IOTA Research Symposium 2021

TL;DR:
The IOTA Research Department recently hosted several of our academic partners for a symposium. The two-day event featured presentations from both external academics and internal members. This was a wonderful opportunity to share a broad overview of the current state of IOTA research.

On July 30 and August 6, the IOTA Foundation held its first-ever Research Symposium. The two-day event featured presenters from both inside and outside the IOTA Foundation. It was a pleasure to host our academic peers and their informative presentations, as well as the subsequent discussions. Videos of the symposium are now available online, so please feel free to watch and join us for a deep dive into the many interesting features of IOTA 2.0, as well as some promising future developments.

Day 1 of the symposium opened with a warm welcome from our Director of Research, Dr. William Sanders. He was followed by four presentations from our esteemed guest speakers:

Professor Stefan Schulte from the Vienna University of Technology presented on DLT interoperability. DLT Interoperability: Relays and Other Solutions [Video] [Presentation slides]
Professor Roman Vitenberg of the University of Oslo presented on blockchain from the perspective of distributed systems and introduced the Blockchain Lab at the University of Oslo. Blockchain from the Perspective of Distributed Systems / Blockchain Lab at the University of Oslo [Video] [Presentation slides]
Imperial College Professor and IOTA Research Council member Dr. Robert Shorten presented alongside two of his colleagues, Andrew Cullen and Pietro Ferraro, on two of their recent publications: Access Control for Distributed Ledgers in the Internet of Things: A Networking Approach and Personalised Feedback Control, Social Contracts, and Compliance Strategies for Ensembles. Access Control for Distributed Ledgers in the Internet of Things: A Networking Approach Personalised Feedback Control, Social Contracts, and Compliance Strategies for Ensembles [Video] [Presentation slides]
Day 1 ended with a presentation by Professor Mauro Conti of the University of Padua along with colleagues Alessandro Brighente, Dr. Rahul Saha and Dr. Gulshan Kumar of the SPRITZ Security & Privacy Research Group. Their presentation focused on the research directions and future applications of IOTA. Research Directions and Future Applications of IOTA [Video] [Presentation slides]

Day 2 of the symposium consisted of presentations by IOTA team members:

Dr. William Sanders once again opened the proceedings, this time with an overview of the IOTA 2.0 protocol. Any newcomer to IOTA who is interested in gaining an understanding of the protocol from the ground up might want to start by watching this presentation. Overview of the IOTA 2.0 protocol [Video] [Presentation slides]
IOTA Foundation Senior Research Scientist Dr. Luigi Vigneri gave a presentation on the congestion control algorithm used in IOTA 2.0. Congestion Control [Video] [Presentation slides]
Senior Research Scientist Dr. Andreas Penzkofer and Dr. Sebastian Muller then gave a presentation on consensus in IOTA 2.0. Consensus [Video] [Presentation slides]
Finally, the symposium wrapped up with a presentation by Research Scientist Dr. Darcy Camargo on our current work on sharding. Scalability and Sharding [Video] [Presentation slides]

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy watching the symposium! As always, for those who are interested in discussing any of the topics around IOTA 2.0 in more depth, you ’are more than welcome to join our Research team members in the #tanglemath channel on our Discord. We also invite you to follow and participate in our technical discussions on our public forum: IOTA.cafe.