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- IOTA Streams could already lose its alpha version status at the end of this week and be released in version 1.0
- IOTA Streams are a greatly improved version of Masked Authenticated Messaging (MAM v0), which was launched in November 2017.
After the alpha version of IOTA Streams was released in February, the release of version 1.0 could already take place at the end of this week. Brord van Wierst, developer at the IOTA Foundation, explained via Discord in response to the question when “IOTA Streams will be ready” that currently only minor changes are necessary:
Were aiming for end of week, just doing some minor changes and working on bindings for C.
When asked if IOTA streams would be ready before the launch of Chrysalis phase 2, van Wierst also added
We are waiting for the rust library for phase 2 implementation, but streams p2 will be ready before launch of p2 for sure!
MAM vs. IOTA Streams
IOTA Streams are a new and greatly improved version of MAM v0 (Masked Authenticated Messaging), which was introduced in November 2017. While the goal of MAM was merely to provide a solution for sending encrypted, unalterable and copyrighted data via the Tangle, IOTA streams provide a framework for cryptographic protocols and applications.
This means that the functionality of the channels has been significantly enhanced compared to MAM. This means that for purposes where the channel application is not the ideal solution, the IOTA Streams framework can be used to create another application.
For example, as before one Author can sign messages and multiple Subscribers can receive messages. Subscribers can now however also publish unsigned messages. In contrast, in MAM v0 only channel owners could publish messages.
Furthermore, IOTA Streams also offer an improved access control. While MAM required multiple channels to share different information with different parties, IOTA streams can assign a different mechanism to each message based on the message type, all in one channel. Thus, different messages can have different access control rules depending on their type.
In addition, IOTA streams allow messages to be linked together so that another message contains additional information about the current message. Message sequencing is also much easier with IOTA Streams. For example, IOTA Streams can be used to change earlier messages in an existing channel while keeping the older message in the Tangle to ensure integrity.
As Jakub Cech explained in an earlier blog post, this is particularly important in the area of credentials:
This makes replacing and changing information like credentials much simpler than before. You can update credentials linked to a digital identity, for example, without having to create a new channel and identity like you did with the previous MAM.
