Who do I ask if I have a question about ixo?

The ixo Assistant contextual AI chatbot is being trained to answer your questions. This assistant gets smarter by being asked questions, using machine learning. So please ask and if it does not know the answer, you will be routed to an ixo team member who can assist you further.

The ixo Assistant can be accessed through Telegram, or the ixo-Webclient and ixo-Mobileclient interfaces.

Terminology and Acronyms

ixo Forum

Reach out to the ixo team via Discord or Telegram.

Github repositories

https://github.com/ixofoundation

An Internet for sensing and verifying changes in the state of the world. The ixo Protocol defines the new standard for making Verifiable Impact Claims about how people and organisations are changing the state of the world, using high-definition data as evidence.

Claims are independently verified by trusted Prediction Oracle services, who issue Impact Proofs and certified digital credentials. These digital assets replace or enhance legacy instruments, such as Renewable Energy Certificates.

Impact Producers use their verified data, proofs and certified credentials, to mint non-fungible Impact Tokens.

1. Credible commitments to shared goals

The Sustainable Development Goals

2. Collective monitoring, with accountability

3. Self-organisation that scales

4. Incentivising results, with rewards

5. Bounded to communities, with rights

6. Governed by rules, with penalties

Digital Infrastructure for the Impacts Economy

Our mission is to enable organisations across the world to coordinate, finance, deliver and verify Impacts at Internet-scale.

The Internet of Impacts provides foundational digital infrastructure for the Impacts Economy

The ixo Platform

The ixo Platform is an open-source software stack:

• The ixo Layer 1 blockchain is purpose-built to implement the ixo Protocol and related services for coordinating, financing, delivering, and verifying Impacts at Internet-scale.

The ixo Protocol

Verifiable Claims capture tamper-proof and accountable digital records of the state of the world, about any imaginable subject.

Claims are evaluated by independent trusted verification services (which ixo describes as Prediction Oracles).

Verified claims with their crypto-economic proofs and data assets are issued as tokenised. For instance a Carbon Emission Reduction claim can produce a verified, information-rich Carbon Credit token.

Tokenised Impact makes the results of development processes more precisely measurable and valuable. Tokens can be traded and used in decentralised development finance mechanisms, such as ixo Alphabonds for Adaptive Financing.

Everyone is invited to participate

• If you feel inspired to learn more: You have come to the right place. Read the docs or ask oxi the Impacts Co-Pilot.

• If you want to do more: Join the Internet of Impacts DAO community.

• If you are ready to make an impact: Form or become a member of an Impact DAO, launch a Project, invest in or create an Impact Asset Collection, fund or issue an Impact Investment, use or deliver an Impact Oracle Service, and implement or create your own powerful data-driven Impact Protocols.

• If you want to build software or data solutions: Visit the ixo Developers Portal.

• If you want to host an Impact Marketplace or Impact Exchange: Get in touch with the ixo team.

Serving the Commons

Using feedback loops

Creating new economy

Programming capital for sustainability

Production of digital assets

Digital marketplaces

Intelligent in all parts

Adaptive and predictive in real-time

Networked and distributed everywhere

Web 2.0 Internets

The Impact Economy

Economic opportunity

Investing in Impact

Sustainable Capital

Impact Products

Verified Impact Data

Tokenised impact assets

Impact Marketplaces

Biomimicry

ixo protocol networks are designed to mimic how the human immune system operates. These networks form an Internet of Impact which is conceptually a global digital immune system for humanity.

The purpose of this internet is to sense and respond to sustainability threats or opportunities.

Sensing applications include:

• IoT

This decentralised architecture must enable local coordination with rapid information feedback loops. It must be possible to rapidly amplify cyber-physical mechanisms that can support social, environmental and economic interventions to scale effectively and safely.

Complex adaptive dynamical systems

Humans in the loop

Economy in the loop

Environment in the loop

An Entity is a node in the Internet of Impact graph. The best way of explaining this is to describe the different classes of entities and their primary puposes.

Entities are inter-linked. The relationships between entities are the edges of the impact graph, as illustrated in the example below.

{insert diagram}

It is important to understand a few security concepts and good practices, to safeguard your accounts, digital assets, and personal data when using any Web3 services and applications, including through the Internet of Impacts software and underlying blockchain networks.

What is a Private Key?

Private keys are crucial for accessing your cryptocurrency wallet. This guide by Ledger explains the difference between private and public keys and how to keep your private keys secure.

What is a Smart Contract Security Audit?

A smart contract security audit involves a professional third-party review of the smart contract code to enhance security. Binance Academy's guide explains the importance of these audits.

General Security Principles

Maintaining security is critical in the cryptocurrency space to prevent major exploits. This guide from Binance Academy covers fundamental security principles.

