Reflecting over the past months, we feel that we need to improve on certain areas to allow ThingsIX to grow faster. Therefore, we will be introducing the following changes:

Lowering the fees for Secure Mappers in the Third-Party-Mapper Program​

We are lowering the fees to be paid by the manufacturer to 25 EUR instead of 50 EUR per mapper. For the first 10 manufacturers we are also waiving the project fees. Additionally, we will discuss with manufacturers the possibility to do provisioning at their facilities to reduce overhead.

Introducing Less-Secure Mappers​

Soon we will allow regular LoRaWAN mappers supplied by ThingsIX Router operators to be used for mapping the coverage provided by gateways. We acknowledge that these mappings are less reliable. Therefore, they will be handled and displayed separately and only 10% of the total gateway-coverage-rewards will be allocated to coverage mapped by these mappers and there will be no rewards for the mappers themselves. As these mappings can only occur via ThingsIX Routers, Router operators can contact the ThingsIX Foundation on how to set this up. Router operators are of course encouraged to provide or sell these mappers to the community. These rewards for less-secure mappings is a temporary measure to boost the expansion of the network. Once secure mappers are sufficiently available these rewards will be reduced or removed, however the mappers will still be usable.

Liveness Checking of Gateways​

One of the common complains of mappers is that gateways they are trying to map are not online or not working. Therefore, we will soon introduce liveness checking into the ThingsIX network and dashboard to give a near-real-time insight into the liveness of gateways. Also, this liveness checking will be used in the reward-calculation to promote highly available gateways and to remove rewards for gateways that are offline for prolonged periods.

Airtime Payment​

In the beginning of next year, we will introduce the payments for airtime, where router operators need to pay for the airtime being used by their sensors because of the data-traffic they are sending and receiving over the ThingsIX network.

ThingsIX Foundation Board Elections​

The chairman of the ThingsIX Foundation, Jochem, has indicated that he will resign as chairman at the end of this year. Additionally, there is still one of the three seats vacant within the board. Therefore, according to the bylaws of the Foundation, we are inviting ThingsIX Maintenance holders to propose candidates for the two available seats. Only THIXM-holders can propose candidates but the candidate itself doesn’t have to be a THIXM-holder. Candidates must be permissible as board-member according to Dutch law. The THIXM holders will be requested to vote on the proposed candidates. Candidates can be proposed by e-mailing the ThingsIX Foundation (contact@thingsix.foundation).

Note: The board of the Foundation is official legal role without compensation. Board members are responsible for the daily operations and well-being of the Foundation and are expected to contribute to the tasks and responsibilities of the Foundation. This is expected to take 4-8 hours a week.

To facilitate the growth of the ThingsIX network, the availability of mappers is one of the critical factors. Not only such that enough mappers are available, but also to make sure that mappers are available for all different regions in the world.

Therefore, the ThingsIX Foundation has decided to launch the Third-Party-Mapper program. Using this program, we invite manufacturers that have a track-record in manufacturing LoRa-related devices to manufacture and sell ThingsIX Mappers.

The ThingsIX Foundation will ensure the security of the Third-Party-Mappers by reviewing the design and doing the actual provisioning of the software and key-material on the mappers.

Approved Third-Party-Mappers will be listed on our website: third-party-mappers. The ThingsIX Foundation will review the design but is not able to verify the credibility of a manufacturer. Do your own research before ordering a mapper.

For more information, see; third-party-mapper-program

21 June 2023, Eindhoven.

The last few days the ThingsIX network and the team have been attacked both technically and reputationally.

Last Sunday (18 June 2023) our attack detection algorithm got a first hit of suspicious behavior of a mapper. Further investigation showed that the mapper was assigned to one of our co-founders, Bas.

After contacting him, Bas indicated that he had lent his mapper to a third-party and that he agreed that he could (try to) attack the network as long as he reported his findings to the ThingsIX Foundation according to responsible disclosure. Bas gave this permission on his personal title and did not have any correspondence with the board of the ThingsIX Foundation and the rest of the team to get approval.

Immediately after detection the ThingsIX Foundation requested Bas to make sure that the attacks with the mapper assigned to him stopped directly and that the third-party would do a responsible disclosure of any vulnerabilities found.

On Monday (19 June 2023) the attack detection algorithm got another hit on the same mapper. At this stage we directly blocked the mapper and invalidated any coverage of the accounts involved in this attack.

The third-party hasn’t responded to our requests but did suggest publicly on Discord to have found a vulnerability. We also have received numerous messages from other community members where this third-party and a related person are distributing the same claims and other false accusations.

