XYO is a network of IoT devices backed by cryptography. Four types of nodes comprise the XYO Network. Each of them work cooperatively to collect, transfer and process geospatial data. The incentive mechanism tying all of this together is a digital currency called XYO.
According to a recent study released by Comcast, more than 30% of Americans have had a package stolen from their porch or doorstep. As the market share of eCommerce continues to grow, this problem will only become more prevalent. By utilizing the XYO Network and XYO Tokens, companies like Amazon and UPS can offer, as a premium service, an independently confirmed ledger to track every step of a shipment’s progress, starting at the fulfillment center and ending with the package’s secure delivery within the customer’s home.
Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, according to a study released by Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Many of these preventable deaths are a result of operational or record-keeping errors, including adverse drug interactions, improper medical records, and even unnecessary surgeries. By tying the XYO Network into the operational frameworks that are already in place, care providers can significantly reduce failures in communication and record keeping that result in patient injury and death.
The number one problem that rental car agencies face are logistical ones. Simple events such as the customer losing their keys results in millions upon millions of dollars in lost opportunity cost for car rental companies each year. XYO has already implemented a pilot program with one of the largest US rental car agencies to help cut down on the number of keys that aren’t returned at major airports. By expanding the program to make use of the XYO Oracle Network, the rental car company and its customers can reduce the number of lost keys.
Lost and mishandled luggage costed airlines $2.1 billion dollars in 2016, according to a study by SITA. While systems are improving, the complexities of air travel still result in millions of angry passengers with lost bags each year. XYO has implemented a decentralized, trustless system for tracking and locating luggage. Its decentralized nature even allows airlines to utilize each other’s networks without compromising the airlines’ network security or needing to coordinate system updates - this means that if you’re at the United desk in Dallas, but your bag is at the Delta desk at SFO, the bag can still be instantly located by accessing the XYO Network Ledger.
Insurance for vehicles, modular homes, and other high-value, high-mobility objects can reimburse for theft, but can’t inherently assist in locating the original good. The insurance industry is also susceptible to fraud, especially in the case of insured items that are highly mobile. XYO is already working with an insurance company that covers high value, high mobility goods to help them process claims and recover insured goods. Using the XYO Network, a decentralized and trustless location-based blockchain ledger, the company and its customers have access to an independently verifiable location history in the event of a claim.
In high security areas, it is essential to ensure that any authorized firearms are strictly controlled. Creating a system that is secure, reliable, and publicly accountable poses an operational challenge. A high-profile government security agency has contracted with XYO to secure firearms in major transportation hubs throughout the United States. The use of XY’s existing technology saves the agency millions of dollars, and the decentralized nature of the blockchain creates a system that is both independently secure and publicly accountable.
Numerous entities are very close to implementing automated drone services, from eCommerce giants like Amazon and Walmart to Google/Alphabet’s Project Wing to the numerous drone mapping services already in operation. Ensuring public safety, securing personal privacy, and maintaining compliance with FAA regulation will become increasingly challenging as guidelines are altered and skies become more crowded.
Self-driving vehicles, package-delivering drones and smart cities. All of these will not be possible unless we solve the biggest shortcoming of location data today: trust.
The technologies of tomorrow will require location data you will trust with your life. Yet how can we have this level of trust in location data? Not through large companies or governments, that's for sure. They get hacked daily. Rather, the answer comes from securing it through mathematical principles of cryptography.
Meet XYO. We're building the world's first people-powered location network built on blockchain technology. The technology we're building today will power the world of tomorrow. And the gas used to power it is the cryptocurrency called 'XYO'.
When Bitcoin arrived in 2009, it transformed how people carried out transactions online. It made online transactions safer, faster and more efficient; millions of people around the world started using it.
Today the combined market value of all digital currencies is over $245 billion... and some experts predict Bitcoin alone could hit the $1 trillion mark by the end of the year.
But why is this revolution happening in the first place?
It's primarily due to the technology behind it all: a cryptographic breakthrough called 'blockchain'.
Blockchain, the fundamental technology underlying Bitcoin, eliminates the need for trust because it makes all transactions transparent, decentralized and secure. It has quite literally revolutionized online commerce.
People can now transact without knowing one another in what are called 'trustless' transactions. There’s no need for a trusted third-party to settle disputes. People can send money from one person to another without a bank sitting in-between, taking a fee.
