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- The IOTA Foundation continues to target the first half of 2021 for the publication of Coordicide in mainnet.
- In 2021, the IOTA Foundation will increasingly work with international bodies to promote clear regulatory guidelines and frameworks.
The IOTA Foundation (IF) team today answered numerous questions from the community about the launch of Coordicide during an AMA. Hosted by IOTA co-founders Serguei Popov, Dominik Schiener and David Sønstebø, the IF also spoke about other projects, partnerships and the new regulations implemented by the European Union.
On the topic of Coordicide, Billy Sanders, Senior Research Scientist at the IOTA Foundation, spoke about the challenges the team is currently facing with regard to implementation. Sanders explained that the most important research points have been answered, but two important challenges remain:
The challenges lying are implementing and testing our solution. We are implementing our solution into the Pollen testnet and typing it up into our research specifications (the specifications, while not complete, will hopefully be made publicly available soon).
After these tasks are done, our solution will go through a rigorous testing phase. During this time, we will collect performance data, look for attack vectors, and tune the parameters.
Speaking about the companies that could adopt IOTA when the Coordicide is deployed, co-founder Dominik Schiener said that they have received a lot of attention from the crypto community as well as enterprises. Therefore, Schiener believes that by removing the Coordinator, introducing smart contracts and second layer solutions as well as tokenization, “there will be no reason not to switch to IOTA”. The IOTA co-founder added:
I obviously can’t name specifics on which companies we are speaking with – and there are probably even more who will reach out once we’ve achieved our objective of being production ready.
IOTA co-founder Serguei Popov also gave some extra details about the full deployment of the Coordicide. Popov highlighted the complexity of the ongoing upgrade, but was confident that the desired release dates can be met:
Our objective is to have Honey ready within the first half of 2021. Obviously replacing the current IOTA mainnet with the new IOTA protocol is no easy feat, and we need to be absolutely sure that the implementation and the fundamental protocol have been extensively tested and reviewed by other experts.
We are doing our best to speed things up where we can, but overall we are very confident that Coordicide will happen in time.
Billy Sanders added that they will not release IOTA 2.0 until it goes through proper testing. The Senior Research Scientist stressed that the IOTA Foundation is working hard to ensure the success of the project. In a “post-Coordicide” world, the “goal is to have at least 1,000 TPS”. However, in case of failure, Sanders mentioned the possibility of keeping the Coordinator on and said that they “are still discussing how to actually turn it off”.
New regulations and the impact on IOTA
One user also asked the IOTA team about the CityXchange proof of concept and the statement of a report that it was not possible to integrate the IOTA token to any actual payment solution due to political issues. In this regard, the IOTA Foundation team also referred to the “Digital Finance Package” implemented by the European Union.
Co-founder Dominik Schiener stated that the IOTA Foundation has always taken the position that “strong and clear” rules and regulations will lead to greater adoption. In that sense, he said that the measures announced by the EU are a great development for the adoption of IOTA:
We often have the situation where a company reaches out to us and wants to use the IOTA token, but they are simply not able to due to uncertainties in regards to taxes, accounting, legal and regulatory questions. The EU is taking a great stance with their new proposal (called MICA) to provide exactly this type of regulatory clarity and guidance we need. So we are very happy about that and see this as a great development for the adoption of IOTA.
We are very active in INATBA (in fact Julie is still on the board), are in the Executive Committee of the Digital Chamber of Commerce (https://digitalchamber.org) and are actively working with other regulatory bodies around the world. I think that especially in 2021, we will be much more pro-active with our outreach and efforts to push for more regulatory guidance (for the IOTA Token, for Tokenization, Smart Contracts, etc.). We are already talking with companies to start case studies around what it means to use the IOTA token – so that will be exciting.
