2022 was a rollercoaster ride for the crypto ecosystem. The year started well for IOTA as the newly introduced staking for the Shimmer (SMR), and Assembly (ASMB) side projects created a sense of optimism for the strong and vibrant crypto community. After the long crypto winter that was 2022, it became clear that financial and digital empowerment through decentralization remains a primary goal for many blockchains, including the IOTA Foundation. In this article, we’ll review IOTA’s 2022 and discuss what 2023 has in store for the network.
Research and Development in 2022
IOTA’s Lighthouse Projects dashboard was released in May and provided an overview of how IOTA’s transparent, traceable and immutable sharing of data offers optimal solutions for any industry. So far, fifteen projects with over 179 partners have committed to utilizing IOTA for a range of projects and services, including mobility (e.g., Gaia-X ROMS), data governance as a Service (e.g., GOVS), developing smart meters (e-g. SUSEE project), and e-commerce (e.g., ENSURESEC, a two-year project that came to a successful conclusion in May).
IOTA research goes far and wide, and their development of Digital Identity and Security also hit milestones in 2022. In April, they released IOTA Identity v5, with improvements in ease of use, security, consistency, and code quality. November saw Stronghold 1.0 stable release; Stronghold is a secure software library written in Rust to manage sensitive data.
It wasn’t just internal R&D as IOTA committed funds to the Imperial College London and the University of Zurich Blockchain center to further develop research into the circular economy and the consensus model used in the IOTA protocol.
Firefly – IOTA’s Official Wallet
The IOTA network received the first mobile iteration of Firefly, IOTA’s official web3 wallet. In a step towards decentralization, the IOTA Governance Framework was added to allow users to view and vote on current governance proposals with more features to be expected in 2023.
The team behind Firefly also released the Firefly Shimmer wallet to support the Shimmer launch. The features include native tokens, microtransactions, expiration times, and claiming async transactions.
Regulation and education
IOTA has always been active in regulating the blockchain space in 2022. The Foundation is an active member of the International Association of Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA), the European Blockchain Association, and Blockchain Bundesverband. IOTA contributed heavily to INATBA’s recommendations presented to the European Commission with most suggestions incorporated in the final version.
The team was even busier at the international level with IOTA representatives present at dozens of conferences around the world.
Decentralized Governance and DAOs
2022 saw IOTA welcome decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to the network with five projects native to IOTA evolving into DAOs and supported by the Foundation, through grants and close collaboration. The Community Governance Group, from which the DAO Pioneers’ idea evolved also developed the voting methods that led to the first on -Tangle governance vote.
May saw the creation of the IOTA Governance Forum where developers and engineers can openly discuss protocol improvements, future protocol implementations, and other suggestions for improvement. This Forum saw the creation of a treasury DAO for the Shimmer ecosystem, the establishment of the Shimmer Community Treasury Committee, and the inception of the Shimmer Growth Committee.
The Shimmer revolution
Shimmer officially launched in September and advanced the IOTA ledger with a tokenization framework, enabling anyone to tokenize anything and everything (from NFTs to real-world assets, stablecoins to fan tokens, and more) natively on Layer 1 without fees.
100% of Shimmer tokens were airdropped to the community over three months starting in June 2022; the community’s vote to allocate 20% of these tokens to set up an Ecosystem Fund means that Shimmer is not under the sole control of the IOTA community but also its own DAO treasury and a Swiss-based Tangle Ecosystem Association, which can help fund ecosystem projects and grow the Shimmer network.
The launch marked a massive milestone in the evolution of IOTA. The framework aims to become a community-led ecosystem of independent teams and organizations with projects supported by the Touchpoint Open Builders Program. Launched in March, the program has connected and supported builders, experts, and investors in the ecosystem to build, launch and scale their projects.
Year in preview: a multi-chain future
Shimmer remains at the forefront of IOTA’s decentralized, multi-chain smart contract future. The ShimmerEVM remains a priority for the Foundation and promises to bring Ethereum-compatible smart contracts with some of the lowest fees for smart contract execution on the market.
Over 70 projects are currently active with the ecosystem expected to grow in 2023. Developer experience remains a constant focus of the IOTA foundation with more programs for builder support expected in the new year.
Firefly is aiming to support NFTs, a more comprehensive voting system for Shimmer governance, as well as supporting Layer 1 to Layer 2 asset transfers. The end goal will be the merging of the Shimmer and IOTA wallet for both desktop and mobile.
Finally, decentralizing the IOTA network looks to be a tangible goal for 2023. This year will see a focus on the development and integration of the Coordinator-free consensus alongside the development of the long-awaited Coordicide update. Combined, these upcoming updates will enable the complete decentralization of the network while significantly improving performance.
Further Readings
It’s impossible to cover all the positive steps the IOTA Foundation has taken and is preparing to take in 2023 in one article. Luckily, the Foundation has released a treasure trove of resources to educate readers on their plans and achievements.
- IOTA’s 2022 Year of the Ecosystem – Official Blog post from the Foundation covering, in greater detail, the networks 2022 and 2023
- IOTA Review 2022 – Preview 2023 Video – A comprehensive four-hour review featuring presentations from multiple IOTA team members.
- Introduction to Coordicide Specifications – A series of educational videos from the IOTA Research team covering what the Coordicide upgrades entail.
- The IOTA Foundation Youtube Channel – Criminally undersubscribed Youtube channel. A lot of high quality content is here for those ready to learn more about IOTA.
