Trust me bro, last issue before ShimmerEVM
From the editorial desk…
[ - by Ness]
Two weeks ago, something big happened: Shimmer finally got listed on Bitpanda. With a special Bitpanda Spotlight, the exchange added Shimmer to their portfolio. You can now buy and trade your coins there. And for everybody who staked their IOTA on Bitpanda: your Shimmer is now in your wallet as well.
There is even more good news: the new Shimmer Firefly update is live. And with that, the Governance vote for the Shimmer Community Treasury and the Shimmer Growth Committee started. If you haven’t done so yet: open your Firefly wallet and vote!
Besides that, the past weeks have been rather quiet. The IF started regular updates on the progress of the ShimmerEVM on Discord. The Tangleverse Times team used this time to host an AMA with Adam and Austin of the IF’s business development team. You weren’t able to make it to the live AMA? No problem - you can read the summary in this issue of the Tangleverse Times.
We also covered our community again. This time, the spotlight is on Vrom. And to make it easier to understand crypto, DigitalSoulx, summarized the second session of the Shimmer DeFi education series with Bankless Consulting.
Make sure to get to the end of this issue. We created a little maze for you. Are you the one to bring ShimmerEVM to mainnet?
Token Swaps - DEC vs. CEX
[ - by @DigitalSoulx]
Bankless Consulting provided eight Shimmer DeFi education sessions for the community. We already published a summary of the first one about Wallets and Interaction with DeFi. In the second session, they talked about Token Swaps, Centralized Exchanges (CEX) and Decentralized Exchanges (DEX). @DigitalSoulx summarized the second topic for you.
“Welcome to the second Shimmer DeFi Education session of seven. In the first session, we explored the different types of cryptocurrency wallets and how to use them. This session deals with cryptocurrency exchanges: Centralized Exchanges (CEX) and Decentralized Exchanges (DEX). Both of these types of exchanges are online marketplaces for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. However, their modes of operation are very different and this session will consider the pros and cons of each.
Centralized Exchanges (CEX)
A centralized exchange is run by a corporation: Coinbase or Binance for example. They generally have features that appeal to new crypto investors such as convenient fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, polished user interfaces, customer service reps, etc. Because they have the backing of corporations, they have the appearance of being trustworthy and it’s true that they must conform to local regulations. But, since they are corporations they must also generate a profit and answer to their shareholders. Additionally, these CEX platforms act as a third party between traders and their coins. Many of them take custody of your coins while you are using the platform, and some of them might not even purchase the coins at all. They might simply generate an in-house ledger entry to account for your purchase without actually buying the coins in the first place.”
AMA with Adam and Austin of the IOTA business development team
[ - by Mart]
We had the great opportunity to host an AMA on our discord server with Adam and Austin. They are both part of the business development team and the Touchpoint Open Builders Program. During the AMA, we asked all the questions the community was curious about. You missed the live AMA? No worries, Mart summarized the one-hour session for you.
“Narrative is extremely important for all crypto projects (along with most things in life). What is IOTA’s unique narrative that will help it stand among giants like Bitcoin and Ethereum’s compelling narratives?
Austin: IOTA’s narrative is unique, it’s about creating sound money, a closely linked environment where people can experience DeFi and NFTs. We need to figure out a way to go back to fundamental problems, banking the unbanked, bringing it to third world countries. IOTA can do differently than just focusing on price action and serve people that come to this space to better the world.
Adam: Crypto’s vision went stagnant for a long time. Bitcoin is an inflation hedge, Ethereum is programmable money for example. IOTA offers a real alternative to this. It’s the only crypto that can offer an alternative vision, not relying on miners or validators, so no gatekeepers. Crypto means no middleman and IOTA does something that comes closer to that vision.
Austin: Most projects stay kind of centralized, IOTA though not decentralized yet, wants to get as decentralized as possible and secure for everyone. It’s pretty clear that there’s a centralized entity behind a lot of projects. We want to create an environment for people that’s as decentralized as possible.”
Community Member Spotlight: Vrom
[ - Interview by @IotaPoet]
In this episode, IotaPoet interviewed one of the best known community members in the IOTA ecosystem: Vrom. On his Twitter account and with his weekly “Stammtisch”, he keeps everybody informed and is always one of the first to know the gossip and the news.
“IotaPoet: With nearly 12k organic followers, you are one of the biggest IOTA accounts on Twitter, what motivates you to be so active on there?
