IOST overview

Founded: 2017

Key persons: Jimmy Zhong, Terrence Wang, Justin Li, Ray Xiao, Sa Wang and Kevin Tan

Capitalization: $980 045 233

Trading volume (24h): $165 567 581

CoinMarketCap rank: 97

IOST general project description

IOST — a blockchain platform designed to remove bottlenecks in the use of first-generation blockchains — Bitcoin and Ethereum. The main objective of IOST was to create a faster and cheaper distributed infrastructure, ensuring a high level of security and privacy.

For this purpose, more than 400 nodes have been launched, whose functioning aims to ensure and maintain the stability of the entire network. Blockchain is built on a “Proof of Believability” (PoB) consensus: not only the encryption algorithm matters for transaction validation purpose, but also the number of IOST tokens on the node balance, the length of time the node has been running smoothly and error-free, and the history of transaction validation and verification. In addition to the distributed nature of the network, the developers have made provisions for operating their own smart contracts and decentralized applications.

Current state (ecosystem and partners)

To date, more than 552 000 accounts have been registered in the system, 1100 smart contracts with more than 608 000 000 transactions made. Despite the relatively long launch date (by crypto market standards), the project is continuing to develop strongly. The most significant recent news include the announcement of a collaboration with Polkadot, a partnership with Japanese NFT platform Hashpallete, the new p2e game Zodium, and the launch of an options platform with Knit Finance. By analyzing these partnerships, we can conclude that the team is pursuing the latest trends in crypto consistently, including DeFi derivatives, gaming, and NFT niches.

Plans and development (roadmap)

The project is a combination of a technically strong team supported by the major venture capital funds. By looking at the open GitHub repository, the platform is evolving dynamically following many trends in crypto. Objectives for the Q4 2021 were published in August with the major focus on:

• Improving the blockchain “virtual machine” for faster processing of data from other blockchains
• Improving the performance of plug-in wallets and APIs
• Further search for points of growth from partnerships with new companies from the traditional sector, exploring opportunities in the multi-NFT universe
• DeFi applications development
• Improving the mechanism for rewarding node owners for smooth operation