• Last week, there have been key developments in the IOTA ecosystem with ShimmerEVM testnet going live and four governance protocols getting approved.
• Iotabee launched its DEX on ShimmerEVM and processed over 10k transactions. Similarly, the ShimmerSea training DEX also went live this week. 

Over the last week, there have been some key developments taking place within the IOTA ecosystem as it gears for some major upgrades ahead of this year in 2023. One of the major events over the past week was the launch of the ShimmerEVM testnet.

The launch of ShimmerEVM has been awaited for a very long time as it will expand the reach of the interoperable Shimmer protocol. Also, the EVM compatibility received a major 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. The announcement from 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.

Another major development has been that the Ledger support for the Shimmer network has been activated. Additionally, the Shimmer votes passed four governance protocols to be implemented at a later stage within the Shimmer ecosystem.

This includes the approval of the Shimmer Growth Committee as well as the approval of the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee. Also, the job of the Growth Committee will be to unlock opportunities in increasing the adoption of the Shimmer network. On the other hand, the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee provides an annual budget of 27,204,307 SMR tokens for the development of the Shimmer ecosystem.

Iotabee and ShimmerSea DEXs Off To A Strong Start

Iotabee is one of the most popular decentralized exchanges (DEXs) to go live on the Shimmer blockchain and has been offering liquidity for SMR, SOON, and SHIMMER native tokens since September 2022. The DEX claims that more than 3000 customers have benefitted from their services.

Interestingly, Iotabee was quick enough to launch on the ShimmerEVM testnet and achieved a major milestone in no time. It announced:

What an incredible milestone!! In just one day since our release of Phase 1 on the #Shimmer EVM #testnet, #IotabeeDEX has already processed over 10k transactions. We’re thrilled with the smooth performance of the #Shimmer EVM #testnet and incredibly grateful to the supportive @shimmernet and #IOTA community!

Similarly, the ShimmerSea training DEX went live ahead this week on Monday, April 3. The official announcement from ShimmerSea read:

ShimmerSea Training DEX presents our absoute MVP (minimal viable product), excluding advanced features & tokenomics. These features are already finished & audited, but are saved for the official launch to protect our innovations.