 
 
September closed in style as the highly anticipated Shimmer network went live. This is after weeks of fire testing the Shimmer Beta version, a process which was initiated back in Mid-July as part of IOTA’s road map.
Earlier this week, Dominik Schiener, Co-founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation reaffirmed the launch of the Shimmer network and its native token (SMR).
“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.“
The Shimmer network will serve as a staging network for the Shimmer and IOTA ecosystem together with its native token SMR. The SMR tokens are specifically created to bring forth full participation from users on the Shimmer network.
Notably, the Shimmer network launch will bring on the capability of IOTA’s smart contracts running on Shimmer’s network. Additionally, other activities like trading, staking and lending will also be possible on the network.
 
 
What Does Shimmer Network Bring to IOTA?
Shimmer outperforms other blockchain networks with the utilization of a DAG-based parallelized settlement layer with a high anchoring capacity similar to IOTA’s. One of the key roles is to verify all developments driven towards the IOTA blockchain. Despite Shimmer offering a feeless and bridgeless layer for tokenizing anything, it will also serve as a hatch for developments of IOTA 2.0.
An essential section on the Shimmer network will be the Stardust module which will enable developers to come up with smart contracts congruous with NFTs and other forms of tokenization. It’s also Shimmer’s hope to offer Decentralized Finance (Defi) applications.
Interestingly, Users will be able to savor the staking services of Shimmer’s native token SMR and receive staking rewards. Firefly Stardust, the official Shimmer network wallet will see it possible users receive their staking rewards according to the official statement.
“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.“
Primary Benefits of Shimmer Network
Highly scalable ledger- The DAG ledger of Shimmer is UTXO-based and able to scale to higher transaction throughput with fast finality. For better Scalability, the shimmer network has parallelized the state anchoring of smart contract blockchain.
Native assets– Shimmer users will be able to create, mint and transfer assets natively on the network without any fees. This means that these assets will be in the user’s control without relying on someone else’s smart contract chain.
Application layer with EVM and WASM support- Basing Shimmer as a feature-rich smart contract platform, the network will offer builders the choice to build dApps on EVM or WASM-enabled smart contract blockchains. Additionally, the Network is capable of supporting “multiple, different VMs in parallel, allowing entirely new dApps and Web3 ecosystems to be created”.
MEV protection and native randomness. Shimmer Smart Contract Chains eradicate current network limitations e.g front-running or sandwich attacks.
Fair Token Distribution. One of Shimmer’s most distinctive features, according to Dominic Schiener, co-founder of IOTA, is the way tokens are distributed. There are no VCs, token lock-ups, or secret allocations of tokens to the team.
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