- The IOTA Foundation was selected by the European Commission to be the sole Distributed Ledger Technology project to participate in the development of a digital solution for the mining supply chain.
- The IOTA Tangle will provide a trusted layer of data exchange for the mining supply chain within the project.
The good news about new cooperations and memberships in consortia has not stopped for the IOTA Foundation in recent weeks. One reason for this is that the IOTA Foundation has proactively participated in research and development efforts of the EU Commission in recent years to increase its reach. The main purpose was to educate third parties about the technology of the IOTA protocol and at the same time identify new requirements that could be incorporated into the protocol in the long term and increase adoption.
This work is now slowly bearing fruit, as the IOTA Foundation states in a blog post published yesterday. Following the +CityXchange projects and the Climate KIK Initiative, the IOTA Foundation was selected for the “Dig_it” project earlier this year, which is a cooperation project for the Horizon 2020 program by the EU that focuses on the digitization of the mining industry.
The Dig_it project is a Research and Innovation Action (RIA) that brings together a consortium of 16 partners from across Europe to develop a digital solution for the mining supply chain (gold, copper, charcoal) to create a more sustainable mining industry. The project will run for 48 months and the entire consortium will receive 7 million euro in funding from the European Union.
Especially the IOTA Foundation will receive funding of 155.000 EUR to develop the necessary interfaces between all partners and technologies. As the only project developing a Distributed Ledger technology, IOTA will have the task to create a trusted level for the data exchange of the mining supply chain.
Other partners selected by the European Commission include ITAINNOVA, Brunel University, Core Innovation, Tau, Rotech technology, LIBRA AI, ICCS Research, EUROCORE, STRATAGEM, Libra, SINTEF Molab, SINTEF Helg. & Schneider Electric. The official start of the project was on 5 May 2020. The IOTA Foundation describes the concrete goals of the project as following:
Dig_it aims to also tackle another major issue affecting the mining industry: the public opinion around the current poor reputation of the industry due to its impact on the environment and on the health of their workers.
The Data will be collected using sensors integrated in workers’ clothing and will be supplemented with data from monitored machines, vehicles and tools involved in mine operations. On the other hand, the acquired data will also improve the image of the mining industry by presenting the data stored on the DLT to the public. IOTA will be the basis for this.
Specifically, IOTA Streams will be used to manage and ensure access to unalterable data for specific stakeholders, including public authorities and the public, etc. IOTA’s Digital Identity will also be used:
IOTA Unique Digital Identity will allow to verify data authenticity. The permissionless nature of the IOTA ledger will guarantee that no party will control the infrastructure, while its feeless nature will guarantee that such data is always free to access.
After the development phase of the project has been completed, the new technology is expected to be tested in the last quarter of 2020:
After the initial development phase, the project will start testing solutions in real use cases. Deployment and test of new solutions will start from the last quarter of 2020. Use cases will be validated in 5 mines, located in Spain, Italy, Norway and Finland. All mines are underground, focus on different materials and provide unique challenges.
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