5 Common Crypto Scams and How to Avoid Them

Cryptocurrency users often face various scams, such as giveaway scams and phishing attacks. Binance Academy provides insights on common scams and protection measures.

How to Secure Your Crypto

The phrase "Not your keys, not your crypto" emphasizes the importance of controlling your private keys. Binance Academy offers guidance on securing your cryptocurrency.

What are Cookies?

Cookies store data in your web browser, which can improve your user experience, but does pose potential risks: Learn more about Cookies

How to Spot Scams in DeFi

As decentralized finance grows, so do scams targeting DeFi users. Learn more about Spotting Scams in DeFi

How to Stay Safe on Discord

Discord is popular in the crypto community, but users must be cautious about phishing. Learn more about Staying Safe on Discord

What are Rug Pulls?

A rug pull is a scam where project creators withdraw funds suddenly, leaving investors with nothing. Learn more about Rug Pulls

Crypto Scams

This section provides examples of common scams in the cryptocurrency world and tips to avoid them. It's important to stay vigilant as new scams continuously emerge.

Imposter Scams

Scammers impersonate legitimate entities like cryptocurrency exchanges or celebrities to deceive you into sending money or information. Learn more about Imposter Scams

Phishing Scams

Phishing scams trick you into revealing personal information or login credentials by pretending to be a trusted entity. Learn more about Phishing Scams

Phone Scams

Phone scams involve scammers calling to extract personal information or money. Learn more about Phone Scams

Crypto Giveaway Scams

Scammers claim to give away free cryptocurrency to trick you into sending money or information. Learn more about Crypto Giveaway Scams

Different Investment Scams

Investment scams in crypto can include Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes. Learn more about Investment Scams

Computer Malware Scams

Scammers use malware to steal personal information or credentials. Learn more about Computer Malware Scams

https://p2pfoundation.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/AccountingForPlanetarySurvival_def.pdf

Oracles in the Internet of Impact

Oracles in the context of the Internet of Impact are trusted digitally-enabled services that operate on stateful data to perform Precision Functions (P-functions).

The 10 P-functions of Precision Impact

1. Proofing through evaluation and verification of claims

2. Prediction by determining statistical probabilities and forecasts

3. Personalisation of interventions and responses

4. Prescription to program deterministic interventions and responses

5. Planning support to make decisions about interventions and responses

6. Proposing how to configure interventions and responses

7. Prevention through relative risk calculation and alerting

8. Protection through threat detection and proactive response

9. Profiling to identify patterns of attributes and features

10. Participation by enabling humans in the loop

Users employ ixo Oracles to provide these functions on their data. This helps optimise the outcomes, risks and financial results of cyber-cellular organisations, projects and investments.

Types of Oracles

Oracles are categorised into different namespace types, to help identify the their general purpose. Whilst oracles are all the same entity class, some security and technical characteristics can differ, depending on the oracle type.

For instance, a Treasury Oracle must be listed in the genesis record of an ixo-SDK blockchain. This type of oracle has the privileged capability to programmatically mint, burn or transfer a specific token on the network.

Oracle Trust Model

Web of Trust

Each oracle has a digital identifier (DID), with one or more verifiable credentials. These credentials are issued by other entities that have a high trust rating, serving as Trust Seeds. This creates a stateful trust graph, based on cryptographic proofs, which can be independently extracted by any Internet of Impact user who wishes to verify that an oracle can be trusted.

Trust rating

Trust must be earned over time. The performance of each oracle is recorded in the blockchain record. For a given oracle, a user can determine from the oracle's transaction history how many services the oracle has provided, to how many different users. They can also see any disputes against the oracle, which were upheld against the oracle provider.

Bonded stake

Oracle service providers may be required by the users who employ their oracles, to place a security deposit into escrow, in order to perform services. This performance bond is a risk assurance mechanism for the users of an oracle service. The bond can be slashed if the terms of a Service Execution Agreement are not upheld, when a dispute is adjudicated against the oracle provider.

Future topics

• Oracle launchpad and innovation bonds

• Oracle development toolkit

• Jupyter Notebooks for designing and training oracles

• Federated learning on a Cell Node network

• Oracle credentialing

A global digital immune system for humanity

Sense the state of the world

Sensors

Data collection - claims

Verifying state -

Shared intelligence

Respond to the state of the world

Coordinating agents

Equipping agents

Incentivising agents

Conditional

Incentivise positive future states of the world

Welcome

The open-source ixo Protocol is the basis for building an Internet of Impact for sustainable social, environmental and economic development and to mitigate climate impacts.

The vision of ixo is to build a global digital immune system for humanity, which will enable us to far more effectively sense and respond to sustainability threats and to invest intelligently in opportunities for positive impact.

ixo Documentation - Beta

This ixo documentation is a work in progress, to which all contributors and users of the ixo protocol and its related open-source software are welcome to help improve.

