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Due to the growing use of location based technologies, privacy and safely of the users largely depends upon the accuracy and validity of the information related to the location. Attempts have been made in the past to eliminate the need of centralized entities that control the flow of data related to location. However, all these attempts relied on the integrity of the devices collecting this data. XY Oracle Network or XYO Network offers a trustless and cryptographic location network that makes use of a novel formulation which is based on a chain of zero-knowledge proofs. This allows for a high degree of certainty about the information related to the location. XYO facilitates layered, location verification across multiple protocols and device classes. At its core sits a set of novel mechanism of cryptography, known as Proof of Origin & Bound Witness. It combines the power of blockchain technology and real world data collection into a system for direct applications.
Historical Background:
The concept of provable location has been around for long that can be traced to ground-based radio navigation systems like LORAN. These days, we have location services that stack multiple mediums of verification on top of one another. This is done to have a Proof of Location using GPS and triangularization services. However, these approaches can’t detect fraudulent signals and also disincentivize the spoofing of location data. In such a scenario, the crypto location platform that focuses on proving the origin of physical location system is going to be the most significant one.
Shortcomings of Proof of Location:
The Proof of Location leverages the powerful properties of blockchain, such as time stamping and decentralization. It combines these powerful properties with off-chain, location aware devices that are expected to be resistant to spoofing. Weakness of the smart contracts is that they center around the oracle using single source of truth, and the same problem is faced by crypto-location systems. The vulnerability of the crypto-location technologies is dependent on the off-chain devices that report back the position of an object. Off-chain data source is an Oracle in a smart contract.
How XYO Network is Unique:
The case with XYO Network is quite different. In this ecosystem, the off-chain data source moves around in the real world as a specialized type of Oracle , which they call as Sentinel. The core innovation of the network centers around an anonymous, location-based proof to create a protocol that is based on crypto-location and is trustless too.
XYO Network aims to create a decentralized and trustless system of location oracles which is not only resistant to attacks but also provides highest possible certainty when queried for the available data. The platform developers achieved this by implementing a set of abstractions that greatly reduce the risk of location spoofing. For this, they make use of zero-knowledge proofs along the components of the system. The system makes use of a protocol of connected devices to provide high certainty on the location data. The users can issue transactions or “queries” to get the location data on a blockchain compatible platform.
XYO Network Brief Analysis:
With the wider adoption of smart contracts that are trustless and based on blockchain (similar to other ICO tokens such as ORIGAMI NETWORK, Lympo, Current , Cryptomon Token, Onyx, JOYSO), the significance of Oracle services has increased a lot as they arbitrate the outcome of a contract. Most of the currently used implementations of smart contracts depend on a set of authoritative oracles for the settlement of the outcome of the contract. This is sufficient in the cases when both the stake holders agree on the incorruptibility and authority of the particular oracle . However, there are numerous cases when the appropriate oracle simply does not exist or is not regarded as authoritative as there is always the possibility of it getting corrupted or encountering an error. Location oracles are very much the part of this category.
Problems Faced in Location Accuracy and Data Integrity:
The divination of the location of a physical world item depends on multiple factors, like relay, reporting, storage and processing components of an oracle . All these components are not free of error and can be corrupted. There are additional risks of data pollution, manipulation, collusion and data loss. This causes the problem of accuracy and certainty of location which are adversely affected due to the lack of a decentralized and trustless oracle . Platforms like Ethereum and EOS have extensively been used as they allow for secure online interactions. The primary use cases of these platforms include fundraising escrows in the form of Initial Coin Offering. The problem with these platforms is that they give focus to the online world, not on the physical one. The reason for this is that the current information channels of the physical world involve the use of data whose integrity is corruptible.
Solutions Offered by XYO:
XYO Network is working to allow the developers, like those writing smart contracts for blockchain platforms, to interact with the physical world like the way it were an API . It is the first of its kind protocol in the world that allows two entities to transact in the real world without the involvement of a centralized third party entity. The abstractions of the platform make the verification of location trustless. This has allowed for novel use cases with the protocol, which was not possible earlier.
