IOTA is awaiting the launch of Staking for Shimmer (SMR) and Assembly (ASMB). Meanwhile, the IOTA Foundation explains what it hopes to accomplish with these projects.
When IOTA promised Staking a few weeks ago, investors wondered: is anything really happening in terms of decentralization and further development, or is the IOTA Foundation once again practicing the discipline of full-bodied announcements? As of mid-December, IOTA staking has not started for either Shimmer (SMR) or Assembly (ASMB). Instead, the IOTA Foundation is circulating a blog post that is already supposed to show the prospects for Shimmer and Assembly.
Thereby it becomes clear: IOTA regards Shimmer as an additional test run for an IOTA 2.0, “little brother” of the IOTA 2.0 DevNet is called SMR. Behind it hides that Shimmer is not to be distributed by IOTA Staking at all over the current Mainnet 1.5, but in test environment. After all, there will be 1 SMR per 10 seconds per 1 MIOTA, for 90 days, once the staking has started. If this all works smoothly, it would at least be a technological proof of concept for IOTA 2.0 aka Coordicide. Whether SMR will develop monetary value from it is uncertain, however, as even the IOTA Foundation acknowledges, which does not expect Shimmer to be listed on crypto exchanges quickly.
SMR and ASMB artificial siblings of IOTA 2.0
From an investor perspective, the IOTA Foundation’s comments on Assembly (ASMB) sound more optimistic. Here, future use cases through smart contracts are emphasized where there is economic potential. However, even ASMB will not be able to make its impact until a decentralized IOTA 2.0 is a reality on the mainnet. Staking for Assembly beckons 20 percent of all ASMB in the first 90 days, though again, a potentially monetized unlock is not expected until IOTA Coordicide.
The IOTA Foundation is directly responsible for Shimmer, while IOTA boss Dominik Schiener is on board as co-founder for Assembly. ASMB most recently reported attracting 100 million in venture capital as seed funding and aims to occupy the fields of DeFi, NFTs and blockchain gaming. Overall, the official water status report on IOTA staking sounds overly confident – but it also only deals with “unlaid eggs”.
Conclusion: advance praise for IOTA Staking justified?
The first official announcements by the IOTA Foundation on staking stirred up anticipation with phrases such as “shortly” and “very soon”. Skeptics also interpreted this as “announcement of an announcement” and may see themselves confirmed weeks later. More importantly, however, the IOTA Foundation, chaired by Dominik Schiener, is now hiding where the catch lies more clearly than before in its comments on Shimmer and Assembly. For now, SMR is only meant to demonstrate the stability of the IOTA 2.0 testnet and thus do preliminary work for ASMB. Considerable doubts remain as to whether new tokens are needed right away for such purposes. After all, the problems with the technological development work for a decentralized IOTA 2.0 are faltering.
Nevertheless, there is hardly anything to stop investors from participating in IOTA staking for Assembly and Shimmer – because there are no costs involved and perhaps ASMB and SMR will develop value in the medium term as harbingers of IOTA 2.0. Provided, of course, that test runs and advance notifications become practice, i.e. the promised staking via the IOTA wallet Firefly starts and works at all. Assembly in particular is then asked to prove its purpose to the early investors.
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