This is a living document which will be continuously updated. Please refer to the git history for this document to view changes.

Help improve this documentation

• Suggest new content

• Request features

• Give general feedback

• Test the documentation by using it!

The preferred way to help make improvements is to post a new discussion, or contribute to an existing discussion, in this Github repo.

Usage and copy rights

Content in the document is copyright of The ixo Foundation. It may be re-used subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Copying content from this documentation

Please attribute the source as The ixo Foundation.

Contributing content to this documentation

Your contributions will be considered open-source and copyright for permissive re-use will transfer to The ixo Foundation, unless your contributions are based on your own prior art. Please ensure that you do not infringe on the intellectual property rights of others when re-using their content here.

Copyright Infringements

We respect the intellectual property of others and ask that you do too. If you believe any content or materials in this documentation violates a copyright held by you and would like to submit a notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or other similar international law, you can submit a notice to the ixo Assistant

Attribution

This website is maintained by ixo.world AG.

Verifiable Claims are the basis for all identified data objects in the Internet of Impact.

Claims are nodes in the Impact Graph. They have relationship edges with the entities which issue, hold, inspect, proof and are the subjects of these claims.

Verifiable Claims encode high-definition data, which has the following characteristics:

1. Resolution to decentralised identifier keys (DID)

2. Linked-data contexts for resolving ontologies

3. Cryptographic verifiability of the data object

4. Content addressability (each claim has a unique identity)

5. Cryptographic authentication of the subject identifier

6. Cryptographic authentication of the issuer identifier

Types of Verifiable Claims

Structure of a Verifiable Claim

Claim objects

Data model

Validation using JSON Schema

Claim signatures

Verifiable Claim encoding

Verifiable Claims are serialised as JSON-LD data schema.

What is a wallet

Keys

Types of keys

Credentials

Like a driver's license.

Non-custodial wallets

Custodial wallets

A project has

Scope

Deliverables

Resources

Time

1. Set up projects from templates, or or create your own.

2. Collect, process & store project data, under your control.

3. Decide who has access to your project, using digital identity credentials.

4. Employ service providers & verification oracles, with automated payments.

5. Issue project tokens to incentivise stake-holders and raise project funding.

Serving the commons

Building new economies

Using feedback systems

No Silos

Project types are

• Accreditation

• Accountability

• Behaviour Change

• Circular Economy

• Civic Action

• Climate Impact

• Climate Adaptation

• Clinical Trial

• Community Currency

• Community Development

• Commons

• Conservation

• Decarbonisation

• Disaster Response

• Ecological Regeneration

• Education & Awareness

• Enterprise Development

• Environmental Protection

• Epidemic Response

• ESG

• Governance

• Identity

• Impact Investment

• Insurance Bond

• Intelligence-gathering

• Lean Data

• Microfinance

• Needs Assessment

• Opinion Survey

• Recycling

• Reforestation

• Refugee Support

• Renewable Energy

• Research & Development

• Skills Development

• Social Enterprise

• Social Finance

• Social Innovation

• Sustainable Capital

• Sustainable Consumption

• Sustainable Infrastructure

• Sustainable Supply Chain

• Universal Basic Income

• Waste Reduction

• Water and oceans

A special type of digital document is the digital building-block of ixo Protocol Networks. An ixo document, together with its associated Decentralised Identifier (DID), identifies and describes each entity in an ixo protocol network. This should become interoperable with all other networks that implement the new W3C Internet standards for a decentralised internet.

The ixo Document also associates cryptographic objects with an entity. This gives the entity remarkable capabilities, such as sovereign control over its own identifier and the ability to authenticate with services, using keys that are referenced in the network's decentralised public key infrastructure.

What is an ixo Entity?

The Internet of Impact is formed by inter-connected decentralised networks of both physical infrastructure and virtual data nodes. Every node which implements the ixo protocol standards can be described as an **ixo Entity. **(The ixo protocol implements core new web standards from W3C).

An ixo Entity has an identity and an associated store of information. The ixo Document provides the genesis record for this information and can maintain a core record of the entity's information and connections. This includes specifying end-points for locating other information and services that are associated with the entity.

Entities connect to other entities, using cryptographic proofs. These authenticated connections form Webs of Trust, through which information and value can securely flow.

By subscribing to standard data models and open data schemas, entity nodes and the connections (edges) between these nodes form an ontologically rich and precise knowledge-graph. These graphs can be searched and navigated through the Internet of Impact and hyperlinked into Web 2.0 networks.

