Can there be a fully functional oracle network ecosystem that anonymously collects and validates geospatial (location-specific) data? A blockchain company seems to have caught the gist of the idea. Founded in 2012, XY Labs and its namesake protocol, XYO, which is based on the Ethereum blockchain, aim to reward participants for the genesis, interpretation, analysis, and storage of data that can be called upon for specific problems. There are currently more than 4 million nodes worldwide on the XYO network.
In a recent “ask me anything” (AMA) session with Cointelegraph Markets Pro, Arie Trouw, founder of XY Labs, explained that the heart of the XYO system is a special type of payload called BoundWitnesses. Contains a list of data points entered by the user and signed by one or more nodes of the XYO network. They can be modified to include time, date, and location, and be signed by the nodes as to reflect the accuracy of the embedded data.
“The job of an oracle is to provide an answer with the greatest certainty possible. We use blockchain to memorize these answers and provide transparency in the process of creating the solutions by linking them to the supporting data using immutable hashes.”
To ensure security, BoundWitnesses only shares payload hashes, keeping payloads private. Each node has its own blockchain, and with BoundWitnesses, those blockchains are linked to each other and together provide an imperfect data reflection of reality. Since its inception, more than 77.4 million BoundWitnesses and 244.7 million payloads have been sent to the XYO mainnet.
Together with the company’s COIN mobile app, which rewards users for data collection and production, and the XYO token as a payment channel, a fully functional marketplace is born where users can exchange data for incentives.. There are approximately 12 billion XYO tokens with no fixed supply. Factors like token inflation and burning mechanisms will affect your tokenomic supply.
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