What is the XYO Network?

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What is the XYO Network? Decentralizing GPS and Putting Location on Blockchain


article originally published on coincentral.com

The XYO Network, short for XY Oracle Network, is offering a people-powered location network built on the blockchain. In a nutshell, the XYO Network is a trustless cryptographic location network that enables layered location verification across many devices and protocols. The network utilizes a cryptocurrency called XYO to function.

XYO taps into the Ethereum blockchain to allow users to “call out” for specific queries that revolve around location requests.

The XYO Network is a project launched by a company called XY, which has been around since 2012 building location technology solutions for autonomous drones, self-driving vehicles, smart cities, and space exploration. The first product XY launched is XY Findables, a network of over 1 million people connected by Bluetooth and GPS devices. These devices are essentially little fobs that can be attached to frequently misplaced items such as keys, backpacks, dog collars, etc.  

How Does XYO Network Work?

The XYO Network contains four primary pillars: Sentinels (The Data Gatherers), Bridges (The Data Relayers), Archivists (The Data Storers), and Diviners (The Answer Aggregators).

  1. Sentinels gather location information through radios, sensors, and other methods. These act as the location witness.

  2. Bridges take data from Sentinels and relay it over to Archivists. These act as location data transcribers.

  3. Archivists store the information for Diviners to analyze it.

  4. Diviners serve as oracles and analyze all the location heuristics to provide answers to queries and assign accuracy scores. Diviners then relay these answers back into a smart contract.

The XYO Network debuts an original Proof of Origin consensus algorithm combined with Transient Key Chaining to ensure that ledgers flowing into the network are valid while making it impossible to falsify the chain of origin for the data. The XYO Network stores the information on a public blockchain called the XYOMainChain.

Who Would Use the XYO Network?

Beyond the technical guts of the XYO Network lays a multitude of use cases that span several industries.

An example noted in the whitepaper is for eCommerce merchants who use XYO to offer a premium “payment upon delivery” service to its customers. The merchant would write a smart contract (on Ethereum’s platform), XYO would track the location of the package every step of the way until fulfillment, and only once it has arrived does the vendor gets paid.

The XYO Token Sale

XYO is only available for sale internationally due to a lack of clarity from U.S. regulators.

U.S. investors, however, can invest in XYO as an SEC Reg A+ Equity. This essentially allows U.S. investors to invest in the XY parent company, allowing them to hypothetically benefit on the upside of XY as well as the XYO Network.

Here’s the breakdown for U.S. investors.

  1. XY is a U.S. Delaware C-Corporation regulated by laws and standards overseen by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.

  2. XY has 850,000,000 XYO Tokens (an estimated 3.5% of the token pool). Additionally, XY  operates the XYO Cryptoeconomic Reserve fund, which is allocated on a 1-to-1 basic for every XYO Token sold in the Public Sale

  3. XY has generated roughly $10 million in revenue to date.

Here are the SEC filings and documentation.

The public token sale has a tiered pricing structure that starts off at 1 ETH: 100,000 XYO and maxes out at 1 ETH: 33,333 XYO.

  • Smart contract platform: Ethereum

  • Contract Type: ERC20

  • Token: XYO

  • Token Name: XYO Network Utility Token

  • Total issuance: Finite and capped at the amount reached after the Token Main Sale

  • Projected XYO Token Cap: $48 Million

  • Unsold and Unallocated tokens: Burned after the token sale event

No further XYO tokens will be generated after the Main Sale ends.

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XYO currently trades on IDEX, DDEX, Bitmart, and a few smaller exchanges, and currently has a market cap around $12,692,705 USD.

Final Thoughts – “Sorta like GPS, minus the government monopoly”

The XYO Network offering falls in line with one of the most popular narratives of the blockchain and cryptocurrency revolution: the removal and replacement of a third party intermediary with a decentralized and more technologically advanced solution to empower and incentivize the end users. XYO aims to replace GPS as it is with a decentralized blockchain-based system.

For more information, check out the XYO Network whitepaper and XYO Network site.

Thomas Schipke