Entities in the context of ixo protocol networks

An entity in the context of ixo can be a:

• Cell (type of Decentralised Autonomous Organisation)

• Project (time-limited coordination mechanism for delivering, evaluating and funding a specified scope of claims)

• Oracle (software-mediated data service)

• Fund ("smart contract")

• Data Asset (dataset, algorithm or encoded model)

• Relayer (connecting market need to products and services delivered through the network)

• Agent (person, organisation or machine)

Each Entity has an identity, which is defined by a Decentralised Identifier (DID).

What is an ixo document?

An entity is described by information contained in a standard Document format - the DID Document (DDO).

Document storage

The ixo Network maintains a distributed registry of entities, which consists of DID:DDO pairs. An entity DID does not change, but the DDO record can be modified.

All changes to the DDO are permanently stored and cannot be erased. Therefore, the information contained within a DDO on a public network must not contain any private or personal identifier data. For this reason (and to reduce the replicated data storage load on the network), the bulk of the descriptive content relating to an entity is stored "off-chain".

As the default, ixo uses IPFS for off-chain document storage to be persistent and available. Document data stored in IPFS may be either encrypted or unencrypted, depending on the preference of the DID controller. Off-chain objects that form part of the DDO are by default referenced in the DDO using Content Identifiers (CID), which enable the data to be validated and locates the content file without any dependencies on URL paths that tend to break or become unavailable over time.

Document Objects

ixo Documents are compiled using a logical structure that can be accessed through standard API interfaces. This builds on the principles of the Document Object Model (DOM), which is a core internet standard from W3C.

The generic structure of an ixo document has 3 sections:

1. Header section which contains the document metadata.

2. Page section which contains public descriptive content about the entity, with a content-addressable link to off-chain document content (which may be clear-text or encrypted).

3. Core properties which contains objects for:

• Identifiers

• Public Keys

• Authentication

• Authorisation and delegation

• Service endpoints

• Cryptographic proofs

See the technical specification [insert link] for these document objects.

Document versioning

When a Document is created on an ixo protocol network, this produces a Genesis Record in the blockchain registry.

ixo Documents can only be updated following protocol rules:

1. A document update is only valid if it is added to the Document chain, which is an append-only log stored in an ixo protocol blockchain database.

2. To add an update to the document chain, a valid message must be submitted to the blockchain, which is signed by the controller of the DID for the entity.

3. The `documentupdate` message must contain a CID pointer to the previous record as prev, a patch containing the update to the document as content, and an encoded signature.

Purpose tokens

Impact Identification Protocol

Digital Identifiers

High-definition Data

Claims

Impact Verification Protocol

Crypto-economic proofs

Impact Valuation Protocol

Tokenisation

Programmatic Capital Protocol

Payment Tokens

Bond Tokens

Staking Tokens

Impact Tokens

Voting Tokens

The purpose of an Evaluation Oracle

How an Evaluation Oracle works

1. Accesses the claims in a Cell-node database, for which it is authorised.

2. Reads the claim data.

3. Uses external information sources to triangulate and predict the odds of claim attributes being true-positive.

4. Opines on whether the claim meets pre-determined criteria for approval

5. Enriches the claim with additional information, such as data transformations and expert opinion.

6. Issues a cryptographic proof based on the analysis and approval status

Fund projects to achieve results, using programmable capital. Use financing innovations, such as Alphabonds. Get integrated reporting on financial & development results. Automate agreements and efficiently resolve disputes, using smart contracts. Build and invest in tokenised investment portfolios.

The digital dynamo for processing, storing, protecting and sharing impact claims data. Deployed as fully decentralised virtual containers that are identified and secured on the ixo blockchain. A marvel built for Web 3 data sovereignty and interoperability! ixo-pods provide the open-source software infrastructure for all types of data-intensive sustainable development applications.

Automatically deploys when a project is initiated. Configures to the requirements of the project. Validates claim submissions in real-time (eliminating duplicates). Built for high-definition data, based on the new web standards for verifiable claims. Stores data in a cryptographically secured private ledger. Identified and secured by the ixo public blockchain. Includes a powerful event sourcing module and web APIs. Access is controlled by decentralised authentication. Enables secure communications and messaging. Project Founders own and control their project data and decide where this should be hosted. This is free open-source software that is fast, inexpensive and highly scalable.

ixo Data Stores are fast, cost-effective, highly scalable and fully interoperable with a wide range of services.

You hold the keys to your data and decide who gets access. Processes project data automatically, as each claim is checked and validated on submission. No more double-counting. Record claims in a high-definition data format that is machine-readable and verifiable. Each project Publishes claims metadata to the ixo public blockchain, for transparency, accountability and trust. Built for Web 3.

