IOTAs

IOTA is a distributed ledger technology designed for the Internet of Things (IoT). Its native digital assets are IOTA tokens, commonly referred to as MIOTA units, used to facilitate value transfer and data integrity within the network. The project began in 2015 under the IOTA Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Germany, founded by Serguei Popov, Sergey Ivancheglo, David Sønstebø, Dominik Schiener, and others.

Technology and architecture: IOTA uses the Tangle, a directed acyclic graph, instead of a traditional blockchain. Each transaction validates two previous transactions, creating a self-optimizing consensus mechanism without miners. Transactions are designed to be feeless, aiming to scale with network usage. A small amount of proof-of-work is required to deter spam and help secure the network. The design emphasizes machine-to-machine payments and data integrity for IoT use cases.

Governance and upgrades: The IOTA protocol has undergone several upgrades to improve performance, security, and usability. Chrysalis, introduced in 2021, brought significant improvements to network stability, wallet support, and developer tooling. The project also emphasizes Coordicide, the effort to remove centralized coordination and achieve fully decentralized consensus on the mainnet.

Use and ecosystem: The IOTA ecosystem includes wallets, client libraries, and developer tools that support IoT-focused applications such as supply chain tracking, data marketplaces, and autonomous machine transactions. Shimmer, a separate test network, is used to trial new features before they are released on the mainnet.

Security and criticism: IOTA has faced security incidents in its history, including wallet breaches and concerns raised about decentralization in earlier phases that relied on a Coordinator for safety. The Foundation continues to emphasize security audits, open governance, and ongoing development toward greater decentralization and resilience.