The ThingsIX Foundation welcomes responsible disclosures. This can be done via our e-mail: contact@thingsix.foundation. If disclosures are made irresponsibly or false accusations are made with relation to ThingsIX or it’s team members we will always press charges, inform authorities and hold those involved legally responsible for any damages.

Although he stated that he didn’t intend to do harm to the ThingsIX Network, in the current situation and with ongoing investigations, The ThingsIX Foundation has no other option but to suspend Bas from any activities related to ThingsIX Network and the ThingsIX Foundation.

As our attack detection algorithm detected the attack, we have full confidence in the future of the ThingsIX Network. Furthermore the exchange of sensor-data on the ThingsIX Network continued to operate without any interruption. The ThingsIX Foundation and the team will continue to develop and improve the ThingsIX Network.

On behalf of the ThingsIX Foundation,
Jochem van Haaren
Tim Cooijmans

Good news! We are planning to launch the rewards on the mainnet of ThingsIX on the 12th June at 09:00 CEST. This marks the next milestone in our go-live of the ThingsIX network. After the go-live onboarded gateways and mappers will receive $THIX rewards for their contributions to the network.

As ThingsIX runs on Polygon, to use ThingsIX you will need a software or hardware wallet with an account on Polygon and a few (<10) MATICs (the native coin of Polygon) to be able to do transactions on ThingsIX.

We will make sure that the ThingsIX Mappers that were allocated during the initial lottery are shipped out before the 2nd of June so the mappers have enough time to reach your destination. You will need a computer with Bluetooth LE 4.2 (or higher) support and a Chrome/Chromium browser in combination with your software/hardware wallet to register the mapper to your account to be able to use it. You can do this as soon as you will receive the mapper. Afterwards you can use your free gateway-onboard to onboard 1 gateway for free (max 1 free onboard per account).

Rewards are calculated per day, just after the day ended. So, the first day the rewards will be based on the mapping of those gateways that have been onboarded using the free onboards. Based on the first day of mapping rewards will be awarded to the accounts that have mappers that did mapping and accounts that have gateways that provided mapped coverage. These rewards can be used to onboard additional gateways to the network. Rewards need to be claimed from the ThingsIX dashboard.

Onboarding gateways costs 20 EUR in $THIX (5 EUR for adding the gateway, 15 EUR for setting/updating the location-details).

To allow others that don't have a mapper to onboard gateways too (or to onboard more gateways), the ThingsIX Foundation will initiate a THIX/USDC-pool on Uniswap will try to keep it well-funded with $THIX for a reasonable amount of time. This means that you can get USDC (On Polygon, not on Ethereum) from any source and swap (=exchange) it for $THIX to onboard gateways. The ThingsIX Foundation will initially fund the pool at a 1 USDC = 1 THIX and set the rate of the $THIX in the pricing-oracle accordingly.

We will update documentation in the coming days and weeks and provide daily updates on the latest steps of the progress and if we are able to meet the planned go-live date.

The lottery to get a ThingsIX Mapper assigned from the evaluation batch for EU868 is now open. It will stay open until 15-Februari-2023 13:00 (GMT+1), so there's no need to hurry. During this time anybody can buy a ticket at the price of 250 USDC (ERC20 on Polygon: 0x2791Bca1f2de4661ED88A30C99A7a9449Aa84174) by using their Polygon wallet.

The 250.0 USDC will be used to pay for the administration, packing and shipping of the ThingsIX Mappers. We use this lottery to ensure a fair distribution of the mappers and to avoid a hurdle. Based on the draw of the lottery you will either get a mapper shipped to you or you can get your USDC back.

For this first batch of ThingsIX Mappers we will include 1 gateway-onboarding, so we can ensure that those who receive a mapper at least can map their own first gateway and start receiving rewards. The first batch of mappers will be shipped at least 1 week before the launch of the rewards. These mappers will receive main-net $THIX rewards. Shipping for this batch is only to the countries of the EU.

Visit: https://mapper-lottery.thingsix.com to get your mapper ticket or see the documentation for more information.

The ThingsIX Foundation will launch the first distribution of the first batch of 50 ThingsIX Mapper’s for the EU868 frequency plan on 1 February 2023. The ThingsIX Mapper is a special device that is used in the ThingsIX reward structure to verify coverage that gateways connected to ThingsIX provide. Both the mapping activity and the coverage provided by gateways will be rewarded in $THIX based on the measurement of these ThingsIX Mappers. This first batch is the first version of the mapper we distribute as evaluation kit for interested parties.

