The air is thick at IOTA: Soonaverse, a long-standing cooperation partner, has jumped ship and the reason for this is quite something. At the same time, IOTA boss Dominik Schiener is being harshly criticized by the community.
The IOTA relaunch is stuttering: the Soonaverse trading platform is leaving the ecosystem in a blog post (https://soonlabs.medium.com/build-community-token-336166d6d9c2), joining a series of other projects. On the one hand, Soonaverse speaks of a constantly shrinking number of people who are still interested in IOTA. On the other hand, it is pointed out that although the IOTA Foundation wants to spread a spirit of optimism again and again with big words, the hoped-for effects have failed to materialize. On X, DL Times is an example of a critical member of the IOTA community speaking out: “We have to start asking ourselves whether there are any projects at all where we (the community) are an important part.”
As a reminder: At the end of last year, IOTA Foundation CEO Dominik Schiener pushed ahead with the establishment of a new representative office in Abu Dhabi and also moved his personal center of life to the United Arab Emirates for this purpose. From there, IOTA will experience a fabulous comeback and work its way back into the top ten global cryptocurrencies, according to Schiener. Four months later, however, the situation is sobering: the data service CoinGecko no longer even lists IOTA among the 100 most capitalized cryptocurrencies and there is no sign of a turnaround.
Soonaverse avoids mentioning the name of the irritant Schiener. But the Emirates are cited, the failing Ethereum Virtual Machine, the EU’s EBSI project and a decentralized IOTA 2.0 – all as examples of glimmers of hope collapsing. DL Times doesn’t shed a tear for Soonaverse, but writes: “It’s not just the projects that are stealing our hard-earned cash. It’s Dom (Schiener) and the IOTA Foundation itself that are siphoning millions of dollars from the ecosystem through opaque decisions and the 40+ percent inflation they’ve caused.” This alludes to the fact that in September 2023, IOTA massively inflated the total supply of all tokens in order to raise new funds.
One setback after another for IOTA
We have been reporting regularly on IOTA for years – but what is happening there these days is reminiscent of a madhouse. Star developer Hans Moog has been condemned to silence, as he announced in secret on X. Moog was supposed to be responsible for a decentralized IOTA 2.0 and enjoyed a lot of trust in the community due to his authentic communication. Foundation head Schiener, on the other hand, has recently been dreaming of an IOTA that would comply with the rules of Islamic finance (Sharia) – including the ban on gambling and interest. Such rules could never be fulfilled by a decentralized IOTA, because the principle of Bitcoin and co. has the ironclad principle of not being influenced from the outside.
A huge rift is widening between the IOTA community and investors on the one hand and Schiener and the foundation on the other, as was recently expressed in referendums on self-administration. From his new home in Abu Dhabi, Schiener is enjoying the role of a crypto king – nothing more can be heard from the IOTA location in Berlin, although a charitable foundation is registered there. The side project Shimmer (SMR) has been unofficially abandoned. DL Times lists half a dozen projects that have gradually turned their backs on the IOTA ecosystem.
Conclusion: creeping departure of IOTA
For many years, IOTA was also largely supported by the German-speaking community; the foundation’s headquarters in Berlin was no coincidence. And in the last decade, IOTA was actually once one of the ten leading, exciting cryptocurrencies in the world; at that time with the aim of linking the Internet of Things (IoT) and crypto. Virtually none of the old glory and fascinating prospects have survived and the list of unfulfilled IOTA promises would fill a booklet. Soonaverse wants to continue without IOTA for now, “without bureaucracy focused on the top, (…) without muzzles (NDA), without missed deadlines”. That’s one way to express an IOTA “save yourself who can”.
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