In 2013, there was another breakthrough...A new blockchain platform called 'Ethereum' was developed. It introduced a Turing-complete programming language into blockchain and opened up a new world of possibilities.
To understand how it works, think of Bitcoin as the Calculator app on your phone, And Ethereum as your phone's operating system which allows you to have many apps with many features. One of the main features built into Ethereum's functionality are called 'smart contracts' - transaction protocols that essentially collapse payment and execution of an agreement into the same thing.
Instead of contracts being written on a piece of paper and signed in black ink, the world of Ethereum allows them to be written in computer code and executed when certain conditions are met. For instance, imagine if you want to place a $20 bet that a certain sports team will win a game. You can write a smart contract, and when the game is over, it checks the score and automatically send $20 worth of Ether (ETH) from loser to the winner.
Because the smart contracts run on decentralized Ethereum client nodes, you no longer have to rely on a third-party, like a sports book service, to facilitate this type of transaction. As a result, middlemen, and their fees, are eliminated.
The best part is that this is just the beginning.
Ethereum developers can also create their own applications which don’t rely on a central third-party authority. This is why they’re called decentralized applications or 'DApps'.
They run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure which can move value around and represent ownership of property. All without any risk of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference.
However, Ethereum had one major drawback. Because their smart contracts needed a centralized third-party for verification, it made them vulnerable to hackers.
Take the sports bet example. In the world of Ethereum, the source for where the smart contract gets the score of the game (i.e. a sports website that lists scores of games) is called an 'oracle'. A hacker or even an insider employee could hack into the oracle (e.g. like ESPN.com), where the contract checks the score, and change the score in their favor. Not much to worry about when it’s a $20 bet. However, it becomes a critical point of failure when you consider some transactions as high as $200,000 or more.
To get around this, multiple 'oracles' are used to build what is called 'consensus'; meaning the smart contract must check with multiple oracles and they all must agree on the score of the game, for instance. That way, the contract is only executed when there's consensus and all third-parties show the same score.
Since the advent of Ethereum, there has been rapid-growth and creation of DApps and technologies related to cryptocurrency.
What if blockchain technology could be bridged to the real world?
Bitcoin and blockchain technologies have been limited to the internet. Every single new blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, or new 'token', which are all economic tools used to align the underlying platform's economy, have focused on online applications, and not offline ones.
Yet the offline, real world market is still the biggest. It’s worth over $11 trillion a year. Since 2012, we've been developing location-based technologies aimed at connecting the digital world to the real world.
For the last several years, XYO has been developing the technologies critical to bringing blockchain to the offline world, in order to make them programmable and accessible to smart contracts.
To make this possible, we’ve had to overcome two extraordinarily difficult tasks: First, we've created a location-based consumer product business focused on getting Bluetooth and GPS tracking beacons out into the world. And second, we've developed ground-breaking research within the realm of location-focused blockchain technology so it is no longer limited to the online world.
After years of research and innovation, we’ve accomplished both.
XYO has become the leader in the world of findable technology with Bluetooth and GPS tracking devices which allow everyday consumers to track real-world items in real-time, right from their smart phones.
XYO now has over 1 million location beacon devices circulating in the world. In just a few years, we’ve created the single largest network of Bluetooth & GPS devices in the world.
XYO makes it possible for smart contracts to access the real world by using the XYO Network's ecosystem of devices to determine if an object is at a specific XY-coordinate. If it is, one can set up applications which execute transactions in the smart contract.
This has opened up a new world of possibilities. The applications of such a technology are infinite.
Take for example an eCommerce Company. With the XYO Network, they could now offer their premium customers payment-upon-delivery services. To be able to offer this service, the eCommerce company would leverage the XYO Network (which uses XYO Tokens) to write a smart contract.
The XYO Network could then track the location of the package being sent to the consumer along every single step of fulfillment; from the warehouse shelf to the shipping courier, all the way into the consumer's house and every location in between. This could enable eCommerce retailers and websites to verify, in a trustless way, that the package not only appeared on the customer's doorstep, but also safely inside their home.
Once the package has arrived in the customer's home (defined and verified by a specific XY-Coordinate), the shipment is considered complete and the payment to the vendor gets released. The eCommerce integration of the XYO Network enables the ability to protect the merchant from fraud and ensure consumers only pay for goods that arrive in their home.
This means e-commerce stores like Amazon.com can use the XYO Network to allow customers to only pay for a product when it arrives at their home.