This blockchain network lets users ‘geomine’ crypto rewards from their smartphones

The XYO Network lets anyone turn their cellphone into an edge node with a proof-of-origin chain and bound witness technology using their partner app, “COIN”. With COIN, users can ‘geomine’ to earn crypto rewards, in exchange for participating in XYO’s decentralized network of devices.

XYO describes geomining as the act of exploring and discovering digital items or assets from a real, physical space while sharing relevant location data and interactions with other geominers. In order to earn cryptocurrency, geominers will have to geomine enough in-app ‘COIN’ tokens and then redeem them for ‘XYO Tokens’ or other cryptocurrencies.

Recently listed on Coinbase, the XYO Token serves as a utility token for the XYO Network. Ultimately, XYO’s goal is to grow their location-based data network that can provide and verify information about the physical world for blockchain smart contracts as well as other off-chain businesses. For example, companies could use the XYO Network to determine relative traffic to their competitor's storefronts, location-based sentiment on socio-political issues, or even whether a real-world interaction occurred between two devices. COIN users provide the data necessary to answer these types of questions and get rewarded for doing so.

Their COIN users have already started benefitting. For instance, a U.S.-based software developer and one of the network’s most successful users earned enough crypto rewards to pay off a 30-year mortgage, according to a case study on the application’s website. Another recent case study involving 500 COIN Users showed more stories: one user was able to cover a month’s rent with COIN and another moved to a new city and purchased a new car.

XYO Network Components

Besides the rewards that benefit users, XYO envisions a broader purpose for its application. The COIN app is essentially a “Sentinel” and a “Bridge” for the XYO Network, two of the major components of the network.

Sentinels are physical devices, like smartphones or an XYO SentinelX device that broadcast signals with their location and other relevant data, like speed and altitude. When the Sentinel is near another Sentinel and they broadcast that they are near each other, this serves as proof of the Sentinel’s location. The entire interaction is referred to as a “bound witness.”

Meanwhile, a Bridge also uses a smartphone or an XYO BridgeX device to register these bound witness interactions. Once these interactions are signed, they are delivered to a core component of the XYO Network called an Archivist, which processes and stores the data for future use. The final component of the network, the Diviner, works with this data to determine answers to queries and delivers these verifiable answers to requesting blockchain smart contracts or off-chain company API’s.

Expanding the network

With over 2 million downloads, COIN has become one of the largest applications in the crypto space. This translates into a large number of nodes actively gathering data for the XYO Network. XYO, in turn, verifies, processes and transforms this data into insights, which it says can be utilized by businesses around the world.

Established COIN users are using the app more than three hours a day in the foreground, which is more daily usage per user than all social media apps combined. “All this data the nodes generate benefits the XYO Network and its customers,” said the project.

XYO also named a list of industries, including airports, hospitals, e-commerce, insurance, drones, rental cars and even national security, where its geospatial oracle network can be useful.

“Blockchain technology allows data to be permanent and chained, which ensures high-mobility assets, and error-prone processes are tracked, monitored, reliable and immutable,” said XYO.