In 2015, the the IOTA project with a vision of creating a distributed ledger for Internet of Things (IoT) . The project originally had an unusual design architecture but was later rewritten to adopt established standards. In 2019, the theoretical basis of an uncompromising, fully decentralized and secure IOTA protocol was launched and it was known as IOTA 2.0. The IOTA project, named after the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet, was initially funded by an online sale and created incredible vibes thanks to its new concept of distributed ledger technology (DLT). IOTA has no consensus on proof of work or proof of stake. IOTA's distributed ledger architecture is quite unique as it uses DAG or directed acyclic graph. The network has been targeted by quite a few attacks and a vulnerability has been discovered. In 2020, Trinity's wallet was hacked. The network went completely offline as the IOTA Foundation had to shut down the "coordinator" node responsible for approving every IOTA transaction. This incident raised serious questions about IOTA's decentralization. The IOTA Foundation recently released IOTA 2.0 DEVNET and is a prototype for achieving full decentralization.
"Today we are launching IOTA 2.0 DevNet, the first fully decentralized IOTA network without the need for a coordinator, along with our new digital asset framework. We invite everyone (and every machine) to join this network, learn and experience the future of IOTA today. " - Publication on the IOTA blog on June 2, 2021.
The IOTA 2.0 protocol was launched with a vision to create an open, fair and equitable distributed ledger network. The low resource requirement was purposefully made to fit the Internet of Things. It was designed to be a leaderless consensus protocol where every participant had to have the same right. Turning a theoretical foundation into reality is a cumbersome task. After years of development, DevNet is finally open for testing and aims to become production-ready and aligned with the original vision of the most decentralized distributed ledger networks possible.
IOTA launches special IOTA 2.0 website . You can visit the Devnet action with this Visualizer. IOTA's Devnet 2.0 has the following features:
No fee: all transactions are absolutely free of charge.
Security: Double spending is not possible. The network is protected from spam and attacks are not possible.
Decentralization: No need to choose a leader. Consensus is achieved through the democratic participation of all nodes.
Image source - Removal of "coordinator"
The new IOTA test network has no "coordinator", no message structure and has a new consensus mechanism. The team claims it is the most powerful implementation of a no-compromise distributed ledger protocol based on directed acyclic graph (DAG). The network is capable of hosting smart contracts, any sophisticated DeFi platform, and even Level 2 protocols. IOTA was always a fast book, but this test network offers transaction finality in seconds. Super fast finality is achieved by Mana base weight for approval. Running a node with low-power devices remains an issue with many blockchains. IOTA 2.0 allows low-power devices to easily run a node, since message creation and verification are inexpensive operations on IOTA. If you are enthusiastic about trying and testing new things related to blockchain technology, you can try running IOTA 2.0 Devnet node and the lesson is available here .
IOTA 2.0 Devnet has created enthusiasm in the community. The test network will go through various phases before the launch of mainnet 2.0. The team also plans to launch incentives for network participants. IOTA wanted to address the key question of blockchain scalability through an alternative approach, and so the project's growth remained slow. The decision to be quantum-resistant boomeranged for them due to various flaws in the technique. After many mistakes, the project is trying to adopt a new approach after acknowledging the problems. A production-ready distributed ledger that does not need miners, electricity, transaction fees and usable by humans and machines can find excellent use cases in the real world if properly implemented. The IOTA Foundation wasted enough time to optimize the tradeoffs between centralization and decentralization. This time they want to embrace the completely permissionless path. Yes, this is the preferred way forward.
Note: This post was first published here for Cryptowriter. The source of the cover image is here .
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