Collect, validate, store and share your project data with private, secure, decentralised data containers, your data is always Built for Web 3, ixo Project Data Stores automatically process and store claims in a new high-definition data format. Each claim is validated and published to the public ixo blockchain.

Impact Relayer Hub

Impact Zones

Cell Nodes

Know Your Customer (KYC)

Anti-money laundering (AML)

Payments Processing

Asset issuance

Asset trading

Asset management

Data protection and privacy

Network topology

Internet of Impact

ixo Protocol networks are formed by connecting distributed blockchain nodes in a way that is designed to create a global Internet of Impact. This builds on core Internet protocols and standards, but uses additional and repurposed standards, in the same way as Web 2.0 has been adapted to form the Internets of Commerce, Finance, Social Media, Internet of Things, etc.

The ixo Protocols provide additional common operating protocols and standards that build on foundational new World-wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for Linked-data, Decentralised Identifiers and Verifiable Claims. ixo also builds on emerging Web3 standards for tokenisation, cryptographic message-signing and validation.

Together, the ixo Protocols provide new ways of:

• Identifying impact with decentralised identifiers and high-definition data

• **Verifying impact **with crypto-economic proofs

• **Valuing impact **through tokenisation of impact data assets

The Internet of Impact will become interconnected by the Inter-blockchain Communication (IBC) Protocol. In the future this will also connect across protocols, to a universe of other Web3 networks, including for instance, the Ethereum Network.

Impact Zones

ixo Protocol Networks may be independently configured into zones that have their own security, governance and economic mechanisms. These networks may be public or private, closed or open. The building-blocks are modular, open-source software components that anyone can reuse, build on and repurpose for their own diverse applications and use-cases.

Project Nodals

These network zones provide the backbone that supports a reticular mesh of project Nodals. Nodals can be thought of as the cells that are responsible for coordinating, resourcing and incentivising the sense and respond activities of the network. Each Nodal is a containerised, sovereign message processing and project data storage component.

Network nodes

Validator Node operators of the Sustainability Hub are referred to as Relayers. These organisations join a consortium which is responsible for securely operating blockchain nodes and to host the software clients that deliver applications to end-users. Relayers also provide channels to the markets in which they operate, providing support to their customers and end-users with value-adding products and services.

Applications built on ixo protocol networks are delivered as web, mobile, IoT and Precision Oracle services. A collection of open-source ixo client applications is available for developers to build on or adapt to their own business requirements.

The** ixo protocols** are based on core new standards for the decentralised internet from the World-wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Blockchain SDK

The software clients that provide the communications, data processing and storage capabilities of ixo protocol networks are modules that build on the generic Cosmos SDK, written in Golang.

In addition to the generic Cosmos modules, which have been purposed for the Internet of Impact, the ixo SDK includes application-specific modules, which include:

• Projects Module

• Bonds Module

• Data Assets Module

• Identity Module

• Fiat Banking Oracle Module

• Alpha Oracle Module

The ixo blockchain contains the records of every claim that is issued against a project and the subsequent evaluation of those claims. Each record is validated by a quorum of validator nodes before it is written to the chain and thereafter the record cannot be removed or updated. This data is then aggregated to build out the final states of the projects.

All the information on the ixo blockchain is publicly available through the ixo Explorer. This data includes the project information, stats regarding the project, the stakeholders of the project and the structure of data being captured against the project. All actual claim data is stored in the Project Datastore.

Privacy of Data

Much of the data that is captured within a claim is highly sensitive in nature. This data might have specific regulator requirements such as GDPR or maybe the data may not reside outside certain geographical boundaries. In order to comply with this and to also put the data into the hands of the owners of the project we have created the concept of independent data stores for each project.

The ixo Blockchain keeps a link to the location of these project data stores and provides services to the project data that are governed by cryptographic access controls.

Security

All requests that create data or access sensitive data require cryptographic signatures and a capabilities model supports this to provide finer grained access control.

Message Flows

Update Messages

In general update requests are created and signed on the front end using our keysafe which holds the private keys for the user. The request with its signature portion is then passed to the Project Datastore (PDS) when it is processed and the results are then ledgered onto the ixo blockchain with hash references back to the original transaction on the PDS. The block containing the request is then processed on the ixo blockchain and the ixo Explorer syncs this block to the current system state.

Read Messages

When reading publicly availably data a REST call is made to the ixo Explorer which contains the current state of the blockchain. If private information needs to be accessed then a signed request is submitted to the PDS which will respond with the data if the the signature and capabilities of the user adhere to the policies for that data.

Cellular organisations

Cellular organisations (Cells) are a highly effective coordination mechanism for people to self-organise and self-govern towards achieving a common mission. By definition, cells are decentralised, autonomous, locally responsive, adaptable, hyper-networked, intelligent and purpose-driven. They are highly suitable for virtual and remote teams to work together and share common resources.

