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The Internet of Services (IOS) is a blockchain platform that support the IOST cryptocurrency. IOST was created by the Internet of Services Foundation, which is led by Jimmy Zhong, former co-founder of Studypool and Dora. The Internet of Services Foundation has stated that their goal is to solve the scalability issues of current blockchain technology and make decentralized services with large transaction volumes feasible.

Introduction
Blockchain technologies have continuously evolved since Satoshi Nakamoto use it for the Bitcoin network in 2008. However, scalability remains an issue with blockchain technologies, precluding it from more widespread use. This was highlighted in December 2017, when demand for Cryptokitties, a game that runs on the Ethereum blockchain, considerably slowed down the network.

The Internet of Services Platform
The Internet of Services Foundation is developing next-generation blockchain technology that will provide its network infrastructure the capability to host any number of online services and their users.

The IOS platform will provide its users a completely decentralized way to exchange online services and digital goods. It aims to enable developers to deploy large-scale distributed applications with the ability to support massive numbers of users. Once fully-developed, the platform may be able to process as many as 1 million transactions per second.

The Internet of Services Foundation is developing IOST around the following technologies: Proof-of-Believability (PoB), Efficient Distributed Sharding (EDS), Atomix, and Micro-State Blocks.

Proof of Believability (PoB)
IOST uses a consensus engine built with a faster-graded Byzantine fault tolerance mechanism that allows for a set of nodes to decide on the next block. A key aspect of PoB is that nodes are selected fairly by using algorithmic randomness based on input from previously generated blocks. Thus, accounts with more contribution to the network are more likely to be selected as the next validators and beneficiaries of the newly generated blocks. Unlike proof of stake, validators are selected using a certain algorithm, not just by chance and their number of tokens. PoB guarantees that nodes have negligible probability to misbehave, while significantly increasing the transaction throughput.

Efficient Distributed Sharding
This is a sharding format for large and strongly bias-resistant shards, achieved through a client-server randomness scavenging mechanism and leader election. This ensures that the IOS network can handle increasingly larger transaction throughput.

Atomix
This atomic commit protocol is used to commit transactions across shards. Atomix ensures that all transactions either commit or abort atomically when they affect IOS blockchain states distributed across multiple shards. The application of a two-tier verification process minimizes the latency of micro-transactions, ensuring faster throughput.

Micro State Blocks
Most blockchains require validators to download the entire blockchain starting from the Genesis block. The IOS blockchain aims to be different by using classic distributed checkpointing principles to periodically produce consistent, collectively-signed micro state blocks that minimize storage and update overhead. Using these blocks, validators can enable blockchain pruning to reduce storage and configuration costs, and quickly catch up with the current blockchain state.

Current Status
IOST is currently an ERC-20 token built on top of the Ethereum network. When the IOStoken blockchain becomes fully operational, the IOST ERC-20 tokens will be converted to IOST hosted on the Internet of Services blockchain.