First IOTA Meetup Cologne – Talk Summary

On the 20th December 2017, 120 people – from beginners to IOTA enthusiasts – met for the first German IOTA Meetup. It took place at the Starting Place in Cologne and kicked off around 19:00. To create a solid foundation for future meetups, the basics of IOTA were explained in a talk by Darius Torabian and our CEO & CTO Patrick Hütter.

Summary of the Technology Behind IOTA

After explaining the IOTA protocol, the speakers outlined the problems of "conventional" blockchains – limited transactions per second and the dependency on miners. This was followed by practical use cases, with Machine-to-Machine (M2M) economy taking center stage.

The IOTA Foundation and Its Interfaces

Patrick and Darius introduced the IOTA Foundation and its organizational structure. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, IOTA was established as a foundation – officially recognized in Germany. This could become a significant advantage in the future.

The comparison of TPS (transactions per second) made IOTA's potential clear: while Bitcoin processes around 15 TPS, IOTA becomes more efficient with each additional transaction. The speakers also covered IOTA's client libraries, which allow developers to interact with the protocol using common programming languages.

Weaknesses and Running a Full Node

Alongside its strengths, IOTA still had weaknesses at the time – such as the coordinator that was still required. The network was also slow in certain situations due to low transaction volume. To help compensate, the speakers explained how to operate a full node and thereby support IOTA's network.

Q&A Session

The meetup concluded with a Q&A session where attendees could ask questions about transaction sizes, network performance, and the roadmap. Overall, it was a very informative evening that built anticipation for the next meetup in January.