In what has been described as “experiencing the future today,” IOTA has launched the IOTA 2.0 DevNet and a new Digital Assets Framework to begin experimenting with the community.
IOTA 2.0 DevNet
As per an update on June 2, IOTA is moving closer to a fully decentralized network without a super-node called the Coordinator.
Following the release of the DevNet, IOTA is now inviting individuals and companies to join and test this network. IOTA describes the final, Coordinator-free network as highly scalable, feeless, without miners, energy-efficient, and public.
According to the network creators, the DevNet marks the beginning of a new age where individuals and companies can begin building dApps and creating differentiated business models before Coordicide.
Testing and Refinement ahead of Coordicide
From the DevNet, users can build and transact on, enjoying what would be the final, defining features of IOTA on the “Honey” stage once IOTA 2 is activated and Coordicide implemented.
The DevNet is the evolution of the Internet-of-Things focused network in their path to becoming a global standard.
Users would test IOTA’s low-energy Sybil protection system using Mana—useful in consensus and forming a reputation system for nodes.
They can also experience how the IOTA Autopeering system is effective in the security of network connections.
At the same time, users can examine the anchoring of IOTA smart contract chains and the efficiency of algorithms behind the network’s parallel reality ledger state.
This launch aims to help IOTA developers experiment, collect, and optimize the entire IOTA 2.0 solution.
From the data collected, developers would be better positioned to determine how parameters should be defined and even identify and remove all potential performance bottlenecks.
IOTA Developers are Building on Chrysalis Upgrade
It also comes a few weeks after the upgrade of Chrysalis in April 2021.
During the upgrade, IOTA launched a new set of libraries and wallets, paving the way for IOTA 2 to be fully production-ready.
As BTCManager reported, the IOTA Foundation is building and striking partnerships. In late April 2021, it announced a deal with Crypto Finance AG.
It is the worst of times. It is the best of times. It is the age of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Nevertheless, Bitcoin’s fundamentals remain intact. The project’s value is still there, despite the disastrous drop in price. It was all going so well. How did we get here? Actually, there are a lot of valid reasons. Let’s review all of the causes that lead to this FUD.
As you know, everything started through Elon Musk’s fingertips…
Tesla’s “Environmental Concerns”
When Bitcoin was on its way up, Elon’s company gave it the push it needed. Tesla announced ownership of $1.5B worth of Bitcoin that, apparently, remain on its balance sheet. The crypto community celebrated the move, profits followed. The coin’s legitimization seemed to take a step forward. And then…
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Inexplicably, Tesla announced they were discontinuing accepting BTC as a form payment. Despite wild speculation, no one knows what happened. In histweeted announcement, Elon cited “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining” as the reason. Few people inside the crypto community believed it. Everyone outside of it did. And even though Tesla clarifies they didn’t sell any of their Bitcoin, the FUD set in. And retail investors started selling.
If you want to learn aboutElon’s real views on the matterand about everything the crypto mining industry is doing regarding green energy, head over to Bitcoinist, our sister site.
Related Reading | Bitcoin TA: Here’s What Could Trigger A Bullish Reversal Above $40K
China’s Tightening Up Its Bitcoin Policies
This generated lots of FUD. The People’s Bank of China seemed to announce clear and unfavorable rules regarding cryptocurrencies.Yahoo Financereports:
“This is the latest chapter of China tightening the noose around crypto,” said Antoni Trenchev, managing partner and co-founder of Nexo in London, a crypto lender.
Virtual currencies should not and cannot be used in the market because they’re not real currencies, according to a notice posted on the PBOC’s official WeChat account. Financial and payments institutions are not allowed to price products or services with virtual currency, the notice said.
Nevertheless, as with most things on this list, the announcement didn’t amount to anything specific yet.
