IOTA continues its path with the OMG towards standardization for the IoT

• The RFC Protocol draft specifications for IOTA received good feedback from the Object Management Group (OMG).
• IOTA Foundation has contacted other standardization bodies such as IEEE, IIC, W3C, and Ethereum EIC.

Following its quarterly meeting with the Object Management Group (OMG), the IOTA Foundation (IF) has presented the latest draft for the standardization of Tangle under the IOTA RFC Protocol, showing that progress on the standardization of the IOTA protocol continues to be on track.

Based on IOTA 2.0 or Coordicide, IOTA RFC Protocol has been reviewed by the OMG. After submitting the protocol’s specifications, the IOTA Foundation received good feedback on three relevant aspects: language, formal description, and formatting. From this, it has been determined that the specifications are well-structured, the IOTA Foundation added:

This includes for example the use of pseudocode to express what a standard-conformant application should do and how we specify the data structures and content. (…) these are looking good right now.

With a tentative delivery date for the end of 2021, once IOTA 2.0 has been deployed, the vision of this initiative is to make IOTA Tangle the standard protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT). The IF is in contact with other standardization bodies such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), IIC and W3C. The foundation reported:

We also continue to engage with cross-industry initiatives such as TangleEE and the Trust over IP Foundation. In so doing our aim is to smooth the path to interoperability and to open up new business opportunities and social benefits, based on the enlightened self-interest of being a standards-setter.

Progress on standardization of other IOTA components

In addition to the proposed standardization of IOTA Tangle, the IF is working on the standardization of IOTA Streams. In the future, similar proposals could be worked out for IOTA Identity, the IOTA Smart Contract Protocol (ISP) and digital assets. Future RFIs will also cover oracles, archival node requirements (IOTA Permanode) and other features of the DLT ecosystem, to meet the end user desire for greater interoperability.

Each of these RFIs represents an opportunity to influence and define the next round of RFPs that will be coming through.

The RFI for the ISCP is planned to be presented at the June meeting. There, the IF will “describe some unique features” of smart contracts on this platform and its “interoperability ambitions.” Currently, the Foundation’s developers are studying implementations of Ethereum’s ERC-20 and ERC-721 standards.

The latter is used to issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a sector that is booming in the crypto space. The IF considers Ethereum’s ecosystem and its EIP schemes to be, in a way, also “a standard body”. The IF states:

Some of what we want to do for IOTA Smart Contracts may be best served by proposing extensions to the existing ERC standards, or proposing new ones through the EIC process. An example is where we would like to add more metadata to some of the ERP standard payloads.

Because IOTA’s network operates without fees, they claim it is possible to “carry more metadata” in a standard payload on this platform. That way, costs would be reduced, and it would be more effective to conduct certain transactions on IOTA than on a fee-based blockchain. The IF will take its proposals for community review with the EIC process and if rejected, they will use the OMG RFP process for standardization.