IOTA wanted to bring new momentum into the game with prominent additions to the foundation’s board. However, months after the announcement, IOTA has opted for internal solutions and prefers to keep to itself.
Around six months ago, IOTA Foundation CEO Dominik Schiener made people sit up and take notice with the news that he would bring external expertise and celebrities into the management team. However, Schiener said at the time in November 2023 that the appointments would have to remain secret for the time being until everything was officially finalized. Two new names for the board have now appeared on the IOTA website – but both Anja Raden and Jan Misselwitz have been with the foundation for years.
We had already asked ourselves in February where the prominent reinforcement at IOTA was. Now it turns out that Dominik Schiener has once again been very full of himself and has not fulfilled his promises. DLTimes also reminds us on X that the IOTA Foundation is currently without a research director and is continuing to shrink in terms of personnel. In his own words, Schiener wanted to significantly strengthen the cooperation with companies that is important for IOTA with new colleagues from outside.
The project to integrate the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) into IOTA is also not running smoothly. This project, which was designated as a priority, was supposed to be implemented in the first quarter, but this did not happen. The IOTA Foundation is now saying that the official launch of the EVM is closer than the closed soft launch in April. This means that the EVM could be activated in June.
The two latest developments hardly come as a surprise to independent experts. After all, the list of delayed and failed IOTA projects is long and ranges from the technological level to external communication. People have become accustomed to Schiener dodging critical questions and IOTA scaring away partners and the community through unreliability.
Conclusion: IOTA comeback a hopeless endeavor?
Dominik Schiener is virtually the sole ruler of the IOTA Foundation in accordance with its statutes, and Raden and Misselwitz, his new colleagues on the board, are unlikely to contradict him. But the opportunity to make new contacts through well-known names has obviously been squandered. This is also not unimportant for EVM at IOTA, as as many external projects as possible are supposed to dock there. The result is a picture in which IOTA is falling further and further behind its own expectations and regularly attracting biting derision in the wider crypto scene.
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