IOTA is starting concrete development work at Gaia-X. As part of the project funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics, IOTA wants to help shape future mobility solutions.
The IOTA Foundation has been involved in Gaia-X since mid-2021, an EU-wide project that aims to develop sustainable IT solutions for various areas of life and work. In March 2022, news circulated that German funding for Gaia-X would be cut. But now, according to the IOTA Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Economics has released funds and preparations are underway for a concrete project phase of three years. IOTA will focus on Gaia-X 4 ROMS, according to a blog post. ROMS stands for Remote Operation for Automated and Connected Mobility Services and IOTA describes in more detail what needs to be done in terms of mobility 2.0.
The starting point is the prognosis that future passenger and freight transport will mainly be carried out by electric vehicles. The renewal of car and transport fleets also makes it possible to consider concepts of (semi) autonomous driving as well as car sharing and similar approaches. This entails many major tasks for the underlying technology. For example, manufacturer-independent standards are desired and compliance with rules on data security and sovereignty, especially for the EU. IOTA already has experience of cooperating with logistics projects, autonomous vehicles and energy efficiency from the past. IOTA sees itself well prepared to share its expertise with around 80 other participating companies and research institutes as part of Gaia-X 4 ROMS and to contribute to practical solutions.
The fact that the IOTA Foundation decided at the beginning of 2022 to reorganize its internal structure could now bear fruit here. The goal is to move away from project-related teams and optimize the core IOTA modules, which then only have to be set up for the very specific purpose. For Gaia-X 4 ROMS, IOTA Identity is mentioned first, a service with which people as well as machines are assigned network-compatible digital identities. IOTA Identity then also makes it possible to determine in detail who can read what information associated with such a digital identity. This seems well suited to the mobility sector, where a large number of individual parts come together, from drivers and vehicles to parking spaces and electric charging stations. Their communication could be organized via IOTA streams.
Conclusion: Farewell Gaia-X seduces – but doubts remain
A recurring point of criticism at Gaia-X is that the announced and largely funded large-scale European computing projects ultimately do not approach the quality of commercial (mainly American) solutions. Examples such as EU Google or EU cloud are familiar to the specialist public. IOTA is not a driving force in this situation, but an almost self-made partner. The funds that the IOTA Foundation can expect from Gaia-X 4 ROMS until 2024 have not been published. In any case, it should be more important for IOTA to have the chance with Gaia-X 4 ROMS to establish its own solutions as standards throughout Europe. But investors should also know: in the context of Gaia-X, there has been no talk and there is still no talk of IOTA as a means of payment.
