The IOTA Foundation continues to support the investigation of new consensus models for the IOTA Tangle. Already in May of this year, it announced the investigation of cellular automata as a possible extension of IOTA’s consensus mechanism in the context of a Coordicide grant to Dr. André Vilela and Dr. Kenric Nelson.
The main purpose of the grant was, as stated at the time by the IOTA Foundation, to support “beyond the horizon” research to explore future possibilities for the protocol. According to the IOTA Foundation, although cellular automata are very difficult to analyze, they have great potential in terms of speed and communication efficiency. The research has been outsourced because “the IOTA team is very busy publishing Coordicide“.
Cellular automata as an extension of IOTA’s consensus model
As Andrew Greve of the IOTA Foundation has now explained in a new blog post, the three-month research has produced its first promising results. Vilela and Nelson from the University of Boston conducted simulations of cellular automata to determine the agreement and success rates for consensus in various voting scenarios between connected neighbors.
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