The distribution of the mappers will happen via a lottery smart contract where anybody gets a fair and equal chance to receive a ThingsIX Mapper. Anybody can buy a lottery ticket in this lottery for 250.0 USDC via a web-interface by connecting your favorite Polygon wallet during a 14-day period. We will use a verifiable blockchain-based random draw to select who will receive a ThingsIX Mapper. If you are not selected to receive a ThingsIX Mapper you can claim your 250.0 USDC back. The 250.0 USDC will be used to pay for the administration, packing and shipping of the ThingsIX Mappers. The ThingsIX Foundation will remain owner of the ThingsIX Mappers during the whole lifetime of all mappers. Terms and conditions apply and will be available before sale.

For this first batch of ThingsIX Mappers we will include 1 gateway onboarding, so we can ensure that those who receive a mapper at least can map their own first gateway and start receiving rewards. The first batch of mappers will be shipped at least 1 week before the launch of the rewards

While the ThingsIX Mapper for the EU868 frequency plan works in many countries outside of the European Union, we will only ship this first batch to countries within the EU due to laws and regulations. Later there will be batches for other regions.

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 22th December 2022. The ThingsIX Foundation is happy to announce that ThingsIX is now officially in production, with the go-live of the data-only main-net. ThingsIX is a neutral crowd sourced LoRaWAN® network where anybody can add existing LoRa® gateways to extend the coverage. By connecting LoRa gateways to ThingsIX, gateways will route LoRaWAN traffic for all connected LoRaWAN networks.

Existing LoRaWAN network operators can extend and improve their network coverage by using ThingsIX. As a result ThingsIX reduces the needs for investments. New LoRaWAN device-operators can start using the LoRaWAN network by using the coverage already available on the ThingsIX network. The only thing that’s needed is a NetID assigned by the LoRa Alliance®.

To evaluate ThingsIX, the ThingsIX Foundation offers a console where parties can register 2 LoRaWAN devices for evaluation. Anybody can add their gateways to ThingsIX today. Instructions are even offered how to do so in parallel with any existing LoRa network.

We want to thank every community member that helped us get where we are today. Especially we want to thank Orne Brocaar, the developer of the Chirpstack, who’s open-source contributions we thankfully used to build the open-source components of ThingsIX on.

Head over to https://docs.thingsix.com to get more information how to evaluate or join ThingsIX. For questions how to use ThingsIX as a network operator, please contact the ThingsIX Foundation at info@thingsix.com

The next step on our roadmap is launching the mapping-infrastructure and starting to reward gateway-operators for the coverage they provide.

The LoRa® Mark is a trademark of Semtech Corporation or its subsidiaries.
LoRa Alliance® and LoRaWAN® are marks used under license from the LoRa Alliance®.

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 7th November 2022. The ThingsIX Foundation joins the LoRa Alliance®. Joining the LoRa Alliance allows the ThingsIX Foundation to build the world-wide, decentralized and neutral ThingsIX network on the LoRaWAN® protocols and collaborations as formed within the LoRa Alliance.

The LoRa Alliance is an open, non-profit association that has become one of the largest and fastest-growing alliances in the technology sector since its inception in 2015. Its members closely collaborate and share experiences to promote and drive the success of the LoRaWAN standard as the leading open global standard for secure, carrier-grade IoT LPWAN connectivity.

The ThingsIX Foundation is a non-profit Foundation that is building the ThingsIX Network. The ThingsIX Network connects LoRa®-gateway operators world-wide with LoRaWAN end-device-operators to allow these operators to use the third-party gateways for communication with their devices without the need for a 1:1 agreement. The ThingsIX Network does this by using blockchain technology to handle the payment for data-traffic and by rewarding the LoRa-gateway operators for providing coverage.

As a result, the costs (both CapEx and OpEx) for using LoRaWAN are greatly reduced by the ThingsIX network as gateways can be shared and re-used. All that’s needed to start is a NetID allocation from the LoRa Alliance. Furthermore, ThingsIX adds to a green future as by sharing LoRa-gateways amongst multiple LoRaWAN networks less energy is being consumed.

Additionally, the unique crowd-sourced mapping approach allows anybody not only to contribute to the ThingsIX Network by sharing their gateways on the network, but also to use ThingsIX-provided mappers with similar antenna characteristics as real LoRaWAN devices to map coverage of the gateways on the ThingsIX network. The resulting coverage-map further aids LoRaWAN network operators to see where the ThingsIX network can support their end-customers.

The LoRa® Mark is a trademark of Semtech Corporation or its subsidiaries.
LoRa Alliance® and LoRaWAN® are marks used under license from the LoRa Alliance®.

The last few weeks we open-sourced the ThingsIX code for the packet-handling on our Github. As ThingsIX is a open project, everyone is welcome to contribute.

We are currently testing packet-handling internally. Soon we will provide instructions how to join the testing of the data-network on testnet. Currently only gateways where users can configure their packet-forwarder endpoints are supported.

Later this year we are planning to launch the data-network (so no rewards yet) in production according to our roadmap.