Cellular organisational structures are common in nature. Think about how human immune cells sense and respond to threats with targeted precision. Immune cells signal other systems, amplify their responses through replication, produce neutralising or catalytic antibodies and build cellular memory. Each of these has strong analogies with digitally-enhanced cellular organisations.

Cellular organisations are taken to a whole new level in the Internet of Impact. Cells now benefit from the capabilities of digital communication tools, stateful data, programmable capital and networked intelligence-sharing.

Cellular organisations can build a digitally-enhanced immune system for humanity.

Cell nodes

Cell nodes are the digital infrastructure for all types of cellular organisations. These are decentralised, autonomous data stores with digital agency and cryptographic signing capabilities.

Cell nodes enable data to be communicated quickly and securely through webs of trust. All participants in a cell have access to the same information and share intelligence both within their own cell node and with other organisations, through Internet of Impact networks.

The digital artefacts created by a cell (such as Project Documents) are stored in the node as stateful records which are referenced in a distributed ledger. Public metadata are stored using the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). This allows cell nodes to retain a form of memory that can be stigmergically shared and rapidly amplified when cells need to be replicated or re-activated.

The capabilities of cell nodes

Cell nodes have powerful built-in Web 3.0 capabilities, such as:

• Stateless validation of data entering the cell node.

• Hash-chain data storage, secured by a public blockchain ledger.

• Publicly accessible file storage that is content addressable and tamper-proof.

• Decentralised authentication using cryptographic identifiers and provable credentials.

• Cryptographic message signing.

Cell nodes also connect to the universe of Web 2.0 services through conventional application-programming interfaces (APIs).

The features of cell nodes

Cell nodes are configured to provide cellular organisations with powerful tools that can be used 'out of the box'. Cell nodes also connect through the Internet of Impact to third-party data, application extensions and integrations.

Core cell node features currently include:

• Projects

• Secure peer-to-peer communication

• Precision Oracles

• Data marketplace

• Alpha Bond funding

• Agent credentialing

• Token issuance

Extended Cell Node features will include:

• Dispute resolution

• Crowd-funding

• Prediction markets

• Bounties

• Blockchain Accounting

• Legal agreements

Purpose of a cell

The purpose of a Cell defines how it will operate in terms of membership, size, location, lifespan, scope of projects it undertakes and other types of organisational characteristics. A Cell Node is configured to fit the purpose of a cell.

The founder/s of a cell define its purpose - usually with an explicit mission statement.

Examples of cell types and their primary purpose:

The mission of a cell

Each cell defines its mission explicitly in terms of credible commitments that can be collectively monitored. Cell commitments are accountable, measurable and verifiable. For instance a Procurement Cell can define its mission as: "Source and distribute 1,000 Ventilators to provide care for people infected with the Covid-19 virus."

Cell agents

Participants in a cell are referred to as Agents. Agents include identified individuals, organisations, software agents and devices.

Agent roles can be broadly categorised as:

• Implementing agents

• Evaluation agents

• Investment agents

Each agent is identified by a self-sovereign digital identifier, with associated verifiable credentials. Credentials are issued by known entities within a web of trust. Every message or transaction an agent sends is signed with their Identity. This ensures a high level of agent accountability, trust and compliance.

Agents are given rights for performing specific roles. They issue verifiable claims which attest to the contributions they make towards the mission of the cell. This makes agents fully accountable. The Cell Node is designed to store agent identifiers and credentials in a way that ensures privacy and protects their personal information.

Cells may incentivise agents with tokenised rewards, which are tracked by the Cell Node. Agents can also be economically penalised for not operating within the rules of the cell.

Find out more about Agents.

Cell projects

The participants in a cell pursue their mission by implementing one or more projects. The scope of each project is defined in an immutable Project Document. Project information and all the data collected by every project that the cell implements gets stored in the Cell Node.

The performance of each project is tracked through claims which are submitted by cell agents who are authorised to work on the project. Claims are independently evaluated and verified (for instance, by Proofing Oracles).

Find out more about Projects and Claims Verification.

Cell sovereignty

Cells are independent, sovereign entities within the Internet of Impact. A Cell Node embodies the digital agency of cells with encrypted identifiers, provable credentials and cryptographic keys for authentication, signing messages and secure messaging.

Each cell operates its own private computational and data storage node. Cell Node software and data can be self-hosted or hosted as a service.

The founder of a cell is the ultimate controller, as they hold the keys to the Cell Node and retain full external access control over the cell's data.

The cell founder decides which agents and services are permissioned to connect with the cell and is able to manage or revoke these permissions. Access and authentication is autonomously managed by the Cell Node, without relying on centralised authentication services. This makes Cell Nodes censorship-resistant.