BTC price chart on Bitstamp | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com
The US OCC Turns Its Eye To Cryptocurrencies
The newly announced Acting Comptroller of the Currency, Michael Hsu, revealed that the agency he presides, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC are reviewing their policies on cryptocurrencies. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it might lead to clearer laws and stronger governmental support. Nevertheless, FUD doesn’t mind that fact. And FUD settled in.
Hsu’sstatement to the Committee Of Financial Services reads:
Shortly after I started, I requested a review of key regulatory standards and matters pending before the agency. Those items include the 2020 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) final rule and associated NPR related to performance benchmarks, interpretative letters and guidance regarding cryptocurrencies and digital assets, and pending licensing decisions. For each, the review is considering a full range of internal and external views, the impact of changed circumstances, and a range of alternatives.
Binance Under Investigation
The US government turned its eye towards Binance. Apparently, blockchain investigator firm Chainalysis found a pattern that showed a considerably higher percentage of funds from criminal enterprises flowed through Binance, compared to other exchanges.Bitcoin Magazinereports:
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Internal Revenue Service (IRS), according to a report fromBloomberg.
“As part of the inquiry, officials who probe money laundering and tax offenses have sought information from individuals with insight into Binance’s business.”
Even though it’s just an inquiry and nothing might come of it, the FUD it generated within the community cannot be ignored.
Related Reading | Market Sentiment Hits Low As Binance Has Largest Bitcoin Inflow Ever
India almost bans cryptocurrencies
A total crypto prohibition was on the table once again, but India’s lawmakers turned the ship at the last minute. Word on the street is that they’ll pass clearer regulatory laws instead.The Economic Timesreports:
The central government may form a fresh panel of experts to study the possibility of regulatingcryptocurrency in India, three sources privy of the discussions told ET. This comes amid the prevailing view that the recommendations by a committee headed by former finance secretary Subhash Garg in 2019 for a blanket ban on these assets had become outdated.
This new rumor arrived yesterday, but the FUD that a total ban inspires was around for a while.
Is This A Coordinated Attack? Or Is The World Just Going Nuts?
We can’t confirm or deny this was a coordinated attack on Bitcoin. Maybe the upper class, transnational corporations, and high rollers of all kinds want to buy your BTC at a discount. Market manipulation is as old as markets. But, maybe, this perfect storm of bad news is what happens when the best performing asset that the world has ever seen takes over the world’s headlines. All eyes turn to it, and all fingers start poking.
However…
crypto vets pic.twitter.com/nsDzzLzMtv
— CMS Intern (@cmsintern) May 19, 2021
Featured Image by Jasmin Sessler on Unsplash - Charts by TradingView
Horizen, a technology platform that enables businesses and developers to create their public or private blockchains, announced a partnership with IOTA. The partnership will see the newly launched IOTA Oracles’ functionality and introduce oracle capabilities to the Horizen sidechain and scaling protocol, Zendoo.
IOTA Partnership Plans
IOTAis a cryptocurrency built to operate as the anchor of the Internet of Things economy. It is specially designed to offer a solution to this problem by creating a fee-free cryptocurrency that can run on the most humble devices.
IOTA Oracles were built to bring off-chain data todecentralized applicationsand smart contracts on the IOTA network. They securely bridge both the digital world and the physical world in a feeless and decentralized way.
The partnership’s initial goal was to introduce IOTA Oracles functionality into Zendoo, Horizen’s fully decentralized and customizable sidechain protocol. In detail, the integration takes place in two stages: First, Zendoo will add the power of IOTA Oracles to its POC side chain. Second, the IOTA oracle submission is integrated directly into theZendoo SDK.
Horizen’s Zendoo makes the IOTA oracle available to any blockchain or Horizen-based decentralized program. It allows businesses and developers to spin-up their customizable blockchain.
With the successful changesto Chrysalis, an intermediate step before Coordicide, the IOTA network is preparing digital tokens at some point in the first half of 2021. IOTA is now focused on connecting different ecosystems with unique valuable offerings and practical applications.
