- IFF to strengthen Obyte’s network by providing a stable, academically honest and secure environment for an Order Provider (Witness) node
- Increase decentralization of the network with a geographically distributed Witness node, located within IFF’s premises
- Provide an independent evaluation of Obyte’s work, research and open-source software
- Promote transparency of the network by sharing findings with the community
The University of Nicosia (UNIC): one of the world’s most respected institutions for teaching, research and development of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency initiatives, has been elected the 7th Independent Order Provider (Witness) on the Obyte Network.
The IFF is an interdisciplinary research Centre at UNIC, aimed at advancing emerging technologies and contributing to their effective application in industry, government and education, as well as, evaluating their impact on employment, wealth inequality and societies in general. The active engagement with Obyte’s Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) platform aims to educate the team at UNIC regarding the technology, its potential application and play a practical role in the maintenance of Obyte’s DAG.
Anton Churyumov, Founder, Obyte: Engagement with the University of Nicosia provides a fantastic opportunity to educate the broader public about the benefits of Obyte’s DAG and its potential application. We are both honoured to have such a respected institution act as a Witness, engage with us professionally and are excited by the potential to proselytise about the possibilities this pioneering technology offers companies looking at Distributed Ledger Technology use.
Dr. Klitos Christodoulou, Research Manager, IFF: We are very excited to join and support the Obyte network. At IFF we conduct academic research in distributed ledgers and digital currency to further advance the field. As part of our community building activities in the blockchain space, we embrace the development of innovative projects that are based on or inspired from the core blockchain technology. As part of our exploration in the space we have been much interested in understanding the behaviour of alternative data structures for decentralized ledger systems/protocols. The idea behind Obyte with the proposal of using a decentralized DAG data structure for offering tamper proof storage of arbitrary data has intrigued the interest of the research team.
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Obyte proposes the use of DAG to connect transactions to one or more previous transactions on the ledger that are monitored by witnesses, and thus increasing the degree of disintermediation. Compared to a traditional blockchain-based system where miners or block producers act as gatekeepers, deciding which transactions should be included in the next block, Obyte uses a DAG as the underlying data structure. By acting as a Witness on the Obyte DAG IFF hopes to both serve a practical role and test the technology before educating others on its findings.
IFF aims to position itself as an interface between academic research and the blockchain ecosystem. By engaging with functioning platforms it can assess and apply the technology before drawing conclusions with regard to the claims made. Findings and results from engagement with Blockchain and Cryptocurrency platforms are shared with students and the broader technology community it looks to educate.
