FIO Protocol (FIO)

The FIO Protocol is a decentralized service layer to the entire blockchain ecosystem. It provides workflow, data, and confirmations leading up to transactions on other blockchains (it never interferes with any underlying blockchain mechanism).

The FIO Protocol does not integrate with nor interact directly with any other blockchain, rather, it integrates with the “crypto endpoints” such as wallets, exchanges and crypto payment processors. The FIO Protocol does not commit transactions to other blockchains; users and computers continue to do that as they normally would — signing those transactions with their private key for their respective chain.

The FIO Protocol is a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) blockchain that is designed to ensure high scalability, while providing adequate economic incentives to the block producers who secure the network. It is not an open smart contract or dApp platform. Rather, it is purpose-built — new features (such as specific smart contracts) can only be enabled through approval of the block producing nodes.
It has a token — the FIO Token — which is used to pay for transactions on the blockchain. Most users will not need to be bothered with individual transactions as they will simply pay a modest yearly registration cost associated with FIO Addresses, which then comes bundled with a high volume of transactions. In the future, it is anticipated that businesses that become high volume users will want access to certain premium protocol features which will incur additional FIO token charges.

What can the FIO Protocol do?
The FIO Protocol will initially provide three core capabilities:
1) FIO Addresses– your human readable wallet name which works identically and immediately across every single token or coin and eliminates the need to ever see a public address. FIO Addresses are designed with privacy in mind. The name itself is only stored as a hash on the blockchain and the correlation of a FIO Addresses to the wallet’s public addresses are only stored in an encrypted fashion (unless the user chooses otherwise). Decrypting is only possible by a valid counter party in a transaction with FIO key pairs, thereby making it impossible for anyone to “look up” the public addresses of someone based only on knowing their FIO Address. Use of FIO Addresses also makes refunds or reversing of transactions easy for a recipient as they don’t need to request the sender’s public address. Most people will simply register a username on their wallet’s FIO domain as these will be very inexpensive. However, users can also register their own FIO Domain. FIO Domains, if purchased, are stored as a self-sovereign NFT (non-fungible token), which is tied to the user’s FIO private key to be traded/transferred.

2) FIO Requests — normal fiat financial transactions usually begin with a payment request — a bill, a check, an invoice or an order cart. In blockchain, most transactions start with simply a “send”. FIO Requests changes that paradigm and enables the ability to securely send decentralized requests for payments from one FIO enabled wallet to any other FIO enabled wallet. All requests made between FIO Addresses are stored encrypted on-chain, which includes all the data necessary for the recipient to populate a send transaction. They can only be decrypted by the counter party for which they are intended. Requests are discovered by FIO enabled applications querying the blockchain through an API. Importantly, FIO Requests do NOT require any “awareness” from other blockchains. The request itself will contain the token type, amount, payee’s FIO Address, payor’s FIO Address, and FIO Data (metadata) associated with the request.

3) FIO Data — Most transactions of value come with data describing what the transaction is for, such as the details on an invoice or in an order cart. FIO Data is a standardized metadata field that can provide a simple note or, in the future, complex structured data like an order cart along with a sent payment or a FIO Request.