After more than a year, the IOTA Foundation finally launched its new mainnet update on IOTA Rebased.
The blockchain infrastructure was upgraded live on Monday, 5 May 2024, and is largely viewed as a significant milestone for the IOTA blockchain infrastructure. Prior to the update, the IOTA token price climbed around 20 percent as interest from investors returned.
Everything About the Latest IOTA Rebased Upgrade
For this major release, they introduced a new network architecture based on smart contracts on top of the Move language, Proof of Stake (PoS), and a set of decentralized validators. The update represents a complete technological shift from the previous versions of the IOTA network, putting the ecosystem into competition with others in the growing crypto space, as highlighted in the previous report.
Luca Moser, one of the lead engineers behind the upgrade, acknowledged the extensive work that went into the launch. “After more than a year of hard work, we’ve officially launched the new IOTA Mainnet,” he shared via X. He added, “The journey wasn’t easy. We made a full 180-degree pivot to an entirely new technology… That takes courage and persistence.”
Dominik Schiener, co-founder of IOTA, praised the engineering team’s dedication. “The network is fully operational and running smoothly, $IOTA holders can stake and builders deploy their dApps,” he said. Schiener further noted, “Amazing execution by everyone at the Foundation who worked tirelessly to make this upgrade happen.”
Existing IOTA token holders do not need to migrate. All that users have to do is import their wallets by private key, mnemonic phrase, or through a stronghold file via Firefly, or Bloom to regain access. Trading continued uninterrupted on exchanges during the upgrade. Also, during the transition period, deposits and withdrawals were temporarily stopped, but they are now normalizing.
Following that, on the same day, the mainnet was launched along with the IOTA Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) resumed function. Users who are using MetaMask still have the EVM layer. Tomorrow, a new IOTA EVM Bridge Web App will be offered for Layer 1 and EVM tokens.
Future Outlook For The Ecosystem
The Foundation has also outlined a number of innovations under development, as Moser underlined. These also include developing “IOTA Names,” a decentralized naming service, and “Starfish,” a system that aims to improve network stability and throughput. Other upgrade plans include enhanced account abstraction, easier API structures, and new programming language bindings for Go, Python, and Java so that more developers can utilize it.
Performance optimizations are also in focus, with improvements in transaction sequencing and validator metrics aimed at fairer staking rewards and system efficiency. “This is what innovation looks like,” Moser stated. “Now that IOTA Rebased is live, we’ve laid the foundation for the ecosystem to flourish.” Thus, developers and builders are encouraged to engage via IOTA’s Discord and explore updated resources at docs.iota.org.
However, despite the successful upgrade, IOTA price is struggling at $0.1937, down by over 6% intraday on Tuesday. It could reflect reduced market interest as the update might not have met investor expectations.