Building Our Way Out of the Bear
The time to build is now!
From the editorial desk…
[ - by Ness]
The IOTA price as well as the whole crypto market finally seems to recover a little bit. Time to have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of IOTA and Shimmer compared to other cryptos. In our last issue, we already covered the aspects of scalability, decentralization and security. This time we are looking even closer at IOTA and comparing its obstacles, adoption, and its user and developer experience with Ethereum and Cardano.
Besides that, Shimmer EVM is just around the corner. But why did they choose the Ethereum Virtual Machine? Are there any alternatives to the EVM? DigitalSoulx took a deep dive into the topic of Virtual Machines and gives an overview on the Shimmer EVM, MoveVM and FuelVM.
And the most popular feature is back: the IF interview. Get to know more about Firefly in the Interview with David De Troch.
IOTA & Shimmer: All Machines Welcome Here (Even Virtual Ones)!
[ - by @DigitalSoulx]
“While the original vision of IOTA was to build a DLT to enable the Internet of Things, the development of the protocol has expanded well beyond that today. The Smart Contract infrastructure that will soon be rolled out on Shimmer will broadly expand the capabilities of the ledgers by enabling a host of new distributed applications (dApps). However, it is clear that the original “no machine left behind” motivation has not been abandoned; it has been expanded to include even the virtual machines of today.
How can a machine be virtual?
We are all patiently awaiting the release of the ShimmerEVM: the Shimmer-customized Ethereum Virtual Machine. In simple terms, a Virtual Machine (VM) is a software package that emulates a different Operating System (OS) that is to be run alongside your primary OS. A VM has its own memory, storage space, etc. and can be used to perform standard computer functions like running a program or creating files. However, the ‘machine’ is just a virtual construct. It allows software to be run on a machine that would otherwise not support it. It provides separation between dApp and node, so if there is an attack on the VM nothing else is affected. The rest of this article will introduce several different VMs that may soon be supported on Shimmer (and later IOTA) with their corresponding strengths and weaknesses.”
The Tangleverse Times Interviews David De Troch
David is working as a software engineer for the IOTA foundation. Currently, he is in the Firefly team.
“Tangleverse Times: What separates Firefly from other wallets out there?
David De Troch: Three things make Firefly stand out from other wallets. The first one is our dedication to a superb experience for our users. We have the opportunity to work with amazing designers and ping-pong between what is technically feasible and what is optimal for the user. Whenever we think about a new feature, we start with regular design discussions to find a solution that looks and feels good. The back and forth continues throughout the whole development phase which results in a well-designed UI/UX.
The second differentiator is the unique features that come with the IOTA protocol. At Firefly, we believe you can have the best network, but without a good wallet, there won’t be any real-world adoption. And what is the point of developing all these cool features if nobody uses them?
The last part is our commitment to usable security. Critics of the crypto industry often point out that it is cumbersome to interact with digital ledgers due to the technical knowledge required to keep everything secure. We aim to provide a digital wallet that doesn’t compromise on its security but still allows its user to take advantage of these new technologies in a frictionless manner.”
Battle of the Layer 1s: The Zero-Sum Struggle
[ - by MolochNess]
In the last issue of the Tangleverse Times MolochNess compared the three Layer 1 solutions Ethereum, IOTA and Cardano in terms of scalability, decentralization and security. The second part of this comparison will focus on the user and developer experience, notable adoption, PoCs and deployments as well as obstacles, risks and the road to mass adoption.
“Welcome back, time to delve into the finer details of these ecosystems:
User/Developer experience
Despite periodic surges in adoption, crypto still has a long way to come with regards to user and developer experience.
One of the largest points of friction for normal users: L1s and L2s force user to pay fees in a ‘core token’: $ETH, $ADA, $MATIC, etc. A handful of dapps also require users to use special tokens: Brave, Chainlink, Arweave, The Graph. Even if most of those are business-facing, how many B2B companies charge their clients in speculative and volatile assets? Web3 games use special currencies, ($MANA, $SAND, etc), but at least gamers are accustomed to that.
