I Read The XYO (COIN App) Whitepaper. This Is What I Discovered.

Being a chunky, office nerd, sometimes I find activities that require me to do things like "walking" to be annoying. Not difficult or impossible mind you, I am no slouch (I am a dad, after all) However, I'm no cross country runner, Usain Bolt, or some even some kind of well adjusted human being. My Google account shows that I haven't been further than a hundred miles from my house for at least a couple years. It's just... annoying.

Just a Typical Tuesday

However, at the same time, I work for a company that surveys land. I want to be a land surveyor myself. That means by virtue of my chosen profession, I GOTTA get out there, see the world and measure it (often using GPS. For real). My outer fatass and my inner ambitious go-getter sometimes fight each other.

Needless to say, when I first heard of XYO, I was...conflicted. a cool blockchain technology that uses GPS? That is awesome! But at the same time, what do you gotta do? Do you gotta roam the world or some shit? I had no clue, so I knew I had to look it up.

That DAMN Advertisement

It started with the COIN ad.

Strangely enough, I have seen this bad boy a million times. I always pass it up because I'm too busy looking for just the right picture I can use to say, photoshop a Tron logo to a bare ass.

Pictured: Justin Sun

But then starting a day or two ago, I stopped. What in the HELL is this? Curiosity got the best of me. I took the leap and downloaded the app.

So, What IS XYO/COIN

I'm happy you asked. Okay, so my first step was to look up the company. Their name wasn't COIN which threw me off because of the app advertisement. The app, XYO. More specifically, the XY Oracle Network. X and Y, right? Like a Cartesian Plane or something. Interesting. So, pants around my ankles, I proceeded to dive deep into the XYO Whitepaper.

THE WHITEPAPER

This goes over the use case and the basic idea of how the network will be set up. So apparently (I had NO idea this was a problem) GPS and location data is not too terribly secure nor is it immune from tampering/fraud/whatever. And that makes a lot of sense; If your grandma is just some old lady uploading her pictures to a site or something, she has no idea that there is this little thing called EXIF data. That's just data on photographs that tells you whereabouts it was taken, and a bunch of other crap that honestly, I have no idea what it is used for because I'm not a photography nerd. I'm a regular nerd with regular interests, sue me.

It's just one way that location data can be easily extracted by bad actors. Other types of location data is also pretty lackadaisical in its ability to be altered, viewed, lost and whatever. So, XYO is looking to apply a blockchain solution to this, and make the data more reliable and safer. That's of course a SUPER high level explanation of what they're doing here, but I think it's a good way to explain it without running the risk of glazing your eyes over. So, How do they do this? With a few different types of actors in the technology:

THE SENTINELS

Aww, What a Cute Little TINY IMAGE
No.. Unfortunately not those types of Sentinels. Sentinels in the XYO world are "Data Gatherers" meaning they collect location Data and then they provide "Witness" that the data is true and correct (Part of their "Proof of Origin" protocol). This information is gathered in different ways such as radios and sensors and shit. They get rewarded with XYO tokens when their information is queried. They then send this information over to the BRIDGES.

THE BRIDGES.
So, just like actual, real life bridges, XYO Bridges Relay the information from the Sentinels to the next folks, the Archivists in a super secure fashion. They are Data Transcribers, and they also provide an addition Proof of Origin that allows the archivists to be REALLY SURE that the data has not been altered. They get tokens as well when the information they bridge gets queried as well. Cool.

THE ARCHIVISTS.
This part is the storage and indexing of the work that has been beforehand with the Sentinels and Bridges. This is all done in a decentralized fashion (kinda like masternodes and stuff) and they get tokens when the data is retrieved.

THE BIG BOY DIVINERS.
This is honestly the most complex part of the entire safe location data storage-and-such game that XYO is playing. They fetch the most accurate data that is being queried and deliver it to the parties that are doing the querying. It's an important job and the fastest and most accurate Diviners get the distinction of creating a block! They digitially sign and administer this block and they also get rewarded for doing this. That's awesome.

Was that a little too much? Yeah, me too. A lot of this paper goes over some really deep math and shit. I had a hard time keeping up, and I have (enough credits to have) a minor in mathematics:

Oh God, Hold ME

But WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN!? Basically this: There is a "Chain of Custody" so to speak that ensures the location data someone recieves is both accurate and secure. It's a rather ingenious use of blockchain technology, In my personal not-so-important opinion. AND the incentive for all this is the SWEET SWEET CRYPTO.

So, What About This App?

It's pretty cool, from my experience: Here's a little screenshot of it:

So, yeah, It's Pokemon Go for Crypto nerds. Alls you gotta do is gallivant around and "mine" different location squares, find boxes with additional rewards, and all the while know that you're providing essentially the "Sentinel" portion of the XYO plan (If I am interpreting this correctly) and getting rewarded for doing it.

In other words, move around a shit ton, mine locations, Gather data for the XYO Network and Buy a Lambo. I often walk to and from work, and I will definitely use this if I'm just kinda doing nothing. Can't really hurt, especially if I have nothing better to do.

If you want more in-depth information (Highly recommended, really an interesting project) start with The XYO Network Website. Go nuts!

Thank you SO SO Much for Reading, I really appreciate it. If you like what you read, then please consider giving me a follow, and I'll be sure to work away giving you more awesome content. I'm sure I have a COIN ref or something, but I'm not shilling it, I just chose to write about it this week. Gives me a reason to use GIMP, honestly.