The XYO Network is building a really useful protocol on the blockchain, which would likely be used by all sorts of projects and developers – an oracle system that provides a ‘proof of location’ on Ethereum. Such an oracle system would invariably have a different set of security parameters than a blockchain itself. However, it is much more decentralized than the centralized options available today. Better still, the XYO Network, by building on Ethereum, can simply be used as an API for location data into DApps (Decentralized Applications) that run on Ethereum. This can actually provide a powerful set of tools for developers.
Developers Rejoice!
The creation of an oracle system is a powerful addition to the blockchain system, which doesn’t have any native information about anything outside the blockchain. The answer today is via an Oracle. An oracle is any program that can be queried by another program, and which returns a value that represents a current truth. For example, a DApp can query a stock market API provider like Yahoo! Finance to get the current price of Facebook, and if it is over $100 per share, do a certain task. The blockchain or DApp by itself would never know such information as the price of Facebook stock by itself without the help of an oracle.
XYO Network is building a very special kind of oracle – a location oracle. Developers will find the XYO Network easy to use in their DApps, because it provides native location data. They don’t need to rely on third-parties, even GPS, if they can get this information directly from the Ethereum blockchain. The trust properties and risk is already outlined, so depending on the level of accuracy required, this can be a powerful addition in the Ethereum developer toolkit.
Location Oracle
Now, on to the location oracle. Oracles are powerful systems. The first examples built in a decentralized way on Ethereum include the likes of Augur, which hasn’t released its product yet. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that DApps won’t be much useful without also including some real-world information in them in addition to merely using the blockchain state. Location is an obvious example of an external data point.
Location and location-based commerce are already powerful concepts. They provide a way for the blockchain to know about the ‘real world’ and its state. It lets apps know the change of this state, i.e. how the real-world is changing and evolving. Again, all of these are powerful concepts.
In the same way that Augur or Gnosis can be used to pass data about a football game results to the blockchain, XYO network can be used to pass the geospatial data about an object to the blockchain. This data can then be used in any number of ways by various DApps built on the blockchain that require a location component for their functionality.
Interested to learn more? Check out the XYO Network website and the whitepaper. There is a token sale soon. Make sure you understand the risks before participating. Token sales are highly risky and you can lose all your capital.