Cambridge-based AI startup Fetch.ai has gone into a partnership with IOTA, an open-source distributed ledger focused on the Internet of Things.
Fetch.ai has got the attention of investors for its potentially groundbreaking machine learning network of autonomous “agents” that could perform real-world tasks.
IOTA was among the most glorified projects during the 2017, cryptocurrency/blockchain frenzy (or bubble, dependent on your perspective.) albeit most projects have since collapsed, IOTA continues to grow steadily and has said a series of partnerships with giants like Dell and Jaguar Land Rover.
Bosch in one of the partnerships that both companies have in common.
IOTA was the first to go into a partnership with Bosch when it publicised that it was integrating with IOTA’s Data Marketplace. Last February, Fetch.ai revealed that its own partnership with Bosch as part of a joint project which they called the Economy of Things (EoT).
However, no specific project involving Fetch.ai, IOTA, and Bosch has been announced. It wouldn’t be amazing to see the first real-world adoption coming from the three companies.
Although it could speculate on the exciting future possibilities, what’s actually been said was an agreement between Fetch.ai and IOTA to deliver a controlled data sharing environment for IoT devices and infrastructures. The ultimate goal is to make available the automated fee-less retrieval and private sharing of data.
Humayun Sheikh, CEO of Fetch.ai, said, “The fundamental goal of this collaboration is to enable granular control over data and to reduce the reliance on centralised systems that take advantage of data.
While there are numerous partnerships focusing on data privacy, this one adds the layer of economic benefit for stakeholders via autonomous economic agents without compromising data privacy.
Enabling these agents to perform “useful economic work” on behalf of individuals, businesses, companies, and other entities or organisations will speed up the adoption of Fetch.ai autonomous economic agents and IOTA Streams thereby allowing them to communicate with sophistication across industries like mobility, supply chain, IoT and more.”
Holger Koether, Director of Partner Management at IOTA Foundation, said, “The main feature of this partnership is offering a serious AI application for the devices that make up the machine economy on the IOTA and Fetch networks.
We are enabling data producers to take control over who can access the data they produce whether from a mobile device, environment IoT sensor, connected vehicle, Industrial IoT solution, and a host of IoT-focused use cases.
With this partnership, we hope both the Fetch and IOTA communities expand the functionally of what devices can do autonomously on distributed networks.”
IOTA has faced various criticisms over the years but the project now seems to have overcome most of its problems. The one major lingering criticism is of centralisation due to its ‘Coordinator’ node. However, that is set for removal in IOTA 2.0.
The IOTA 2.0 ‘Nectar’ devnet went live last week. For the first time, assets on the network will be persistent even after upgrades.
“IOTA 2.0 DevNet ‘Nectar’ marks a major milestone on IOTA’s trajectory towards full decentralisation,” commented Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation. “I cannot understate the importance of this release: Nectar is the living proof that you can have feeless, scalable, secure, resource-efficient, and fully decentralised DLT. It’s a game-changer.”
Such rapid developments in the technology is not only crucial for the UK, but also for the entire Commonwealth of Nation to speed up the volume of business that by and large depends on the technological advancement in general and in the area of automated fee-less retrieval and private sharing of data in particular.
