IOTA introduces staking rewards with the launch of its incentivized staging network Shimmer

BERLIN (November 16, 2021) -- IOTA Foundation, the open-source foundation behind the IOTA Tangle, announces Shimmer, IOTA’s incentivized staging network with a native token $SMR. The staging network will accelerate the development roadmap of IOTA and ensure that major network upgrades are publicly validated and thoroughly tested through the right token incentives. At the same time, Shimmer will offer builders and users a dedicated network to get early access to key innovations, and to be fully compatible for the eventual releases on the IOTA mainnet. 

The introduction of staking rewards will accompany the Shimmer launch. For the first time, IOTA token holders will be able to stake their tokens directly within the Firefly wallet and earn staking rewards in the form of Shimmer tokens. With IOTA staking, the community will have a guaranteed way to participate in the fair token launch of the Shimmer network, without being overbid at auctions or pushed out of unfair selection processes. 

Shimmer will accompany IOTA on its path to become a fully decentralized, programmable multi-asset ledger. The series of upgrades that will first be introduced on Shimmer are: 

• Programmable multi-asset ledger, with the introduction of output types and tokenization on the base layer

• Smart Contracts, with the introduction of IOTA Smart Contracts; agnostic multi-chain smart contracts are fully EVM-compatible

• Full decentralization, with the IOTA 2.0 protocol and its leaderless consensus algorithm, currently live on a public testnet

• Sharding and further optimizations, such as Layer 1 DeFi and more sophisticated output types

Shimmer will provide an innovation testbed with the necessary rewards for the developer community to start building use cases and applications that align with the official IOTA development roadmap. These include decentralized finance (DeFi) with lightning-fast feeless transactions, custom zero-fee smart contracts, a limitless amount of tokenization possibilities and NFTs that can be generated and traded at no minting or trading cost. Shimmer is a dedicated network for the community to build and launch dApps before upgrades happen on the IOTA mainnet. This presents a path to rapid innovation and adoption for the IOTA and Shimmer ecosystem. 

Instead of waiting for polished, fully audited and finalized product releases, Shimmer offers its community an entire ecosystem of applications aimed at being at the forefront of innovation. With Shimmer the innovation will not just happen on the application layer through DeFi, it will also happen on the base protocol layer with new features such as advanced output types, multi-chain smart contracts, feeless tokenization and sharding. Shimmer will enable new possibilities for builders to push current boundaries with dApps, DeFi and NFTs that leverage the feeless and scalable base layer.

The Shimmer network will be fully governed by the community and fueled by the Shimmer token. The Shimmer token is the economic backbone for the economy, with token holders being able to earn a minimum of 8% APY from staking their tokens, or they can participate in the application ecosystem to experiment on different and more unique yield opportunities. After completing the public token distribution over the next three months, the Shimmer network will launch in early 2022. The Shimmer network will be a powerful Layer 1 mainnet: 

• Feeless transactions, including for minting and trading tokenized assets and NFTs 

• Innovation Testbed, with early access to exciting innovations on Layer 1 before they reach the IOTA mainnet

• Staking rewards, with a minimum of 8% APY staking rewards

• Sharded Smart Contracts, with maximum flexibility for developers to define rewards and incentives to validators, support of Solidity, Rust and Go

• Fair token distribution, with no premine or hidden allocations

• Incentivized testnet, with its own token so anyone can participate and become a part of Shimmer

“Launching Shimmer was an easy decision by our team to further accelerate and secure our path towards full decentralization with IOTA. As we’ve seen with the success of Kusama and Polkadot, the Shimmer network will become an incentivized staging network offering crucial testing and public validation to our ambitious development roadmap.” said Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation. “Introducing tokenization, complex output types, smart contracts and new consensus offers exciting new opportunities. These opportunities aren’t without significant risks, however, and Shimmer will ensure the safety of each upgrade. This also lets us offer our community early access in building new decentralized applications. With Shimmer, we are supercharging the innovation playground around IOTA.”