Vrom: I was never really active on Twitter, but when I joined the crypto space it was clear that all the latest information was shared on Twitter. So, I decided to create a special IOTA-related account. At the beginning I was just a lurker in the dark, but as I already had a private crypto-related whatsapp group, where I always shared the latest IOTA news, it was just a small step to also publish this information on Twitter. I thought that this could be my way to help the community to grow, as the founders constantly wrote that everyone could do something to help the community. Back then I was also impressed by Limo’s weekly Sunday Banter, where he explained all the latest IOTA-related news to the German community and I also wanted to help him a bit to find more content.
With almost no coding background I thought that this was my way to contribute to the community and I got a lot of positive, but sometimes also negative, feedback. Especially for my screenshots from discord and telegram discussions, where I normally just posted the screenshots without any comments. However, some people became angry, normally because of the drama that appeared after certain sentences made by the founders. I had the feeling that everyone should be unbiased and informed about all the important topics that happened around IOTA. I found it unfair that some information was only shared in certain telegram or discord channels, where not everyone had access. So for me, Twitter was always the most accessible way for crypto-related content and I thought it was a good way to inform the community about all things related to IOTA.
Coming back to your question; on the one hand, Twitter is a great platform to reach other people with similar interests, and on the other hand it is also possible to reach people outside of our bubble. For example, if you tag some famous account and get enough likes, even Elon Musk might be interested in your tweets. That’s why I guess Twitter is the fastest way to spread all kind of news and once IOTA can finally announce Coordicide you can be sure that I still want to be there and spread it with my followers!
What’s new in Moonaco?
[ - by Ness]
Moonaco Podcast Episode 64: In this episode, Thomas was joined by Dave de Fijter of the IOTA Foundation.
Dave de Fijter got into crypto back in 2010/11, when Bitcoin slowly started making its way into the world. He started mining, collecting, and trading coins but somehow left the space again. In 2017 Dave came back and had a closer look into Ethereum. But he was left being disappointed by its performance. On Reddit, he finally discovered IOTA and got involved. As a moderator, at first he became the bridge between the IF and the community. Today, Dave is the Director of Engineering of the Smart Contracts team and a member of the Technical Committee.
What are Smart Contracts? To put it simply: “Programmability added on top of a distributed ledger”. People can rely on the authenticity of the program, which creates trust. Smart Contracts can be used for voting, governance and financial things – just to mention a few – without relying on one single party hosting the infrastructure.
When it comes to IOTA, the foundation is currently working on the ShimmerEVM to bring Smart Contracts to IOTA. While other chains are just taking the EVM, put it on top, and they’re done. IOTA went the extra mile. They created a dashboard and a specific consensus module. In the last year the focus was on the specific output types of the chain as well as on the work with native assets like NFTs. Furthermore, they needed to be able to anchor the EVM to Layer 1. At the current state, Dave is pretty happy with how things are turning out. They also extended the EVM support and the next step would be to put the ShimmerEVM on the testnet.
Compared to other chains, the architecture of IOTA allows anyone to start a Layer 2 and a lot of chains can run in parallel. They are able to communicate directly via Layer 1, and you can transfer L1 assets to a L2 chain. This is also called “magic contract”. You just send L2 tokens to it and they “magically” become an ERC20 token.
Why would people and projects from other networks move to IOTA/Shimmer? Besides the scalable and flexible architecture of IOTA, especially Shimmer provides a good reason for this change: the first mover advantage. A lot of projects want to become market leaders, but this is hard on established networks. If Shimmer is successful, chances are high, the projects can profit from it. Dave himself doesn’t see a problem in spreading the word and attracting people from outside our ecosystem to use Shimmer and IOTA.
And last but not least, we all want to know about the timeframes of the ShimmerEVM. Unfortunately, Dave couldn’t give us an exact timeline. But here are some of the upcoming steps:
During the last months: working hard to make the release testnet ready
Currently: setting up the testnet, doing some general tests and the first projects already started internal testing
Coming up: ensure that the chain is running stable and is ready for value use
Launch of the Shimmer EVM
After extensive testing, it will be launched on IOTA as well
Dave expects that in the best case scenario, it will take a couple of months, until everything is available on IOTA as well.
Bring Shimmer EVM to mainnet
[ - by @DigitalSoulx]
To make the time waiting a little bit more fun, DigitalSoulx created a little Maze for you to solve. Can you bring Shimmer EVM to mainnet?
Flippin’ Burgers - “Boobavelli”
In the latest Flippin’ Burgers episode, Kutkraft sat down with @DraculaPresley and @oxBoobavelli, the founder of Omni X. If you want to know more about their NFT project and see beyond our own bubble, you can listen to the recording on Twitter:
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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, IotaPoet, Vrom, Adam Hardaker and Austin Bandalof.
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