• The introduction of the EVM on the testnet helps to expand the reach of the scalable and interoperable Shimmer protocol.
• The EVM compatibility has received a nice upgrade with a focus on adding support for using Shimmer native assets from L1 on an EVM chain just as if they were either ERC20 tokens or ERC721 NFTs.

On Wednesday, March 29, IOTA’s Layer-1 staging network Shimmer announced the launch of the ShimmerEVM testnet. This is the major milestone towards the platform’s goal of launching the ShimmerEVM which would further open the doors for the launch of the IOTA 2.0 infrastructure.

The introduction of the EVM on the testnet will expand the reach of the scalable and interoperable Shimmer protocol to a wide community of blockchain users and developers working on EVM-compatible smart contracts.

In this public testnet phase, the developers will test and validate the ShimmerEVM which will help in discovering bugs and open the scope of improvement. It will also help in catalyzing the launch of ShimmerEVM on the Shimmer blockchain, which is currently under production.

Over the last four months, the IOTA smart contracts team has been actively working on approving the first release of the Shimmer-compatible IOTA smart contracts (ISC) on several fronts. The developers have mainly focused on getting the node software ready for usage on the real network.

One of the biggest challenges that IOTA developers faced while implementing the smart contracts nodes was a major refactoring of the consensus-related modules. Although the previous version of consensus modules worked, it was hard to debug and understand. Shimmer noted that the developers have worked towards proper refactoring while ensuring that the crucial components work swiftly with the launch of ShimmerEVM.

Another important change in the node software was to look at the historical state of smart contracts and not just the most recent state.

Extending the EVM Functionality

The EVM compatibility has received a nice upgrade with a focus on adding support for using Shimmer native assets from L1 on an EVM chain just as if they were either ERC20 tokens or ERC721 NFTs. In their blog post, Shimmer noted:

We implemented several interfacing contracts that allow you to use native assets deposited to a chain directly within EVM without losing the flexibility to seamlessly transfer those assets back to L1 if desired. This eliminates the need for custom bridges within the Shimmer ecosystem.

Additionally, Shimmer unveiled a brand new API along with CLI implementation. While using the OpenAPI specification standard, Shimmer will allow users to fully automate “the generation of documentation for the API and its client libraries in almost every programming language imaginable”. This new API offers a versatile and consistent replacement for the previous version. Additionally, the API supports new functionalities such as directly calling smart contract call-views, user management, and node management.

The CLI tool also gets a good makeover while using the new API and generated client libraries with more convenience.