The network will be built over 1,000,000 devices circulating in the world. Bluetooth and GPS devices of the company allow the people to place physical tracking beacons on the things they want to keep track of. These things could include luggage, expensive items, automobiles and even pets! They can always locate these objects on their smart phone application. Currently, XYO boasts of the largest consumer Bluetooth and GPS network in the world.
XYO Token Economy:
XYO tokens are used to incentivize the desired behavior by providing accurate and reliable location heuristics. The tokens can be thought of as “gas” needed for interfacing with the real world to verify the XY-coordinate of a specified object. One can set a desired confidence level and XYO gas price during the creation of query. The cost of query, which is to be charged in XYO tokens depends upon the market dynamics as well as the amount of data required to provide an answer. More the data needed, the more expensive the query will be and higher will be the XYO gas price.
In case the data provided by a Sentinel device such as Bluetooth Beacon is used to answer a query, then all the four components viz. the Diviner who searched for the answer, the Achiever who stored the data, the Bridge who was responsible for transmitting the data and Sentinel who recorded the location of the data, receive a portion of the XYO gas paid by the token holder. The distribution of the gas between the three components is always in the same proportion, with the exception of the fourth component Diviners whose involvement in providing the answer is more extensive. However, gas is evenly distributed within each component.
Innovations in Incentivizing the Use of Tokens:
A system in which the use of tokens is not incentivized creates problems for the underlying economy in the long term. Such an ecosystem triggers a natural impulse to find the reasons for not using the token, and the utility and liquidity of the token is not boosted.
The problem faced by most of the crypto economic incentives is that they keep too strong focus on the token miners, with no focus on the users of tokens. XYO token takes account of the both – token miners and token users. It incentivizes the miner to not only provide accurate data, but also to know to not provide the data at all. On the other hand, the end-user is incentivized to transact more when network liquidity is low, not when it is high. This way, XYO ecosystem remains well-balanced, robust and fluid.
Team:
Arie Trouw – Founder and Architect
He is an accomplished serial entrepreneur with a rich history of technological breakthroughs and business successes
Scott Schepher – Co-founder and Head of Marketing
He has worked on many exciting ventures with talented group of people.
Markus Levin – Co-founder and Head of Operations
He has 15 years of experience in managing and growing some companies around the world.
William Long – Head of Hardware
He has over 25 years of experience in engineering management and the development of electrical engineering.
Christine Sako – Head of Analytics
She has an extensive background in mathematics and has worked in upper management for five years.
Roadmap: xyo.network/roadmap/
XYO Network has four primary components.
I. Sentinels or the data gatherers
II. Bridges or the data relayers
III . Archivists or the data stores, and
IV. Diviners or the answer aggregators.
Sentinels gather information about the location through multiple means like sensors and radios. Bridges collect this data from Sentinels and provide it to the Archivists who store the data for analysis by the Diviners. The Diviners analyze the location heuristics to generate answers to queries and relay the answer back into a smart contract. The accuracy score or the Origin Chain Score is determined through Proofs of Origin Chain, which are essentially a set of zero knowledge proofs. The chain guarantees multiple pieces of data which is originated from the same source, all the while not revealing any underlying information. Each component of the query generates its own Proof of Origin which is chained to each component it relays data to. The Proof of Origin is a novel formulation in the sense that it builds a chain of cryptographic guarantees along a path of relays in the network. This is done to achieve high confidence of real world data. The Proof of Origin Chain encapsulates the confidence a user can have about the location data. This can be tracked to the very first device that gathered the data.
In order to establish a decentralized consensus mechanism among the Diviners, the network relies on an immutable blockchain, known as XYOMainChain. This public blockchain stores query transactions and also the data gathered from the Diviners.
