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- IOTA Notarization has been officially unveiled to complement traditional systems in addressing document-related fraud that organizations face.
- Research suggests that organizations lose billions of dollars of their annual revenue to document-related fraud, which includes falsified invoices.
In a recent update, CNF discussed the alpha release of the IOTA Notarization to enable developers, builders, and infrastructures to integrate blockchain-based data authenticity and integrity proofs into their products.
According to that report, this comes with a ready-to-integrate tooling designed for individuals and entities that seek compliance, verifiable records, and tracking.
Detailing this in a blog post, the IOTA communication team highlighted that the Notarization implementation is specifically meant to complement the traditional systems rather than replace them. Meanwhile, the existing systems with centralized databases were reported to be liable to modification. This implies that they could be tampered with, putting organizations at risk of fraud or costly errors.
Confirming this, the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) has disclosed that organizations lose 5% of their annual revenues to document-related fraud. According to them, this includes falsified invoices, unauthorized changes to contracts, or even manipulated credentials.
The centralized solutions, which were expected to mitigate these risks, are, however, reported to fall short in the sharing of important information across organizational boundaries.
How IOTA Notarization Solves This Problem
In a blog post, IOTA explained that its Notarization does not rely on a single point of control. Instead, it ensures that decentralized tamper-proof records are created to enhance data integrity and authenticity. Its alpha release also introduces two notarization methods with different business requirements. The first is the Locked Notarization, and the other is the Dynamic Notarization.
According to IOTA, the Locked Notarization is meant for very critical and permanent records, including the likes of certificates or contracts. It is designed to store data immutably on-chain. It also has an optional time-lock that prevents deletion or changes for some time.
Dynamic Notarization, on the other hand, was designed to maintain a single and updatable object on-chain when “real-time updates like digital passport matters most.”
While the Locked Notarization was developed for industries including Legal and Regulatory Compliance, Credentials and Certifications, and Ownership and IP Protection, its counterpart works perfectly with the Digital Product Passports and Supply Chain, Public Registries and Digital Twins, and IoT and Real-Time Systems.
As highlighted in our earlier blog post, the European Union (EU) has already declared its support for IOTA’s Web3 ID and digital product passports.
What Notarization Actually Means
According to IOTA, Notarization does not mean storing an entire document on a public blockchain network. Instead, users could only anchor their digital fingerprint to their data or document. Users can also integrate the IOTA Notarization using the Move-based smart contracts or Rust, WASM libraries.
When using IOTA Notarization, it’s crucial to understand that all notarized information becomes public on the IOTA network, and is thus visible and verifiable by anyone. This transparency is the very point of notarization on a public distributed ledger and ensures integrity, immutability, and verifiability through high availability of certain information.
The official release of this jaw-dropping project is part of the bigger plan of co-founder Dominik Schiener to build the digital world on-chain, as mentioned in our previous news brief. Already, the team has unveiled the IOTA Identity, which is an integral part of the Rebased Protocol, as noted in our earlier post.
