Interviews and Reviews

Interview with Lohan Spies the Product and Security Advisor for ixo Foundation.

The ixo Foundation is creating a “new operating system for the Impact Economy. Using blockchain and Web3 standards, ixo enables anyone to collect, measure, evaluate, value, and tokenize verified impact data.” Lohan will be discussing the ixo products and opportunities with us in this interview.

1) Please tell us your name and about yourself?

My name is Lohan Spies and am the Product and Security Advisor for the ixo Foundation I am a serial entrepreneur focused on building start-ups that leverage decentralized trust networks to create a more sustainable future for humanity.

My ventures have included Global Consent, which focused on digital identity and personal data protection, as well as Trustlab, a trust-tech venture production studio based in Cape Town. Previously, I co-founded an information security startup in Angola after a career as an IT security analyst.

2) What is the ixo Foundation?

The ixo Foundation is a nonprofit established to develop the open-source software and technology of the ixo Protocol and ixo Network and to foster open development of the larger ixo ecosystem.

ixo is helping the United Nations meet its 2030 Sustainable Development Goals by building a revolutionary blockchain-based data protocol to measure the real-world impacts of investments into sustainable social, environmental and economic development.

3) What are the Major Features and Services provided by ixo Foundation?

ixo is the new operating system for the Impact Economy, which is created by capital flows that are invested towards addressing the world’s greatest social, environmental and economic sustainability challenges. These challenges are increasingly seen as opportunities to open up new markets and to generate new forms of economy — for instance, based on renewable energy using sustainable, exponential technologies.
All impact investments need verified impact data to prove that value has been delivered, to get evidence for results and to improve how impacts are achieved. Until now, it has not been technically or economically feasible to produce, measure and value impact-related data at scale in ways that are cost-effective and useful.

Now, using blockchain and Web3 standards, ixo enables anyone to collect, measure, evaluate, value and tokenize verified impact data. When impact claims are verified, valuable digital assets are created.. We call these Impact Tokens. Impact Tokens are a new form of capital in the Impact Economy.

There can be many types of Impact Tokens: for social development, carbon credits, clean water, and so on. Impact Tokens can be traded as a crypto-assets and exchanged for fiat, or similar impact assets. For instance, a project that increases the use of clean-burning cookstoves to reduce carbon emissions and prevent pollution-related respiratory complications can claim both climate impacts and health impacts, without the problem of double-counting.

Impact tokens tell the story of a positive impact that has been delivered. Each token is associated with the verified data that proves the credibility of the impact in an accountable and transparent way.

The ixo operating system can enable a fast-scaling, decentralized marketplace in which verified impact data is produced and traded through networks. An analogy is the ecosystem that has developed around the Ethereum Network.

Participation in this ecosystem will be coordinated and incentivized by the IXO network Token. The token mechanism enables otherwise competing initiatives and incumbent infrastructures to join efforts, by using a common standard to exchange value within this ecosystem.

ixo provides a trusted global information network that is owned by everyone, enabling anyone to become the creators of their own impact projects and stakeholders in the projects they believe in.

4) What is Global Impact Ledger and how does it work?

The Global Impact Ledger is the decentralized data storage layer for the ixo protocol. This also provides data processing capabilities for claims to be evaluated.

The ledger governs access to all claims data. It permits authorized evaluation agents to use the data for evaluating the claims that are associated with a specific impact exchange. Once an evaluator verifies a claim, they issue a signed attestation as a Proof of Impact that records the result of the evaluation, together with other useful information.

Verified impact claims and the associated Proof of Impact are recorded as digital assets in the ledger, in the form of cryptographic Impact Tokens. These transactions include each claims metadata that enables anyone to query the ledger and analyze or visualize the impacts.

This is great for accountability and transparency. For instance, impact dashboards can be constructed to view types of impacts at any level — from global to local, and from different stakeholder perspectives.