The cell founder

The role of a cell founder is to instantiate the cell, manage the keys of the cell and ensure that the call operates effectively.

The founder of a cell can be:

• One or more identified individuals;

• One or more identified organisations;

• A combination of individuals and/or organisations operating through a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO).

Cells are principally organisations of people with digital super-powers. To be successful, participants in a cell need to be well-governed, incentivised and empowered. This requires leadership, cooperation and accountability.

Cell governance

Once a cell has been formed, it may be governed by the founder/s or by all the participants in the cell. The Cell Founder configures a governance mechanism when the Cell Node is instantiated.

Decisions and actions may be made by the Cell Founder, or by cell agents. The Cell Node provides governance tools for stakeholders to make proposals, vote and pass executable resolutions. These tools are available as Cell Node plug-ins, such as DAOStack Holographic consensus.

Cell incentives

Cells exist within an economy that broadly have three types of common enterprises, in which cell agents may be incentivised to participate:

• Entrepreneurial Common: interfaces the cell with external ecosystems and markets. This common sets financial and monetary policy. It determines the price of cell membership, how the cell is owned and how to distribute capital. Incentives for participation in the entrepreneurial enterprise may be created by issuing and distributing shares or tokens in the cell that embody rights of ownership, economic participation and access to the cell's capital resources.

• Production Common: produces goods and services though the cooperative efforts of the cell members. As incentives, contributors may be paid for their work or receive shares for the value they have created.

• Beneficial Common: governs the cell's mission, impact goals, operating policies, membership, consensus rules, rights and incentive mechanisms. Voting rights are an incentive for participating in the beneficial common.

Financing cells

There are many possible ways of raising capital resources for a cell. Operating capital can come from more traditional commercial, philanthropic or peer-to-peer sources. Instruments include grants, venture capital, loans, crowd-funding, mutual credit, etc. Now there are also decentralised financing instruments such as tokenisation, Alpha Bonds and Quadratic Funding.

The use of capital by a cell can be transparently tracked and accounted for using the Cell Node's blockchain ledger. This includes a mechanism for tracking financial transactions in fiat bank accounts and representing these on the ledger.

Capital flows can be programmatically allocated and distributed using Alpha Bonds. Conditional payment triggers are linked to provable results. This has tremendous potential for risk-adjusted financing of new ventures and performance-based contracts.

How to set up a Cell Node

The easiest way to start is with a template. Browse app.ixo.world to find one that fits close enough to the purpose and other characteristics of the cell you want to form. The ixo cell node guide explains this further.

If you can't find a template that suits your specific needs, start a new cell template with guidance from the ixo-assistant chatbot.

The costs of operating a Cell Node

The costs of hosting a Cell Node depends on whether this is self-hosted or hosted as a service. For hosted options offered by ixo.world see the pricing guide.

Registering a Cell Node with a Decentralised Identifier and Cell Document on the Sustainability Hub incurs a negligible transaction fee (gas) for writing these records to the blockchain.

Cells can choose to employ services and acquire applications from a growing network marketplace, where the costs are determined by providers.

The ixo blockchain is open-source software to provide computational and data storage infrastructure for the Internet of Impact. This implements open standards to form an inter-operable network of networks. Anyone can set up an ixo blockchain based network, which will provide users with a common set of functionalities.

A network running the core ixo blockchain software can fulfil the following functional requirements:

A modular SDK framework

The ixo Blockchain software is modular. Application-specific networks can configure these modules for their purpose, add new modules, or swap-out some of the non-core modules. These modules are written in Go.

ixo blockchain SDK modules

The purpose of each module is briefly outlined in the table and described in technical detail on the linked pages.

Built using the Cosmos-SDK framework

The ixo blockchain SDK shares a set of core blockchain modules with the Cosmos-SDK and is built using the same standards. The Cosmos-SDK is a software development kit for building application-specific blockchains.

This enables functional interoperability between blockchains that implement the same modules.

For example:

• The MsgSend function transfers fungible tokens of designated denominations between counter-parties, using the bank module.

• The accountquerier function, which is part of the Auth Module, returns information about an account, regardless of which chain this account is created on.

Offer services to projects, in a peer-to-peer marketplace. Submit high-definition claims, using apps and connected devices. Prove your credentials and grow reputation, with self-sovereign identity. Receive automated digital payments for services. See personal performance dashboards, owning your private data.

https://docs.ixo.foundation/ixo/developers/relayer-setup/node-cells

Create your personal wallet

Medium Article for Reference: The ixo Keysafe, KYC and becoming an ixo member

Prove your identity

Data Standards

Data standards are the rules by which information is organised, described, formatted, transmitted, and made available for different uses.

