- IOTA is gearing up for the launch of IOTA 2.0 which will have a decentralized decision-making system overcoming the Coordinator.
- The Shimmer network serves as a testbed to try new innovative ideas before they make their way to the IOTA network.
Ever since its launch, the IOTA Foundation has undertaken multiple initiatives with the IOTA network emerging as a go-to platform for handling microtransactions. Several industrial sectors such as the Internet of Things (IoT), supply chain, P2P energy trading, and others have leveraged the power of the IOTA technology to their own use.
Over the last few years, the IOTA network has heavily relied upon Coordinator for ensuring the security of the network against hacking attacks. However, the existence of Coordinator has raised several concerns over-centralization and the IOTA Foundation is now working on an upgrade to IOTA 2.0 which will replace the Coordinator with a decentralized decision-making system.
The IOTA Coordinator still exists in the market while the IOTA Foundation continues to hit new milestones every single day. Also, the team behind the IOTA has been working on some key projects such as Europe’s Digital ID wallet, projects involving cross-chain interoperability, and much more.
As we know, the IOTA Foundation is planning to release the IOTA 2.0 mainnet by the second half of the year. The first version of the same could probably arrive in a matter of a few weeks.
But before ensuring this transition, the IOTA developer team plans to bring a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with all core functionalities that would be part of IOTA 2.0. Exactly, for this reason, IOTA introduced the shimmer blockchain last year in September 2022.
The importance of Shimmer
Currently, the IOTA network has tokens worth half a billion dollars. Thus, if the network decides to simply switch to IOTA 2.0 without extensive testing, there are high chances of a security breach which could be more threatening to users’ deposits.
This is exactly where the Shimmer network has to play a major role. The Shimmer is a Layer 1 staging network of IOTA that serves as a testbed to test all new innovative ideas before they make their way to the IOTA mainnet.
As a result, all the battle-testing before bringing new innovations to IOTA 2.0 will happen on the Shimmer network. Some of the new features of the IOTA ecosystem that was not available earlier include:
- Instant transactions without any fees.
- The ShimmerEVM chain whose beta version launched recently. The ShimmerEVM will allow developers to build thousand of Ethereum dApps which will be instantly compatible with Shimmer.
- NFTs on Layer 1 including their integration to the Shimmer Firefly wallet.
- Minting of native L1 tokens into the Shimmer Firefly wallet.
- Voting functionality in the Shimmer Firefly wallet.
- Staking of IOTA tokens and receiving Assembly tokens as rewards.
All of the above features are currently available on the Shimmer network and will be soon available on IOTA after sufficient testing.
However, the question of whether Shimmer or IOTA is difficult to answer. But since both are parts of the same ecosystem, their users are likely to benefit in the long term.
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