a high-security lite IoT OS

Can you describe your team? How many, how many engineers?

We have 11 engineers, mostly from famous Internet companies like Baidu, Xiaomi. We also have some fellows from IoT industries. 

Can you describe business model and token economy of IoT Chain? Who pays and who gets reward for what?

In the IoT Chain ecosystem, ITC will act as the carrier of value transfer and ownership exchanging among intelligent devices in the whole system. ITC claims data should belong to the users. After the smart device is connected through blockchain, users can obtain the right to use the device by paying with tokens. 

At the same time, a huge amount of data generated by the devices can be used for A.I. learning, business decisions making and so on. Those require data need to pay tokens to get the data digest, thusabsolutely protecting the user's privacy.The the data field, those organizations who need to use data to analysis pay the ITC token, and people who provide valuable data get reward.

Why do you think that blockchain is necessary for IoT?

We figure out that there are some pain points in the field of loT, among which security issues tend to attract most people’s attention.

One of the security issues is about the security of the equipment. It would be fatal if my equipment is controlled by someone else. Take camera as an example. Recently I heard some news about a domestic leading company. The cameras it sold automatically open the function of live streaming and gain commercial interests without users’ consent.

Another security issues is about users’ data. Some equipment will produce some meaningful behavioral data. For example, the smart lock will gain the data of when the user comes back home or goes out. It will be horrible if such data is misused. 

In fact, there are still other challenge faced by loT. For instance, we found that the overall Internet of Things has been develop to a reasonable size. If you are an innovative company or start-ups team who aspire to make some progress in smart hardware in such a loT ecosystem, the first challenge for you is to take sides. You have to stand with either JD or Taobao. Or you choose Xiaomi and will be invested by Xiaomi. In the process of taking sides, most of your commercial interests will be deeply influenced by such big groups. 

Actually, in most of the cases, the potential of start-up teams can not be perfectly released. From our perspective, blockchain can not merely solve security problems in a technical level, but can also make the business model of industry more free and open. And blockchain could solve these problems and bring a better environment for IoT players.

What are main differences of Iot Chain from other public blockchains like IOTA?

If you know IOTA well, you would know what I mean.

1. We do think IOTA is a pretty good project . But the architecture of IOTA is centralized. In IoT chain, we think decentralization is the most important part of blockchain. We use PBFT algorithm to achieve decentralization, which is the guarantee of safety in blockchain.

2. Our performance is better. IoT chain is designed to satisfy the performance IoT industry, in which thousands of transactions happen in one second.

3. We are based in China, which is the most developing market for IoT industry. There are hundreds of startups focusing on IoT just in a city like ShenZhen. 

Here's some technical questions. There are other new blockchains like Dfinity, EOS, and etc. What is your take on these? Do you think they can be used for IoT as well?

Currently, we have not found other blockchains which could satisfy the need of IoT. So we decided to develop our own public blockchain. For example, EOS, which use the DPOS algorithm, claims it could reach a very high performance. But we do believe DAG is the best solution to achieve high performance. There also some DAG projects like IOTA or byteball, but there is a serious problem, they are somehow centralized, which will bring safety problem to the whole network. Maybe other solutions could also be used for IoT, but we do think IoT Chian's solution is the most reachable solution.

What do you think about 'Fee model'? IOTA claims that ZERO FEE make IoT business model possible otherwise user always need to take care of deposits for the fee.

If you have no fee, there‘s no way to avoid some attacks, like DDOS attack because anyone could run an attack without any costs. In IoT chain, there will be a fee in a transaction, however, the fee is computed according to the bytes of the transaction takes. So the fee will not be like what happens in bitcoin and ethereum, it is always very cheap and will not rise when there are lots of transactions in the network. 

Can it run Smart contract? If it’s possible what programming language does it support? And why did you choose that language? 

As our development, we have accomplished the DAG part. There are two main work in 2018, that is achieve the decentralization goal with PBFT and improve the performance. We do have a plan to support Smart contract. And we are investigating some solutions to improve the performance of contract execution. In fact, we think the contract execution should be separated from transaction and a layered architecture is wanted. As for the specific language, we have not decided. And you could follow our github and further discuss and plan would be shown there. 

How does it store all the data from IoT devices? Where can it store, if IoT devices don’t really have much storage capacity?

Each IoT device could only restore the data they concern. Not every device need to restore the whole transaction history.

Do you think that data stored in blockchain is going to be valuable even if they are eternal?

Some data, like a gender or birth, is eternal, however they are valuable. Not all data should be on chain. Maybe we could fetch them when needed and to prove it is not changed, we could check the hash which is remained on chain. And there are other solutions which could help release the physical cost.

What do you think about market crash happened recently? 

Regulation from many countries makes it. And I think the crash is temporary.

What do you think of Chinese regulation?

All the real blockchain project are worldwidely. Each country has its own regulatory approach. The biggest controversy is the property of the token. And many projects are not qualified, some projects are not suitable for blockchain. So proper regulation is necessary.

In the long run, the government will certainly relax its supervision and embrace new technologies, just like the development of Internet in China.



Do you think Korea is important market? If yes, why?

Sure, we believe the most exciting part of a blockchain project is that, you could develop your business worldwidely and you could reach everyone in the world who show interest in your project. Korea is a country where blockchain develops rapidly and very well. People here know the great value blockchain could take in. So we think Korea is a very important market and we are honored to develop our market here with the help of Hashed!

Do you have partnerships you want to introduce?

Our CEO Zhuopeng has a lot resources in IoT industries and we could help many companies to bring their business into blockchain. You could find the partnership relations in our website (Link).

THANK YOU!

by. #Hashed Post.

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