These standards include, but are not limited to, data models, data elements (sometimes referred to as schemas), data formats, and data protocols.

The ixo-Protocol describes data standards which are relevant to information about impacts and changes in the observable state of the world. This enables impacts and world states to be described, verified, compared, and transformed into digital assets.

The ixo Protocol provides standards for:

• accorded-rights

• attributes

• claims

• credentials

• entities

• evaluation

• identifier

• indicators

• interface

• linked-resources

• methods

• payments

• proofs

• tokens

• vocab

Data standards make it easier to publish, share, and use data across diverse communities. Standards can significantly enhance data quality, open new markets, promote innovation, enable the creation of sharable tools and services, lower costs for data production and use, support policy implementation, encourage collaboration, and much more.

ixo-Protocol data standards are based on the W3C specifications for Linked-data, Verifiable Credentials and Decentralised Identifiers.

Methodological Standards

The simplest way to start configuring a claim template is to use a pre-existing template as the basis. Templates can be found in the Templates Explorer section of the ixo-webclient.

To create a new Claim Template from scratch, you can ask the ixo-assistant to guide you through the process by asking something like "I want to create a new Service Claim template". This will open up the relevant page in the ixo-webclient where you can complete the claim template setup using the configuration form.

Every claim template has three sections, with associated objects:

1. Form fields, which includes the following types of cards:

• Short text

• Long Text

• Multiple-choice

• Radio button

• Photo capture / image upload

• Picture selector

• Sliding scale

• Video capture / file upload

• Sound recording / file upload

• Document scan / file upload

• QR code scan

• Email with validation

• Mobile phone with validation

• Identity and credential with validation

• Profile photo for identity verification

1. Settings, which includes metadata about the claim template:

• Creator

• Owner

• Status

• Version

• Terms of Use

• Privacy Settings

• Privacy Credentials

• Filters

• Display Credentials

• Embedded Analytics

1. Advanced Settings

• Linked Entities

• Payments

• Staking

• Nodes

• Funding

• Keys

• Services

• Data

Verifiable Claims are defined as a JSON Schema using JSON-LD.

The simplest way to set up a new entity is to use a pre-configured template as a starting document. Search for a relevant template in the web-client Explorer templates library.

Alternatively, initiate the process of setting up your entity through the web-client explorer control panel, where you will find the relevant button in the Actions panel to:

• Create a Cell

• Create a Project

• Create an Oracle

• Create a Template

• Create a Data Asset

• Create an Investment

What is an Entity?

To understand the concept of an Entity in the Internet of Impact, check out:

What you will need

Before creating any entity in the Internet of Impact, you must have set up an Impact Wallet and obtained your digital credentials, so that each new entity you create can participate in the web of trust that connects all entities.

To publish your entity onto the Internet of Impact, you will sign a transaction with your cryptographic keys, which are stored in your wallet. A small transaction fee in IXO credits must be paid towards the network costs of processing the data and permanently storing your entity document.

Configuring your entity

Each entity has a digital Entity Document containing a number of prescribed linked-data Objects. In the following section we will de-mysify these objects and break the document down into 3 sections:

1. Entity Page

2. Settings

3. Advanced Settings

Entity documents can be set up and published using the ixo client software. For this demonstration, we will use the ixo.world web-client interface.

Configure your entity page content

The Entity Page contains information about your entity that you want end-users will view through web and mobile client software. Think of this as your entity's own web page.

This information is input and displayed using cards. The default types of cards available are:

• Header card

• Body content card

• Image in article card

• Video embed card

• Table card

• Profiles card

• Linked entities listing card

Cards accept plain text and render this in the pre-formatted style determined by the portal through which the page content is being viewed.

Configure your Entity Settings

Settings are what define the metadata and operating parameters for your entity. Using the ixo web-client, you can be assisted by the ixo AI Assistant to complete these configurations, which include:

• Creator identity, brand and credentials

• Owner identity and credentials

• Credentials of the entity

• Operating parameters, such as start and end dates

• Privacy settings and data view permissions

• Filter categories and tags

• Claims templates for a range of claim types associated with the entity

Configure Advanced Settings

In this section, you will provide objects such as:

• Cell-node binding which determines where the entity data is stored

• Associated entities that are linked to this entity, for mapping relationships

• Public keys for authentication, message signing and encryption

• Services and their associated endpoints

Getting Super Powers

Becoming a super hero is a fairly straight forward process:

Once you're strong enough, save the world:

Getting Super Powers

Becoming a super hero is a fairly straight forward process:

Once you're strong enough, save the world:

Getting Super Powers

Becoming a super hero is a fairly straight forward process:

Once you're strong enough, save the world:

Getting Super Powers

Becoming a super hero is a fairly straight forward process:

Once you're strong enough, save the world: