What is Tangle?
Crypto Glossary Definition
A type of DAG (directed acyclic graph) used by IOTA. It's a network consisting of nodes that issue and validate transactions. A qualifying node must choose two other transactions to approve, ensure approved transactions are not conflicting, and solve a cryptographic puzzle. A 'Coordinator' is currently used as a centralized consensus mechanism to prevent attacks on the network, and is scheduled to be shut down once the network is stable enough.
Why Tangle Matters
IOTA designed the Tangle specifically for machine-to-machine micropayments in Internet-of-Things use cases, with the pitch of feeless transactions since there's no dedicated miner to pay — validation work is instead spread across the two prior transactions each new transaction must approve. The "Coordinator" centralized checkpoint has been a long-running point of criticism, since it means the network hasn't been fully decentralized in practice despite the underlying design's intent.
Still have questions about Tangle?
Ask ARIA, our free AI crypto intelligence agent, for a deeper explanation.
Ask ARIA →