- A study by two top Turkish universities found that Tangle is superior to other types of DLT, including traditional blockchains, for the Internet of Things (IoT).
- Tangle’s feeless transactions, low energy demands, and better scaling make it more suited for industries like IoT, which require massive amounts of low-cost transactions.
Tangle, a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that networks like IOTA are built on, is a much better fit for industries like the Internet of Things (IoT), a new study by two top universities in Turkey has found.
The study was conducted by Bahçeşehir University and Siirt University and published in the Turkish Academic Research Review.
1/8. A study by Bahçeşehir University and Siirt University, published in the Turkish Academic Research Review, compares #Blockchain and #Tangle technologies within the #IoT context. The verdict? Tangle comes out on top. Here’s why. https://t.co/aEHd6oFyDY
— Salima (@Salimasbegum) October 14, 2024
Tangle relies on a directed acyclic graph (DAG), a data structure in which nodes are connected by directed edges that have a direction. DAGs have no cycles, ensuring the clear ordering of transactions. In traditional blockchains, transactions are ordered in blocks and then added to the chain in a linear sequence. With DAGs, transactions are confirmed individually without the need for a block.
According to the study, one of the areas that Tangle beats traditional blockchains is in microtransactions as it allows for feeless transactions. To have a transaction approved, a participant needs to approve a prior transaction. This also eliminates the need for mining, making the process much cheaper. This is crucial for IoT as the individual devices send thousands of transactions every day amongst themselves, containing crucial data. A network like Ethereum, where the fees are high for each transaction, would be unsuited for IoT.
Today, there are nearly 20 billion interconnected IoT devices, a number that experts expect to double by the end of the decade. Paying fees for every transaction from such devices would be untenable, even for networks with lower fees.
IOTA’s Tangle Beats Blockchain
Speed is also crucial for IoT. Imagine a world where traffic lights are automated through IoT—if there’s a delay in relaying information between the IoT devices, it could result in fatal accidents, resulting in lives lost and millions of dollars damaged.
As such, any network underpinning IoT must have high throughput and no lag. This is another field where IOTA’s Tangle beats the traditional blockchains. With Tangle, as the number of transactions increases, efficiency is boosted, not hindered, as each new transaction confirms earlier ones.
Tangle is also energy-efficient, unlike traditional blockchains. With each new transaction being used to confirm prior ones, there’s no need to mine. Mining is an extremely energy-intensive process; experts estimate that BTC alone consumes over 120 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity annually, which is higher than the annual consumption of Argentina, the world’s 22nd-largest economy with over 45 million citizens.
With Tangle, IOTA is the undisputed industry leader. This has established IOTA as the leader in IoT, which was the industry it was originally designed to focus on. However, as founder Dominik Schiener told CNF in an exclusive interview this year, it has since expanded to other sectors, including the tokenization of real-world assets.
IOTA trades at $0.1293, gaining marginally over the past day to take its weekly rise to 6.3%.