Blockchain: CNA founding member of the Tangle project

The Tangle project has been launched the 11th February 2020 and is supported by IOTA and Eclipse foundation. Its goal is to overcome the inefficiencies of current Blockchain designs by introducing a new way of reaching consensus in a decentralized peer-to-peer system.

The IOTA Foundation and the Eclipse Foundation announced the launch of the Tangle EE Working Group (WG). Established under the Eclipse Foundation’s proven governance framework and processes, the Tangle EE WG unites leading companies and academics in developing IOTA-based data and payment solutions for commercial use.

Dell Technologies and STMicroelectronics are among the founding members of the new working group, along with 13 other member organizations: Software AG, Object Management Group,  accessec, Energinet, BiiLabs, Calypso Network Association, ENGIE Lab CRIGEN, RWTH Aachen University, AKITA, Geometric Energy Corporation, TMForum, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg and IoTIFY.

Several projects will be formed under the Eclipse Foundation to drive open-source collaboration and commercial adoption. Business and academia will come together to develop tooling and provide thought-leadership in key IOTA use case areas. IOTA’s distributed ledger has already been used in a variety of sectors including Mobility and Automotive, Global Trade and Supply Chain, eHealth, Smart Energy (including Smart Cities), and Industrial IoT. For CNA, Tangle could play a major role in the field of ticketing as an alternative to centralized architectures.

Find here the Press Release of the launch of the Tangle project

Interview with Philippe Vappereau
Chairman of Calypso Networks Association

Why is Calypso Networks Association involved in Tangle?

Originally Calypso is a contactless ticketing transaction, between a portable object and a reader, decentralized. This means that even without any communication link with a server, the sale, validation and control transaction can take place in complete security.

Such a decentralized scheme has been invented to overcome all the faults of centralized systems, especially the failure of communication networks, but many others as well.
Today, because the communication networks are remarkably reliable, we return to centralised architectures, known as ABT, Account Based Ticketing, in the field of ticketing. It is true that ABT brings a great deal of flexibility and much greater easiness of implementation, with client accounts and application software on a central server. But today, the craze for ABT  is such that we forget that telecom network reliability is not the only flaw of centralized architectures, there are many others, and major ones: weakness of centralization, with the risk of a system crash leading to the loss of all data and the need to reconstruct them from backups, always problematic and a source of disillusionment; data piracy, which is very sensitive with transport rights and tracking of trips centralized in a server, and a very motivating target for hackers, etc.

The question therefore arises: how can one benefit from the advantages of a centralized architecture without bearing its faults at the same time? If CNA participates in Tangle’s work, it is because we feel that this initiative is capable of providing an answer to a question that previously seemed insoluble.

What can be Tangle’s interest in the field of ticketing?

Blockchain technology promised a compelling vision: decentralized networks peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries or fees. But it is quite a failure until now: even if blockchain adoption has increased over the last decade, the adopters have been hit with slow transaction times and incredibly high fees. With such poor performance, the blockchain quickly appeared to be unsuitable for the needs of ticketing, very fast transactions, involving small amounts incompatible with high fees.

Tangle is designed to overcome these proven blockchain shortcomings. It is based on a new distributed ledger technology. Tangle’s promise is that people and machines can transfer money and/or data without any transaction fees in a trustless, permissionless, and decentralized environment. And with excellent transaction time performance.

But in concrete terms, what can we expect from it?

If Tangle’s results live up to its ambitions, then we will be able to benefit from decentralised ticketing system architectures that are reliable and independent of network performance, offering better protection against massive fraud and greater resilience, while having the flexibility and agility to offer innovative services at lower cost to transport network users.
It could be also an essential contribution to the MaaS, Mobility as a Service, which is leading more and more players to become involved in ticketing systems, which raises an underlying question of trust between players. With Tangle, there is with no need for a trusted intermediary of any kind.

When could the ticketing industry benefit from Tangle’s results?

There is, of course, no immediate answer to this question. For CNA, this is a very innovative initiative, which is not intended to provide immediate answers to our members’ needs, but to prepare for the future. It may of course appear very different from the other work carried out by our association to offer concrete, rapidly applicable solutions, such as those currently underway on the Calypso product range, the open source SDK, certification, etc. But the Tangle concept is perfectly in line with our technical philosophy, with our doubts that ABT solutions are truly the future of ticketing. And moreover, Tangle is supported by the Eclipse foundation to which we belong with our open source SDK project Eclipse Keyple. It is therefore logical that we support an open source initiative, which is in line with our desire to bring openness to all levels of ticketing.

Find here the Press Release of the launch of the Tangle project