The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is set to go live on IOTA in March or April. This is the promise made by Dominik Schiener, head of the foundation. However, the news could not stop the free fall of IOTA’s price curve.
At IOTA, hopes are pinned on the activation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It is the standard module for organizing decentralized finance (DeFi) and is expected to open up new fields of application for IOTA. IOTA Foundation CEO Domink Schiener announced the EVM for IOTA in Q1 2024 at the opening of a representative office in Abu Dhabi in November 2023, thus spreading a spirit of optimism. Now, in an online discussion on X, Schiener has once again commented on the timeline for the IOTA EVM – at one point referring to March as the target date, but at another point also talking about early Q2, i.e. April.
However, investors and crypto markets are hardly impressed. IOTA’s price curve continued its downward trend and the once successful altcoin is currently struggling not to fall below the psychologically important USD 0.2 mark. This means that IOTA’s temporary price gains from November, which were driven by the new representative office in the United Arab Emirates, are already history again. Over the past year, IOTA has fallen by almost 13% – by comparison, the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) recorded a whopping 70% increase over the same period. The data service CoinGecko has now dropped IOTA out of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
IOTA side project hits new all-time low despite EVM
There are at least two reasons for IOTA’s continued loss of importance. Schiener’s timetables have proven to be notoriously unreliable in the past and he is once again unwilling to commit himself. Even more serious, however, is the fact that investors and experts are wondering whether an IOTA EVM is still needed on the markets at all. With well over 100 crypto projects already performing their services with daily turnover in the billions, IOTA is very late to the game. And then there is the experience with the EVM at the IOTA side project Shimmer (SMR). There, the EVM for Shimmer was already activated in September 2023.
Data from DeFiLlama now shows USD 10 million invested in the Shimmer EVM. This is a small sum for the DeFi sector and Shimmer has an average of just 600 active accounts per day. Just a few hours ago, Shimmer hit a new all-time low of 0.032 US dollars. The reason for this is probably that an IOTA EVM will make Shimmer unimportant in the long term.
Conclusion: EVM will hardly be a savior for IOTA
The tangible scepticism towards EVM in the IOTA ecosystem also stems from the fact that neither Shimmer nor IOTA itself are based on a decentralized network. Ultimately, central committees are responsible for validating transactions, which contradicts the ironclad crypto principle of decentralization. Although a decentralized IOTA 2.0 is still planned for 2024, such promises have not been fulfilled for years. Our annual review of 2023 also looks at the chances of IOTA emerging from its death spiral in 2024. Small spoiler: It doesn’t look good.
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