Chrysalis is the most significant improvement in IOTA’s history and covers all aspects of the protocol, library, portfolio, and software implementation developed by the IOTA Foundation. It is truly a significant step for IOTA as it is ready for production and the foundation for upcoming features such as smart contracts and tokenization.
Tokenization Centers IOTA’s Plans
The increasing demand for DLT solutions led IOTA to develop solutions that further boost acceptance. Consequently, they published various tools, libraries, and frames for the ecosystem to thrive when they get the most out of their knitting.
The detail of a digital asset framework is the first step in a larger scheme. Tokenization connects many parts of a mobile network, including smart contracts. The free and easy tokenization of the scalable machine platform opens up new possibilities in NFT and others that the user can explore.
Instead of a blockchain, IOTA is supported by a DAGcalled Tangle. The IOTA team chose to use DAG over blockchain because they felt it would help solve many of the scalability and cost issues associated with blockchain. With Tangle, each transaction can be processed individually rather than concurrently, and it can even be processed asynchronously.
The IOTA Foundation is releasing the official protocol Request for Comment (RFC) for the Digital Asset Framework. It has also activated asset tokenization on the Coordicide Testnet (GoShimmer), an update on Feb 18 shows.
Chrysalis Mainnet Launch is in March
Coupled with changes made on Chrysalis, an intermediate step before Coordicide, the IOTA network is getting ready for digital tokens at a tentative time in H1 2021. The IOTA development team has disclosed their intention of deploying Chrysalis onto the mainnet in March 2021.
Accordingly, the project is ready to receive applications for grants for projects willing to explore IOTA’s digital tokenization.
With the transition closer to complete decentralization and even more possibilities in the blockless network, the team said Chrysalis would be the “enabler of exciting new use-cases, partners, and products that have not been possible before.”
IOTA is Fast-Tracking Digital Token Activation
The IOTA Foundation stresses the importance of asset tokenization. It wants to activate this feature “as soon as possible.”
However, how fast this deployment depends on the thorough review of the RFC now that Chrysalis is active.
Towards that end, the IOTA Foundation will be integrating the Digital Assets framework in Firefly, a new wallet designed from the ground up to replace the Trinity wallet.
Unlike other Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) designs, the IOTA network is secure, decentralized, and energy-efficient despite leveraging a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm.
Furthermore, it can inherently scale, with throughput increasing with the network’s demand. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, currently bogged by transaction fee troubles, IOTA scalability means zero cost of transactions, even for intensive projects.
Tokenization is Center to IOTA’s Plans
The rising demand for DLT solutions now makes IOTA build solutions that will further spur its adoption.
Consequently, they are unleashing a broad spectrum of tools, libraries, and frameworks for its ecosystem to flourish as they draw maximum benefits from the tangle.
Digital Assets framework details are the first step in the bigger scheme. Tokenization is a cog that interconnects many of the network’s moving parts, including smart contracts.
Specifically, the free and easy tokenization on a scalable machine-facing platform opens new opportunities and possibilities in NFTs and more for users to explore.
As BTCManager reported, IOTA launched their First Party Oracles to protect against data manipulation.
Jakub Cech, the Director of Engineering at the IOTA Foundation, on Jan 14, released the development update detailing progress made in December 2020.
IOTA Smart Contracts and Chrysalis
In their report, the Chrysalis testnet and the pre-alpha version of IOTA smart contracts were made public in December. Hornet has since been running on this testnet as most integrations for Chrysalis phase 2 are now ready.
Chrysalis is the intermittent stage (IOTA 1.5) before Coordicide. The objective of releasing the testnet to the public, the foundation explains, was to test all of the Chrysalis components openly while concurrently adding remaining capabilities and components.
Auditing of Bee Node Software, Stronghold, and Firefly
From next week, users will be able to test the Bee node software on the testnet. The Bee Node software audit is ongoing and will conclude in early February—or after three weeks.
