IOTA Community Gives Green Light to Rebased Protocol Upgrade

In a governance vote held between Dec. 2 and Dec. 17, the IOTA community has supported the Rebased protocol upgrade proposal.

With a 7.52% voter turnout, 98.37% of participating IOTA token holders voted in favor of the upgrade.

Faster, More Secure, and Decentralized

According to the IOTA Foundation, the Rebased upgrade, in which IOTA switches its Layer 1 (L1) to a Move-based object ledger , will bring improvements to the network. These include increased scalability and performance, leading to faster transaction speeds and greater network capacity.

Additionally, IOTA aims to bolster security measures with the new protocol upgrade, making the network more resilient to potential threats.

Furthermore, Rebased is expected to promote greater decentralization, ensuring a more robust and distributed network.

A Sustainable Tokenomics Model

Beyond the technical improvements, Rebased also introduces staking rewards, giving IOTA tokens real utility. IOTA token holders can now actively participate in securing the network and earn rewards for doing so.

To ensure a sustainable token economy, Rebased balances inflation with deflation. New IOTA tokens are minted to provide staking rewards, but transaction fees are burned to counterbalance this. This creates a deflationary pressure that helps maintain the long-term value of IOTA.

All minting and burning operations are publicly visible in the IOTA Rebased Explorer, ensuring accountability and transparency within the ecosystem.

IOTA Rebased would introduce sustainable #tokenomics model ♻️:

6% supply growth in year 1 (767k #IOTAs /epoch), staking rewards for validators/delegators, low transaction fees (~0.005 IOTAs) deflationary pressure via fee burning.

Sponsored transactions add user flexibility. pic.twitter.com/gAQzCg8uQk

— IOTA (@iota) December 20, 2024

Testnet Live with Strong Validator Support

With the community’s support, the IOTA Foundation is actively working towards the mainnet release of IOTA Rebased.

A public testnet is already operational, providing developers and partners with an opportunity to explore and integrate the new technology.

To ensure a smooth transition to the upgraded mainnet, IOTA has outlined several key conditions.

These include a minimum two-month testnet phase with rigorous stress testing, a readiness review of all validators on the testnet, completion of thorough security audits during the testing phase, and finally, successful integration of IOTA Rebased by major cryptocurrency exchanges .

Once these criteria are met, the official mainnet launch date will be announced.

Additionally, the IOTA Foundation also announced partnerships with various blockchain infrastructure providers and validators, including Nansen, Ankr, Nodes.Guru, Cosmostation, InfStones, and Stakin, among others.

These validators have already begun participating in the IOTA Rebased test network.

The #IOTA Rebased test network just welcomed an additional 9 validators! 🤝
It's incredible to see so many leading projects stepping up to prepare the network for mainnet launch – learn more about them here 👇🧵 1/10 https://t.co/m9gd2CB3wh pic.twitter.com/7RHybYCmOj

— IOTA (@iota) December 19, 2024