The status quo works well-enough when most users are crypto die-hards and speculators who would use/hold $ETH regardless. However, average people are unlikely to learn about $ETH and keep re-purchasing it forever simply to pay fees. Users routinely get ‘stuck’ with a wallet full of USDC/NFTs/etc, but not enough $ETH to cover the cost of a transfer or swap, forcing them to embark on a grueling trip to and from Binance. The only way to avoid this is to buy core tokens in excess of what they really need, but that exposes users to volatilty, and most people just don’t want to.
For global adoption to occur, L1s and L2s must enable fees in more mainstream assets (eg: USD stablecoins), or wallets will have to abstract the complexity away from users, swapping assets their users have for the respective core token.”
Community Member Spotlight: ID.iota (@id_iota)
[ - Interview by @IotaPoet]
In this issue, IotaPoet interviewed community member ID.iota, who provides helpful twitter threads about IOTA and Shimmer.
“IotaPoet: Which coin do you think will be worth more on 21 August 2024- IOTA or Shimmer?
ID.iota: Great Question! I really love how those discussions come up and how everyone got surprised with the Shimmer Marketcap suddenly being at above 200 Million USD. We are still above 100 Million USD at the time of writing (2nd February), which puts us at 15% of IOTAs Marketcap. To compare the numbers, Kusama, the staging network of Polkadot, is at 5% of Polkadots Marketcap.
So basically, the market saw more in Shimmer than just a staging network and as we can see even the IOTA Foundation is pivoting. Shimmer isn’t any longer just the “little crazy Cousin” from Iota. Shimmer is advertised as “feeless, parallelized DAG ledger to secure and create fully customizable smart contract chains”. And if you listen to what the IF is communicating in Discord lately you see that they are eager to bring things to success with Shimmer.
So that’s how the IF and the market understands Shimmer, but we also see quite different tokenomics for Shimmer and IOTA till today. We have token locks through the storage deposit, and we will see $SMR as the token necessary to pay fees whenever using ShimmerEVM.
I think at the end it depends, if the market thinks that strong Shimmer leads to strong IOTA, or if the market doesn’t see any price adaption from Shimmer to IOTA. My guess is 21st of August 2024 is too early in either case. If Shimmer becomes the go-to place for Web3 and IOTA becomes the go-to place in real world adoption, then we will see a Shimmer close to IOTA in 2025 and IOTA above Shimmer in 2029.”
What’s new in Moonaco?
[ - by Ness]
Moonaco Podcast Episode 61: In this episode, Thomas was joined by Adri Wischmann of EnergieKnip.
“EnergieKnip has built a local green currency on IOTA to drive energy efficiency in homes. The non-profit organization BlockchainLab Drenthe started with spreading knowledge about blockchains, giving guest lectures at university and building several blockchain applications.
When the city of Emmen reached out to them to find a solution to grant people subsidies for saving energy, EnergieKnip was born. They designed an app that the city can use to give out the subsidies, and the people can only spend it on energy saving measures. Since crypto is tightly regulated in the Netherlands, they first had to go into talks with the National Bank to ask if they were allowed to launch a local currency in the municipality of Emmen. The National Bank agreed, and EnergieKnip launched their own currency based on IOTA.
They designed an app with two purposes:
1. Collect information anonymously.
2. Reward people for sharing that information by giving them subsidies they can spend in local hardware stores.”
Spec Weekly - Taking over decentralized data storage!
One of the projects with a lot of potential within the IOTA and Shimmer ecosystem is PIPE: the infrastructure for Hub Cloud that was developed by TangleHub.
In the last Spec Weekly episode, Kutkraft took a look at the future of decentralized storage and explored PIPE.
And that’s a wrap! Please like, share, smash that subscribe… or better yet, join us! Do you love to write? Passionate about the IOTA ecosystem? Do you have a project to share? Master at making memes?
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Special thanks and honourable mentions to all the hardworking ICCD degens who contributed (in the form of written, editorial, design, advisory, and memetic support) to this edition: DigitalSoul.x (Rob), Mart, Ness, Molochness, IotaPoet, ID.iota and David De Troch.
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