XYO Network: Taking the Blockchain to the Real World
XYO Network solves the problem of storing and verifying locations, making a physical-world usage for the blockchain.
XYO Network aims to bring the blockchain to the physical universe, tying it to the problem of location data. In one of the first attempts to tokenize location, XYO Network will launch a decentralized location-verification oracle network, or a system to provide relevant data to smart contracts. Oracles are key in the blockchain ecosystem, providing data so that smart contracts function correctly.
The XYO Network would allow for transactions that depend on time or location of delivery, thus making a clear-cut use case for all forms of deliveries.
The project's team stresses that at the moment, most blockchain systems only rely on information from the virtual world, and there are almost no attempts to build a system of oracles for the physical world. Location data is readily available to build such a system.
"To achieve this goal, XYO has created a successful location-based consumer product business with the purpose of getting Bluetooth and GPS tracking beacons out into the world. In doing so XYO has cultivated significant research surrounding location-focused blockchain technology, allowing it to expand to the offline world," explained the project team.
After the physical network of beacons is deployed, the potential for the product is to expand to multiple industries. Those may include e-commerce, medical care and hospitals, rental car agencies, commercial airline luggage logistics, insurance agencies, national security agencies, drone and package delivery systems.
"The XYO Network’s ability to combine its location innovations with blockchain developments has led to one of the most exciting ideas in blockchain today," says XYO Network Founder Arie Trouw.
The XYO Network project has been in development since 2012, providing workable solutions for geo-location. The upcoming ICO will further expand the potential of those technologies by tying up payments and physical locations. The network will also store and analyze location data for increased security and usability.
For the purpose of powering the network, the XYO Token would be used to pay when communicating with the physically deployed electronics in the geo-location ecosystem.
CALL TO ACTION: XYO was on the start of a nice run before the market pullback took over this week. This is a nice entry point for us, but beware, prices may keep dropping. Best to scale in to any positions.
Stay ahead of the masses,
Seth Maniscalco
Due to the growing use of location based technologies, privacy and safely of the users largely depends upon the accuracy and validity of the information related to the location. Attempts have been made in the past to eliminate the need of centralized entities that control the flow of data related to location. However, all these attempts relied on the integrity of the devices collecting this data. XY Oracle Network or XYO Network offers a trustless and cryptographic location network that makes use of a novel formulation which is based on a chain of zero-knowledge proofs. This allows for a high degree of certainty about the information related to the location. XYO facilitates layered, location verification across multiple protocols and device classes. At its core sits a set of novel mechanism of cryptography, known as Proof of Origin & Bound Witness. It combines the power of blockchain technology and real world data collection into a system for direct applications.
Historical Background:
The concept of provable location has been around for long that can be traced to ground-based radio navigation systems like LORAN. These days, we have location services that stack multiple mediums of verification on top of one another. This is done to have a Proof of Location using GPS and triangularization services. However, these approaches can’t detect fraudulent signals and also disincentivize the spoofing of location data. In such a scenario, the crypto location platform that focuses on proving the origin of physical location system is going to be the most significant one.
Shortcomings of Proof of Location:
The Proof of Location leverages the powerful properties of blockchain, such as time stamping and decentralization. It combines these powerful properties with off-chain, location aware devices that are expected to be resistant to spoofing. Weakness of the smart contracts is that they center around the oracle using single source of truth, and the same problem is faced by crypto-location systems. The vulnerability of the crypto-location technologies is dependent on the off-chain devices that report back the position of an object. Off-chain data source is an Oracle in a smart contract.
How XYO Network is Unique:
The case with XYO Network is quite different. In this ecosystem, the off-chain data source moves around in the real world as a specialized type of Oracle , which they call as Sentinel. The core innovation of the network centers around an anonymous, location-based proof to create a protocol that is based on crypto-location and is trustless too.
