Empirical Analysis of the IOTA Tangle Ledger in the Stardust Stage

Abstract

IOTA is a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) designed for the Internet of Things (IoT), featuring feeless transactions and data-only blocks for information sharing between IoT devices. Its ledger, the Tangle, adopts a Directed Acyclic Graph structure (DAG) that enables it to scale while keeping secure, fitting with the needs of IoT growth. Most of literature work address the behavior and asses the performance of the Tangle by using simulated data, only few of them are based on empirical dataset. Moreover, to our best knowledge, no research has been previously carried out on the evolution of the Tangle at its current Stardust stage using empirical data. Our study conducts a comprehensive analysis of the Tangle at the Stardust stage using real data provided by IOTA Foundation. Our key findings are that the confirmation of new blocks is two times faster in the Stardust stage, and the Tangle is currently being used far below its capacity to carry and secure data from IoT devices. Our study is the first to shed light on the characteristics of the real Tangle in the Stardust stage, which are particularly useful to understand the evolution of the ledger and contribute to its improvements in future upgrades.