This article is a translation of the German IOTA Beginner’s Guide by .
BiiLabs
BiiLabs was founded in November 2017 in Taipei, Taiwan. BiiLabs Co.Ltd. is a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) startup. BiiLabs is dedicated to developing distributed ledger technology to address challenges in the Internet of Everything era, including smart cities and energy management. Its core technologies support the digital transformation of various industries and solve critical customer problems on issues such as trust, security, growth, and efficiency. Including the machine economy, over 5 trillion transactions and microtransactions will occur daily by 2020. BiiLabs aims to become a leading technology provider in the Internet of Everything space.
Primarily, BiiLabs uses IOTA technology, but for some complex cases, BiiLabs also provides its own Layer 2 solutions to solve data storage, lack of smart contracts, or transaction speed issues, if necessary.
BiiLabs, like the IOTA Foundation and quite a few other companies, is a member of INATBA, a global forum for developers and users of distributed ledger technology. INATBA brings together industry, small and medium enterprises, startups, policymakers, international organizations, regulators, civil society, and standardization bodies to support, establish, and expand DLT and blockchain across multiple industries.
BiiLabs projects in this guide:
Technology focus:
DLT Research
BiiLabs is one of the pioneers of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) developers with smart contract engine based on DAG-based systems. These are just regular contracts, except for the fact that their terms are stored in the distributed ledger and are machine readable automatically verifiable by all peers.
Custom API
BiiLabs is based on DLT and delivers the service including digital ID, ledger and settlement, micro-payment, digital forensics and much more by providing and securing the sandbox for testing. There is also an option to provide custom APIs.
Transaction Security
With the distributed system, all data would be cryptographically secured on multiple nodes so that even sensitive data can be transferred safely and securely.
Business scalability
BiiLabs enables micro and nano transaction recording using distributed ledger technology and provides developers with a range of innovative tools for IoT applications.
Potential application areas:
Sharing
Using distributed ledger technology to enable new frontiers of the trust-based economy. For example, DLT can be used to effortlessly lease products (e.g., home appliances, tools, drones, e-bikes, etc.) and resources (e.g., computer storage, computing power, Wi-Fi bandwidth, etc.).
Energy
Elements of smart cities include smart building, smart charging, and smart mobility. However, massive facilities incur huge centralization costs, whether power generation or transmission. Therefore, the concept of smart energy communities is to ensure self-sufficiency through “smart grids” and develop an innovative business model using cryptocurrencies as incentives.
Certificates
Certificates, which are the proof of an individual, have a big problem with reliability, and blockchain technology can make good use of distributed ledgers to create the trust ecosystem for certificates, not to mention more efficient management in digital forms.
Supply Chain
Supply chain managements value transparency, authorized participation, and immutable records. Therefore, DLT’s role here is to strengthen the trust relationship between consumers, producers, transporters, retailers, and public institutions as part of the integration of global trade.
Machine economy
A revolutionary peer-to-peer network is freeing itself from transaction fees and diving further into a machine-to-machine world. In other words, machines with independent wallets could automatically transact with non-humans, meaning a new machine-centric business model is emerging.
Digital identity
In the future, centralization in digital identity hardly works with the alarming awareness of self-sovereignty. As a result, DLT would be the best alternative technology to realize online voting, medical record management, and data exchange between cities.
Data Marketplace
DLT could fulfill the need for self-governance, indicating that users can control their personal data and ensure the traceability of private information at will. We can assume that there will be a new marketplace for data.
One problem BiiLabs can solve is tamper-proof storage of large data sets.
The IOTA Tangle is not a data store for larger data sets, so it relies on third-party storage solutions for many use cases, such as Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure cloud storage.
At this point, however, there’s a big problem: You can’t trust these third-party providers, so how can you ensure that data hasn’t been altered?
Although the Tangle itself is not a data store, it is still the solution to this problem. The Tangle is an immutable distributed ledger that can be used to store a cryptographic hash (footprint) of the data set being stored, along with a timestamp in the Tangle. This hash can be used to prove at any time that the data set has remained unchanged. In addition, by using a standard encryption method, it is possible for the data to remain confidential and only viewable by authorized users with a decryption key. This authorization can also be revoked if needed.
Depending on the use case, BiiLabs offers its customers an interaction of the Alfred API (software tool for PoE) with access to Amazon AWS, hardware (Sentinel Appliance) for recording data and IOTA technology to prove the existence of the data and secure it against manipulation.
BiiLabs provides its customers with both certification of the existence of stored data and its authenticity
Certification of data in the distributed ledger ~ Proof-of-Existence (PoE)
All records generate unique digital footprints (hash value) in the IOTA Tangle along with a timestamp. This hash value can be used to provide proof-of-existence (PoE) of the data due to its verifiability. However, this proof does not guarantee the authenticity of the data itself. Since the data may also be stored externally (e.g., AWS), only the existence of the data can be proven.
Raw data on distributed ledgers ~ data authenticity
Assuming correct data size, raw data can be written directly to the IOTA tangle, therefore data manipulation due to decentralization is extremely difficult not only in terms of footprint. In this case, no storage solution is needed with the help of a third party. If necessary, IOTA Permanodes could be used as needed to store transaction data for a longer period of time.
Sources
Original source
https://iota-einsteiger-guide.de/biilabs.html
Last Updated on 16. February 2021