XYO Network aims to create a decentralized and trustless system of location oracles which is not only resistant to attacks but also provides highest possible certainty when queried for the available data. The platform developers achieved this by implementing a set of abstractions that greatly reduce the risk of location spoofing. For this, they make use of zero-knowledge proofs along the components of the system. The system makes use of a protocol of connected devices to provide high certainty on the location data. The users can issue transactions or “queries” to get the location data on a blockchain compatible platform.
XYO Network Brief Analysis:
With the wider adoption of smart contracts that are trustless and based on blockchain (similar to other ICO tokens such as ORIGAMI NETWORK, Lympo, Current , Cryptomon Token, Onyx, JOYSO), the significance of Oracle services has increased a lot as they arbitrate the outcome of a contract. Most of the currently used implementations of smart contracts depend on a set of authoritative oracles for the settlement of the outcome of the contract. This is sufficient in the cases when both the stake holders agree on the incorruptibility and authority of the particular oracle . However, there are numerous cases when the appropriate oracle simply does not exist or is not regarded as authoritative as there is always the possibility of it getting corrupted or encountering an error. Location oracles are very much the part of this category.
Problems Faced in Location Accuracy and Data Integrity:
The divination of the location of a physical world item depends on multiple factors, like relay, reporting, storage and processing components of an oracle . All these components are not free of error and can be corrupted. There are additional risks of data pollution, manipulation, collusion and data loss. This causes the problem of accuracy and certainty of location which are adversely affected due to the lack of a decentralized and trustless oracle . Platforms like Ethereum and EOS have extensively been used as they allow for secure online interactions. The primary use cases of these platforms include fundraising escrows in the form of Initial Coin Offering. The problem with these platforms is that they give focus to the online world, not on the physical one. The reason for this is that the current information channels of the physical world involve the use of data whose integrity is corruptible.
Solutions Offered by XYO:
XYO Network is working to allow the developers, like those writing smart contracts for blockchain platforms, to interact with the physical world like the way it were an API . It is the first of its kind protocol in the world that allows two entities to transact in the real world without the involvement of a centralized third party entity. The abstractions of the platform make the verification of location trustless. This has allowed for novel use cases with the protocol, which was not possible earlier.
The network will be built over 1,000,000 devices circulating in the world. Bluetooth and GPS devices of the company allow the people to place physical tracking beacons on the things they want to keep track of. These things could include luggage, expensive items, automobiles and even pets! They can always locate these objects on their smart phone application. Currently, XYO boasts of the largest consumer Bluetooth and GPS network in the world.
XYO Token Economy:
XYO tokens are used to incentivize the desired behavior by providing accurate and reliable location heuristics. The tokens can be thought of as “gas” needed for interfacing with the real world to verify the XY-coordinate of a specified object. One can set a desired confidence level and XYO gas price during the creation of query. The cost of query, which is to be charged in XYO tokens depends upon the market dynamics as well as the amount of data required to provide an answer. More the data needed, the more expensive the query will be and higher will be the XYO gas price.
In case the data provided by a Sentinel device such as Bluetooth Beacon is used to answer a query, then all the four components viz. the Diviner who searched for the answer, the Achiever who stored the data, the Bridge who was responsible for transmitting the data and Sentinel who recorded the location of the data, receive a portion of the XYO gas paid by the token holder. The distribution of the gas between the three components is always in the same proportion, with the exception of the fourth component Diviners whose involvement in providing the answer is more extensive. However, gas is evenly distributed within each component.
Innovations in Incentivizing the Use of Tokens:
A system in which the use of tokens is not incentivized creates problems for the underlying economy in the long term. Such an ecosystem triggers a natural impulse to find the reasons for not using the token, and the utility and liquidity of the token is not boosted.
The problem faced by most of the crypto economic incentives is that they keep too strong focus on the token miners, with no focus on the users of tokens. XYO token takes account of the both – token miners and token users. It incentivizes the miner to not only provide accurate data, but also to know to not provide the data at all. On the other hand, the end-user is incentivized to transact more when network liquidity is low, not when it is high. This way, XYO ecosystem remains well-balanced, robust and fluid.
