- The shimmer Network launches along with its native SMR tokens which will incentivize and fuel the participation of users on the Shimmer network.
- With this development, the IOTA blockchain becomes free from a single-asset ledger and moves towards becoming a multi-asset ledger.
After years of research and progress, the IOTA Foundation has touched an ambitious and important milestone with the launch of the Shimmer Network. Shimmer is a staging network for the IOTA blockchain and launches along with its native SMR tokens.
These native SMR tokens have been designed to incentivize and fuel the participation of users on the Shimmer network. Speaking on the launch of the SMR tokens, Dominik Schiener, Co-founder and Chairman of the IOTA foundation said:
This is the week where, for the first time since the start of #IOTA in 2015, we launch a new token to the world. Couldn’t be more excited for what will follow.
Furthermore, the IOTA smart contracts will also be able to run on the Shimmer Network. Besides, other activities like trading, investing, and lending will also be possible. Also, the interaction of Layer-2 smart contract chains with Layer-1 will effectively turn the base layer into a trustless bridge between the smart contracts.
With the latest development, the IOTA blockchain will be absolutely free from a single-asset ledger. Also, with countless tokens coming to its platform, the IOTA blockchain is moving towards a multi-asset ledger. But unlike other multi-asset ledgers, IOTA’s Shimmer Network has no transaction fees for minting as well as sending native tokens.
More about the Shimmer Network
As the official website of Shimmer Network explains: “Shimmer is the incentivized Layer 1 innovation network, built to spark the growth of feeless and highly interoperable digital assets and token economies”.
The #Shimmer Network is here! 🥳
With its $SMR token:
✨ Tokenize everything natively on Layer 1 without fees
✨ Get ready for the upcoming bridgeless, modular, multi-chain smart contract architecture
🔗 https://t.co/qJNzR2A0ef
Claim your tokens now🚀 Instructions below! pic.twitter.com/EfU2yDEd4E— Shimmer (@shimmernet) September 28, 2022
Similar to IOTA, Shimmer also uses a DAG-based parallelized settlement layer having high anchoring capacity in comparison to other standard blockchain networks. The Shimmer Network serves as a validation ground for all developments geared toward the IOTA network. It will also serve as the gateway for the development of IOTA 2.0. Shimmer serves as a feeless and a bridgeless base layer for tokenizing anything.
The Stardust module serves as the core of the Shimmer Project which will allow developers to create smart contracts that are compatible with NFTs and other forms of tokenization. In the future, the shimmer Network also seeks to host decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
With the Shimmer Network going live, users can stake the native SMR tokens and earn staking rewards. Firefly, the official blockchain wallet of IOTA will facilitate users to claim their staking rewards. Existing Ledger wallet users will be able to claim the rewards soon. The official announcement notes:
A total of ~1,450,896,407 SMR was generated from users staking IOTA. Moreover, the community decided to mint additional tokens to award 10% of the total supply (~181,362,051 $SMR) each to the Swiss Tangle Ecosystem Association (TEA) and the Shimmer Community Treasury (DAO), allowing them to independently fund community projects. The total Shimmer supply is ~1,813,620,509 $SMR.
Key benefits of Shimmer Network
The launch of ShimmerEVM will make the Shimmer network complete making it a smart contract network with the lowest fees. Here are some of the key benefits that the shimmer network brings along:
- Highly Scalable Ledger: The DAG ledger of the shimmer Network is UXTO-based which allows it to scale to high transaction throughput with fast finality. Shimmer has parallelized the state anchoring of smart contract blockchain allowing the networks to scale horizontally.
- Native Assets: Users can create, mint, and transfer assets native on the Shimmer network without any transaction fees. These assets are absolutely in the user’s control without relying on someone else’s smart contract chain. Users can swiftly transfer these assets to all other chains and layers of the network.
- Bridgeless Composability: The Shimmer network will support the bridgeless transfer of native assets and even between sovereign Blockchain networks anchored on Shimmer. This frees up the liquidity to move quickly across the chains at zero fees. The good thing is that the liquidity remains protected by Ledger 1 itself instead of a Smart Contract Bridge operator.
- MEV Protection: Shimmer Smart Contract Chains will eliminate current limitations of front-running or sandwich attacks.
- Application layer with EVM and WASM support: Shimmer is a feature-rich smart contract platform. Thus, it will offer builders the choice to build dApps on EVM or WASM-enabled smart contract blockchains. The shimmer Network can support “multiple, different VMs in parallel, allowing entirely new dApps and Web3 ecosystems to be created”.
- Fair Token Distribution: With respect to the $SMR, Shimmer said that it is conducting one of the fairest token distributions as all tokens are with the community. There are no token lock-ups, no VCs, and no hidden token allocations to the team. “Shimmer is a community-owned network focused on building a long-term, sustainable ecosystem with incentives and opportunities aligned between all participants,” it adds.
Shimmer says that the tokenization element of the Stardust protocol will be one of its most crucial elements. It will bring modular scale architecture along with horizontal scalability.