Developers also released version 0.3.5 of Pollen—the first phase designed as the testbed for engineers and developers testing and validating the concepts of IOTA 2.0. The update will be more robust, secure, and reliable, as that was the main goal.
The development team is also working on Stronghold and will release its Beta version in Spring. The primary determinant will be its feature-completeness and robustness.
Meanwhile, most of Firefly‘s user interface is complete. Its code will also be audited in January.
Leading IoT
IOTA is the leading distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based Internet of Things (IoT) platform whose supporters say will underpin the future of machine and data economy. Unlike the common architectures deployed by existing platforms, IOTA is using a blockless system.
Their design is to inherently lower transaction fees and incrementally scale the base layer depending on the platform’s demand. Therefore, diverging from Ethereum or Bitcoin, a sharp increase in load won’t clog the network but exponentially increase its throughput.
The network throughput, as adjudged from their setting, is variable, fluctuating depending on user load.
The Coordinator Problem
Despite what IOTA seeks to achieve, the network is presently under the control of the foundation which runs the Coordinator. It is a super-node primarily tasked with protecting the network against third party attacks and confirming Proof-of-Work transactions.
However, their pressing concern is to remove the Coordinator and decentralize the network in a three-stage release strategy starting from Pollen, eventually culminating with Honey.
As BTCManager reported, IOTA will consider a partnership and bridge to Cardano, a peer-reviewed and research-led smart contracting platform.
The second phase of Chrysalis is progressing well, according to the latest update from the IOTA Foundation on Dec 11. Chrysalis Phase 2 Chrysalis is the intermediate stage before Coordicide. Here, IOTA will eliminate the central coordinator for a fully decentralized, infinitely scalable, and secure distributed ledger network powering the internet of things and the next
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IOTA recently published a December update, announcing its progress for its remaining elements for the delivery of IOTA 2.0, Nectar.
IOTA’s next major milestone, IOTA 2.0, which is also known as the phase of Nectar, is expected sometime in the first quarter of 2021.
In the past month, IOTA’s team has seen great progress on the Pollen testnet for the implementation of IOTA 2.0. IOTA recently published a new version of its Pollen testnet, which is the step before reaching Nectar.
The IOTA team released the Pollen testnet v0.3.1 last month, where the update included the refactoring of the message structure according to the new Tangle RFC. Progress has also been made on the mana branch, where there was a tool added to determine how much mana would be generated when spending funds.
IOTA’s team has been optimizing the consensus implementation by introducing FPC statements, where the FPC protocol requires nodes to directly query randomly selected nodes for conflict resolution.
The team also noted that another milestone reached by the team was the implementation of markers, which is a tool to infer knowledge about the structure of the Tangle, in the past and future cone membership. IOTA’s research and development team explained:
“Finally, many members of our community joined together to set up the first IOTA community-based dRNG committee. This is a great achievement and really shows how much our community is a fundamental and integral part of this prototyping process.”
In the networking team at IOTA, it was noted that they have been performing simulations to validate the congestion control mechanism. The algorithm has been put under extreme conditions, including powerful attacks. The algorithm has been found to be very robust against any malicious circumstances, and is ready to be implemented on the Pollen test network.
Researchers at IOTA are also working on lowering the adoption barrier in Coordicide, which is the most important step for IOTA. The team also aims to guarantee access to low mana nodes during uncongested periods.
IOTA’s team has been writing a proposal summarizing data sharding, as the team has been looking closely into some second layer solutions for data. The idea of “data sharding” is still preliminary, where the amount of data stored on the Tangle could greatly increase.
The second phase of Chrysalis is progressing well, according to the latest update from the IOTA Foundation on Dec 11. Chrysalis Phase 2 Chrysalis is the intermediate stage before Coordicide. Here, IOTA will eliminate the central coordinator for a fully decentralized, infinitely scalable, and secure distributed ledger network powering the internet of things and the next