Team:
Arie Trouw – Founder and Architect
He is an accomplished serial entrepreneur with a rich history of technological breakthroughs and business successes
Scott Schepher – Co-founder and Head of Marketing
He has worked on many exciting ventures with talented group of people.
Markus Levin – Co-founder and Head of Operations
He has 15 years of experience in managing and growing some companies around the world.
William Long – Head of Hardware
He has over 25 years of experience in engineering management and the development of electrical engineering.
Christine Sako – Head of Analytics
She has an extensive background in mathematics and has worked in upper management for five years.
Roadmap: xyo.network/roadmap/
XYO Network has four primary components.
I. Sentinels or the data gatherers
II. Bridges or the data relayers
III . Archivists or the data stores, and
IV. Diviners or the answer aggregators.
Sentinels gather information about the location through multiple means like sensors and radios. Bridges collect this data from Sentinels and provide it to the Archivists who store the data for analysis by the Diviners. The Diviners analyze the location heuristics to generate answers to queries and relay the answer back into a smart contract. The accuracy score or the Origin Chain Score is determined through Proofs of Origin Chain, which are essentially a set of zero knowledge proofs. The chain guarantees multiple pieces of data which is originated from the same source, all the while not revealing any underlying information. Each component of the query generates its own Proof of Origin which is chained to each component it relays data to. The Proof of Origin is a novel formulation in the sense that it builds a chain of cryptographic guarantees along a path of relays in the network. This is done to achieve high confidence of real world data. The Proof of Origin Chain encapsulates the confidence a user can have about the location data. This can be tracked to the very first device that gathered the data.
In order to establish a decentralized consensus mechanism among the Diviners, the network relies on an immutable blockchain, known as XYOMainChain. This public blockchain stores query transactions and also the data gathered from the Diviners.
XYO Network: Taking the Blockchain to the Real World
XYO Network solves the problem of storing and verifying locations, making a physical-world usage for the blockchain.
XYO Network aims to bring the blockchain to the physical universe, tying it to the problem of location data. In one of the first attempts to tokenize location, XYO Network will launch a decentralized location-verification oracle network, or a system to provide relevant data to smart contracts. Oracles are key in the blockchain ecosystem, providing data so that smart contracts function correctly.
The XYO Network would allow for transactions that depend on time or location of delivery, thus making a clear-cut use case for all forms of deliveries.
The project's team stresses that at the moment, most blockchain systems only rely on information from the virtual world, and there are almost no attempts to build a system of oracles for the physical world. Location data is readily available to build such a system.
"To achieve this goal, XYO has created a successful location-based consumer product business with the purpose of getting Bluetooth and GPS tracking beacons out into the world. In doing so XYO has cultivated significant research surrounding location-focused blockchain technology, allowing it to expand to the offline world," explained the project team.
After the physical network of beacons is deployed, the potential for the product is to expand to multiple industries. Those may include e-commerce, medical care and hospitals, rental car agencies, commercial airline luggage logistics, insurance agencies, national security agencies, drone and package delivery systems.
"The XYO Network’s ability to combine its location innovations with blockchain developments has led to one of the most exciting ideas in blockchain today," says XYO Network Founder Arie Trouw.
The XYO Network project has been in development since 2012, providing workable solutions for geo-location. The upcoming ICO will further expand the potential of those technologies by tying up payments and physical locations. The network will also store and analyze location data for increased security and usability.
For the purpose of powering the network, the XYO Token would be used to pay when communicating with the physically deployed electronics in the geo-location ecosystem.
CALL TO ACTION: XYO was on the start of a nice run before the market pullback took over this week. This is a nice entry point for us, but beware, prices may keep dropping. Best to scale in to any positions.
Stay ahead of the masses,
Seth Maniscalco
