IOST (IOST) is a blockchain platform that is building a network with high throughput with the intention of being “the underlying architecture for the future of online services.” Founded in 2017 by Justin Li, Terrence Wang, Jimmy Zhong, Sa Wang, Kelvin Tan, and Ray Xiao, the project’s name is short for “Internet of Services Token”.

IOST’s focus is more on the enterprise level than it is on retail, with the team explicitly mentioning that it is focusing on services, bringing them together on one blockchain platform that can scale to the level required for global usage.

The IOST network utilizes a distinct consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Believability (PoB), which the team says lends itself to scalability and security. With horizontal scaling and high transaction throughput in mind, the team uses sharding, along with its consensus mechanism, to achieve what they say is 100,000 transactions per second. 

IOST launched version 1 of its mainnet, Olympus, in February 2019, six months before schedule. For the rest of 2019, and going into 2020, the team is focusing on creating decentralized applications and optimization through machine learning implementation. 2019 has also seen a lot of effort with IOST’s Global Partners Program, through which members can become nodes on the network. The team has an ambitious goal of on-boarding over 100 million users in 2019.