The Global Impact Ledger functions as a virtual index to all the verified impact claims data processed using the ixo Protocol. This provides a growing ocean of global big-impact data that can be shared and used for all kinds of valuable applications. The actual impact claim data is stored off-node under the control of the data owner. This can be configured for any type of data storage service – including on-premise, decentralized (e.g. using IPFS or IPDB ), or in various cloud configurations.

Data flowing through the Global Impact Ledger provides real-time information feedback loops to optimize how investments are made, how impacts are managed and how claims are evaluated.

Many innovative financing and performance accounting applications can be built on the shared data layer of the Global Impact Ledger.

5) Tell us more about the IXO token?

IXO tokens are the primary cryptographic tokens (blockchain-based units) of the ecosystem enabled by the ixo protocol. The holder of an ixo token has the right to use services, applications and economic mechanisms that are offered within this ecosystem.

Access to the ixo network services is charged on a transaction fee basis. Transactions can only be paid using the IXO native token. This will enable frictionless transactions across geographic territories and between applications that use the ixo Protocol. It also provides a more price-stable medium of exchange that is not affected by unpredictable fluctuations in other general-purpose currencies, such as Bitcoin and Ether, which are subject to excessive market speculation.

Users of the ixo network can purchase IXO Tokens through application interfaces, to immediately pay network transaction fees when they access the network. The Network does not hold stocks of tokens. Pricing of the tokens at the transaction interface is linked to the market price of tokens.

The IXO token utility will provide holders with rights to:

  • Access the hosting services of the network and process and store impact claims and related data.
    Use the ixo software applications at a zero-rated license fee.
  • Operate network nodes, which requires depositing a security stake to assure the integrity of the network. This also accords the rights to participate in network governance mechanisms.
  • Participate as agents providing services through the network, by depositing a reputational stake that disincentivizes poor service delivery. Staked tokens are lost (burnt) for poor performance.
  • Have impact claims evaluated. These services will typically be performed by software algorithms (evaluation oracles) or human agents that are augmented by software.
  • Access tokenized services from third-party providers. For instance, smart contract driven dispute-resolution services.

6) What is the difference between the ixo token and Impact Tokens?

IXO tokens are a cryptographic means of exchange within the ixo network. Impact Tokens, on the other hand, are generated for a project by a smart contract that algorithmically determines the price on issuance or repurchase of the project’s impact tokens, based on a transparent mechanism that statistically measures the probability of the project succeeding. The probability of a project succeeding is based on the proportion of successful impact claims that have been verified against the target number of claims set when the project was founded.

Unlike IXO tokens, Impact Tokens should only be exchanged directly with a project’s Decentralized Impact Exchange smart contract, so there will be no market incentive to trade these through secondary exchanges.

7) What is next on the ixo roadmap?

While we are not running an ICO at the moment, we do want our community to feel as involved as possible. We are working on a number of initiatives to engage the community, including meetups, podcasts, newsletters, AMAs and an ambassador program.
We’ll be launching an invite-only private beta for our closest supporters who will be considered for exclusive membership when ixo goes live.

8) Do you have more information for our readers?

Verified Impact data should inform, drive and help govern how investments are made for goods and services to be delivered in ways that promote sustainable development. Investors and service providers need good-quality, trusted data to prioritize how resources are used and to know what works. Trusted data should also increase accountability, reduce inequalities and injustice and ensure that the right goods and services are delivered to the right beneficiaries. The ixo network can provide data-driven proof of impacts.

ixo’s decentralized marketplace for investing in and delivering sustainable development impacts will drive the growth of the Impact Economy, while anyone will have the tools to participate and the power to make positive changes.

ixo’s Global Impact Ledger will also provide a shared big-impact data commons for the world. Through advances in AI and data analytics, this data will provider deeper insights and drive smarter decisions that will optimize sustainable development and increase the chances of meeting the Global Goals by 2030.

Sign up to our newsletter https://bit.ly/2IFsp9F or join our telegram channel for more information https://t.me/ixonetwork

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