## We have gazillions of questions and very scarce literature so far
#
So, what do we do? We dig! Here's what we've dug so far. For IOTA developers and those who are totally familiar with major technological aspects, we do apologize in advance for any mistakes or misunderstandings concerning the concepts.

http://www.deepseanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Diving-deep.-Image-3.jpg

### An Introduction to ternary/trinary systems
Yes, not binary, ternary or trinary. There's no 0's and 1's but 0's, 1's and 2's or, better yet, instead of having to use a bit to represent + or - you always get it by using -1, 0 and 1.

Representations would follow into trits as opposed to bits. A tryte is composed of 3 trits whereas a byte is 8 bits. A tryte goes from -121 to +121.

IOTA is coded in such a way that it is both compatible with binary or ternary processing chips. That is also the reason the total available coins is given in base 3: (3^33-1)/2.

### Quantum Resistance
IOTA claims to be quantum resistant. This is due to the signature scheme it uses to process public addresses. IOTA uses the Winternitz One-Time Signature Scheme to produce public addresses. In short, these signatures may "rot" as they are used. This means they can be re-used but they should not. Instead, a good practice is to generate a new address for each transaction and have it reattached to the tangle.

Winternitz is considered a post-quantum type of signature. It is also considered "existentially unforgeable under adaptive chosen message attacks when instantiated with a family of pseudo random functions". 

As a rule of thumb, one can receive as many incoming transactions with a public address generated by Winternitz but, whenever an outgoing transactions is performed, a new public address must be generated.

Therefore, it might be a good strategy to have a separate wallet only to receive donations and other income that would be best done by leaving a qr-code standing somewhere for the public. Nevertheless, whenever you cash it out to another wallet, you must renew the addresses.

It is important to say that the "old, perishable addresses" that rot after you send a transaction do not become inactive or unusable. If someone send transactions using it, they will arrive but, as they go through this process of "rotting" they may not hence the need for updating them to the public.

### Attacks and the need for a Coordinator
The tangle is susceptible to 34% attacks meaning that if one achieves the processing power of 34% of the network, he/she/it could, in theory, successfully undergo a double-spending transaction.

That said, devs have introduced the use of a Coordinator into the network that is aimed to be active while the network is still considered small enough that 34% attacks are feasible. 

The coordinator is a piece of software that sets checkpoints to ensure incoming transactions that need to be validated (called tips) get an adequate layer of randomness that prevent for such possible "parasitic chains" to succeed on early stages.

It has been argued that, during this period of transition whilst the presence of the Coordinator is necessary, IOTA would actually be considered a centralized system. Nevertheless, as the development team states, the only reason for the Coordinator do exist is to ensure that attacks do not happen and, therefore, it does not render the network centralized.

### [More to come] -> please upvote and resteemit if you like it :D Welcome to new followers as well! Cheers

### References
- https://dev.to/buntine/the-balanced-ternary-machines-of-soviet-russia
- https://eprint.iacr.org/2011/191.pdf

---
EDUARDO CAPANEMA
@bitworkers