IOTA wanted to attempt a comeback by integrating the Ethereum Virtual Machine. But after the promised launch in Q1, the EVM is still not coming in April. The IOTA project has to put up with criticism.
IOTA continues to plummet in the crypto rankings and the reasons are homemade. With the integration of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), IOTA wanted to attempt a new start at the beginning of 2024 and the head of the foundation, Dominik Schiener, had personally promised the launch for the first quarter. As we have already reported, this did not materialize – but it gets worse: if you read the latest progress reports from the IOTA Foundation on EVM integration carefully, no target date is mentioned at all.
“Phylo” from the IOTA Foundation has recently explained the situation and is quoted extensively by community members such as IOTAPoet and IOTAVrom. According to this, the EVM at IOTA is theoretically ready to go – but cooperation partners, applications and much more are missing. “If you present the Web3 group with an empty network, they might not be very impressed”, says “Phylo” and elsewhere: “You need oracles, indexers, RPCs, bridges and tools and you don’t want to build everything yourself”. 15 other, external teams must be prepared to work together on the IOTA EVM leek at the same time, writes “Phylo” on behalf of the IOTA Foundation – thus postponing the official launch to “someday” and blaming others for delays.
IOTA had just wanted to make a big splash at the important crypto conference Token 2049 in Dubai, where Schiener himself made a guest appearance in the side program. As usual, he painted a picture of an IOTA network and ecosystem that would efficiently meet the challenges of the real world with blockchain solutions. The reality, however, is that IOTA is still unable to implement complex smart contracts and EVM – the typical combination with which the crypto industry demonstrates innovative strength in more than 150 other projects, including Ethereum (ETH). Meanwhile, the markets are punishing IOTA, and new all-time lows have been set again compared to the cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC).
Conclusion: IOTA investors led around by the nose again with EVM
IOTA is around 95% away from its 2017 all-time high in US dollar terms, while Bitcoin is almost regularly setting new positive records. IOTA’s decline is closely linked to unfulfilled promises and the resulting loss of trust; artificially induced inflation in 2023 was a particularly bitter example of this from an investor’s perspective. The IOTA side project Shimmer (SMR) has disappeared into oblivion anyway with constant new all-time lows. According to data from DeFiLlama, far more than half of the capital invested in the EVM tested there has been withdrawn since February and, at less than USD 4 million, it is now at a level that experts no longer even smile at.
Meanwhile, “Phylo” probably unintentionally sums up the divergence between the IOTA Foundation and the community with the words “We love you all” – but the EVM publication and ecosystem are therefore not aimed at “our existing community”. To hear this from the inner workings of the non-profit IOTA Foundation is like a declaration of bankruptcy. In other words, no one from the crypto industry wants to get involved with IOTA anymore and even a temporary momentum because of the EVM is already failing due to the lack of a launch.
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