Iota Tangle: A cryptocurrency to communicate Internet-of-Things data

Abstract

The emergence of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and design limitations of Blockchain systems for some types of applications led to the development of cryptocurrency alternatives for various purposes. Iota is a cryptocurrency with a new architecture called Tangle, which promises high scalability, no fees, and near-instant transfers, focused on the Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions. This paper aims to present a systematic community’s visions of this new technology and to provide minimum background to understand the Iota Tangle and ecosystem generated by this distributed Ledger. The first parts of this article describe the ecosystem behind Iota, theoretical mathematical foundation, and its challenges and solutions for implementation. In the second part, we presented systematic research about Iota Tangle in academic databases: IEEE, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Research Gate. We select the articles those of high impact which can be filtered with the H5-index indicator. This criterion aims to guarantee that the papers analyzed underwent a careful selection process, evaluated by peers. The methodology used helped have a global vision of Iota, including that this innovation is not only understood as a cryptocurrency but can be considered as a “distributed communication protocol”, absence of fees, low latency, and low computational cost for sending transactions. However, there exist several challenges in the vanguard of development of this ledger. It could also be identified that this technology enables many possibilities, however, it is fundamental to understand the potentials and limitations of this ecosystem to generate the best use cases.