![]() The IOTA Foundation has put together quite an amazing visualization that you can use to better understand the random walk. Let’s start with the random walk (again, the more precise term is “uniform random tip selection”, but we’re just going to refer to it as “random walk” in this post for brevity). I’m going to go ahead and spoil the surprise: neither of these tip selection methods is used in IOTA however, without understanding their underlying principles and the why behind their ineffectiveness, we can’t fully appreciate the weighted random walk used by the network. We could choose any number of methodologies to direct the approval of other transactions, but we’re going to stick with two of the more frequently cited alternatives in this process: the random walk (or more precisely termed the “uniform random tip selection”) and the unweighted random walk. In this post and the next, we’re going to try to better understand what it means to make a tip selection. So that means a node can just choose any two transactions it wants, approve them, and be on its merry way, right? Not only is this selection process an interesting facet of IOTA as a whole, but it is also extremely important to maintaining the convergence of the tangle and the network’s stability. Now we understand the basics of the tangle – there are transactions and approvals, and before a transaction can be placed on the tangle it has to approve two other transactions. Are there any more tips still on the diagram above? Yep – #6 is a tip because it has yet to be approved by any other transactions. In a logical fashion, both #2 and #3 have already approved #1 which approved #0…you get the picture.Īs each new transaction comes onto the network and approves 2 more tips, the previous transaction approvals get stronger and stronger (similar to the period of time in Bitcoin it takes to get a high probability of a block being approved it takes quite a few blocks to really trust a transaction is legitimate – not just one approval). We’ll get into the selection process for tips in a little bit, but for now notice that #5 approves both #2 and #3. Someone decided to make a transaction on the network, and now they need to approve 2 tips (where tips refer to unapproved transactions). Every time a new transaction (square) is placed on the network, it needs to choose two prior transactions to approve (where the older transactions are on the left of Figure 1 and newer transactions move to the right). Remember that the squares in the diagram above represent transactions in the network while the edges that connect the squares represent approvals of transactions. ![]() What happened after the genesis block was created? This is when the network actually kicked things off and started allowing for transactions and approvals. So while MIOTA is the actual name of the token, the number of IOTA listed above should be divided by 1,000,000 to get the number of MIOTA in circulation. Note that this number is actually the number of IOTA in place as a MIOTA refers to 1,000,000 IOTA (nice and confusing, eh?). How many tokens did this include? Quite a few: 2,779,530,283,277,761 to exact (or around 2.78 x 10 15 for those who prefer scientific notation). When the genesis block was first instantiated, the entirety of MIOTA (IOTA’s token) was put into circulation. Like other cryptocurrencies, IOTA also has a so-called genesis block that kicked off the entire chain (or web in this case) of transactions. Let’s start at the very left with block 0. ![]() Practice? A simple (i.e., verrrryyy simple) tangle is shown below:įigure 1: An example tangle. Again, if you want to learn more about the tangle itself from a fundamental, logical viewpoint, check out the last post in the series. ![]() This was a bit abstract, so this week we plan to put some more details into the mix to better understand the tangle from an application perspective. A graph groups together objects a directed graph means that the order between various relationships in the group matters a directed acyclic graph has no succession of hops (between points) that forms a cycle (such that you could start at the beginning and repeat steps in a cyclic fashion indefinitely). Unless you’re already a math wizard, though, this concept might be a bit vague, so let’s break it down some. Let’s recap: a tangle is a directed acyclic graph or DAG. Starting in the last post, we began our dive into a better understanding of the IOTA tangle, how it works, and why it even matters in the first place. Hello there, and welcome back to our IOTA tangle series! Throughout the course of this series, we plan to look at the fundamental concepts behind IOTA, a revolutionary cryptocurrency that ditches the blockchain in favor of a…tangle? If you’re thinking to yourself, “What’s a tangle?”, then you’re in the right place. ![]()
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