Visibility graph analysis of IOTA and IoTeX price series: An intentional risk-based strategy to use 5G for IoT

The transformation of time series into complex networks through visibility graphs is an innovative way to study time-based events. In this work, we use visibility graphs to transform IOTA and IoTeX price volatility time series into complex networks. Our aim is twofold: first, to better understand the markets of the two most capitalised Internet of Things (IoT) platforms at the time of writing. IOTA runs on a public directed acyclic graph (DAG) and IoTeX on a blockchain. Second, to suggest how 5G can improve information security in these two key IoT platforms. The analysis of the networks created by the natural and horizontal visibility graphs shows, first, that both IOTA and IoTeX are still at their infancy in their development, with IoTex seemingly developing faster. Second, both IoT tokens form communities in a hierarchical structure, and third, 5G can accelerate their development. We use intentional risk management as a lever to understand the impact of 5G on IOTA and IoTeX. Our results lead us to provide a set of design recommendations that contribute to improving information security in future 5G-based IoT implementations. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.