IOTA Counts Down a Month to Network Upgrade
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IOTA, the innovative distributed ledger ecosystem, is preparing for a new round and a possible bull market. The asset price is on an upward leg after months of stagnation. The project may fix both its price action and technical problems with a long-planned update of its wallet.
Since February, the price of IOTA expanded by more than 500%, breaking the $1 barrier. In the past few days alone, the price jumped into a new range, from $1.40 toward $1.70. After a brief slump, IOTA is back at $1.40, with some expectations of shooting for $2 in the near future. IOTA is also hoping to become a part of an eventual altcoin rally in case BTC prices stagnate.
IOTA also appreciated by about 30% against Bitcoin (BTC), adding to the price strength. The price moves are already reflected in social media hype, potentially boosting the interest in IOTA even more.
IOTA has been on an upward hike since its $0.29 yearly lows in January, re-sparking hopes of visiting previous highs.
Network Migration Boosts Prices
The price spike for IOTA followed news of the upcoming Chrysalis network. The IOTA Foundation will release the upgrade on April 21. All IOTA tokens will be migrated to the new network, with the potential to build a faster, more secure network.
The news around the Chrysalis migration will further boost the visibility of IOTA, which has been a relatively silent project in the past months. IOTA slid significantly during the three-year bear market, and will have to regain its community in 2021.
Firefly Wallet Beta Release Completed
The IOTA developer team has already completed an important step in the Chrysalis update, the Firefly wallet.
The wallet will be the central hub to migrate IOTA assets and start using the new network. IOTA will pose a significant challenge, as the Chrysalis update changes all aspects of the protocol. Previous implementations, as well as old wallets, will not be usable.
Currently, the Firefly wallet only works with testnet tokens. The new tokens should come live on April 28. Between the March 22 launch of the wallet and the final Chrysalis update, a new version of the token will be released in production.
Right now, the available IOTA tokens from the old network will only have a month to live, and both users and exchanges will have to make an effort to adopt the new assets.
IOTA Reinvented
The IOTA network faced problems for years, starting with a faulty hash function. Later, the project had to use a centralized server as wallets could not otherwise coordinate and display updated balances. The technical problems were only added to disagreements between developers and the IOTA Foundation, culminating in the ousting of founder David Sønstebø from the Foundation.
A year ago, the IOTA system came under attack as hackers exploited a bug in the Trinity wallet and stole $1.6M equivalent of coins. To counter the attack, the IOTA Foundation stopped its central server, which ultimately verified transactions. This led to a weeks-long freeze of all IOTA transactions, leading up to the idea to restart the network with the Chrysalis update.
The new network aims to solve the problems of Trinity wallet and the old transaction verification technology. IOTA was supposed to work by turning each wallet into a node, but users reported lost coins and troubles connecting to the network.
What’s Ahead for IOTA?
IOTA wanted to position itself as the coin for the Internet of Things, a small-scale asset capable of fast, cheap microtransactions. However, for years IOTA existed only as a speculative trading asset, with no additional use cases.
The rise of DeFi projects and the need for high-capacity networks led IOTA to a new path. The project will now strive to include smart contract functionalities and compete with Ethereum on DeFi, non-fungible tokens and other resource-intensive activities.
Despite its foray into DeFi, the IOTA Foundation preserves its past allegiances with IBM and blockchain research organizations.
The new IOTA network and its wallet will also offer the creation of new types of tokens. With that in mind, owning IOTA may become a more valuable proposition, if the project attracts an ecosystem of DeFi projects and NFTs.
By April 28, the project will still work on launching a mobile wallet and integrating with the Nano hardware wallet. The current beta version of Firefly is still under review and bugs may still be reported.
Where to Buy or Trade IOTA
Despite the upcoming token swap and new network update, IOTA is still actively traded. The biggest market for IOTA is on Binance International, against dollar-pegged asset Tether (USDT). More than 70% of all IOTA trades are against USDT, and there is no significant trading against BTC.
Currently, the Binance activity for IOTA is relatively small. In the past, IOTA has been one of the most traded assets, due to its relatively low price and significant upside.
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