Layer 1 blockchain
IOTA ticker IOTA
Summary
Delegated proof-of-stake layer 1. IOTA holders delegate stake to validators for 24-hour epochs, a validator needs 2 million IOTA of stake to join, and decisions need validators holding more than 2/3 of voting power. Since protocol version 24 (node release v1.21.1, April 2026) validators run Starfish, a successor to Mysticeti that builds a directed acyclic graph of blocks proposed in parallel, separates block headers from erasure-coded transaction data and commits in three message rounds. Executed transaction effects are certified by a quorum and recorded in checkpoints signed by more than 2/3 of the committee. Rewards come from 767,000 newly minted IOTA per epoch plus tips; an underperforming validator loses rewards. The reviewed staking docs describe no slashing of staked principal, and the security page says staked tokens cannot be seized by validators or other participants. 123410242527
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchainRecorded as a proof-of-stake base-layer blockchain, not as a non-block ledger as the package hint suggested. IOTA's original Tangle, where each new transaction approved earlier ones, was replaced on 5 May 2025 by IOTA Rebased: a Move-based object ledger run by a stake-elected validator committee. Consensus (Starfish) orders blocks that validators propose in parallel as a directed acyclic graph, and history is a hash-linked chain of checkpoints signed by more than 2/3 of the committee. Ledger's IOTA page still says IOTA is not a blockchain in the traditional sense.
- Settlement family
- Its own design
- Scarce resource
- Stake (proof of stake)
- State model
- Other
- Finality
- Other
- Who makes blocks
- Every validator in the epoch's committee can propose consensus blocks in parallel. IOTA's mainnet page says up to 150 validators. The Foundation reported 67 active validators and 80 committee seats in October 2025; on 27 September 2026 the public RPC endpoint listed in IOTA's docs reported 64 active validators, 63 of them in the committee, with 18 together holding more than 2/3 of voting power.
- Fork choice
- No longest-chain or heaviest-chain rule. A transaction is final once validators with more than 2/3 of voting power certify its effects, and certified checkpoints form the permanent history. The docs state tolerance for up to one-third of stake being offline or misbehaving; beyond that the quorum rule means the network cannot commit, an inference from the design rather than an observed event.
Qualifications
- Block time · Partial. There is no single fixed block interval: consensus blocks form a graph proposed in parallel, and users see certified checkpoints. Block-interval comparisons with single-chain designs are approximate.
- State model · Partial. Object-centric ledger: every object has an ID, a version and an owner, and transactions consume and produce object versions. It resembles a coin-output ledger more than an account ledger but fits neither label fully. The pre-2025 Stardust ledger was output-based and was converted into objects at launch.
- Finality · Applies. Deterministic committee finality: a transaction is final once validators with more than 2/3 of voting power certify its effects. It is not recorded as economic finality because the reviewed docs describe penalties only as lost rewards, with no slashing of staked principal.
- Tps · Contested. Only Foundation figures without published method were found; they appear as unclassified claims, and no observed mainnet window was recorded.
- Legacy tangle metrics · Not applicable. Measures tied to the pre-2025 Tangle (feeless transfers, Coordinator milestones, confirmation rates) describe a retired network, not the current mainnet.
- Move language peers · Not applicable. IOTA adapted Sui's MoveVM and ledger design, but facts about Sui, such as its validators, incidents, fees or sign-in options, do not carry over; IOTA runs its own validator set and consensus and removed zkLogin support in May 2026.
- Settlement family · Partial. Recorded as other: IOTA Rebased (IOTA's term) settles on its own Move-based object ledger, where the validator committee certifies transaction effects and signs checkpoints; nothing settles to another chain. None of the named settlement families describes this.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Security and Scalability Contested
- Gives up
- Operational decentralization and liveness margin. The validator set is capped at 150 and the committee had 63 members at review, 18 validators held more than 2/3 of voting power, a mainnet full node is specified with 64 GB of RAM and a 1 Gbps uplink, and the network cannot commit if more than 1/3 of voting power is unavailable. The IOTA Foundation leads protocol development and may ship urgent security fixes as signed binaries before publishing their source.Security here means safety while more than 2/3 of stake is honest; the reviewed docs describe reward penalties, not seizure of stake. A rule tying each validator's minimum commission to its voting share is meant to slow stake concentration. The Foundation's 2025 review calls the network fully decentralized; with about sixty committee members and 18 validators holding more than 2/3 of voting power at review, that reading is contested. Throughput figures are unclassified Foundation statements.
- Full node at home
- Demanding 8910IOTA's build-from-source guide lists 64 GB RAM, 8 physical cores (16 vCPUs), a 512 GB NVMe SSD or more depending on pruning, and a 1 Gbps uplink for a mainnet full node. Validators are listed at 128 GB RAM, 24 cores, 4 TB NVMe and 1 Gbps. The default full node configuration prunes old object versions and transactions after one to two epochs, so full history needs archives.
- Throughput claims
- Unclassified: 400,000 tx/s 538Unclassified; do not compare.Stated on IOTA's comparison page as Starfish throughput on a wide-area network; no test date, node count or report is cited.Not stated.The page cites no benchmark. Sui's documentation gives the same 400,000 figure for a 50-node test of Mysticeti, Starfish's predecessor, so the number may not describe Starfish at all. A consensus-engine figure at most, not observed IOTA mainnet load or end-to-end execution; it ignores state growth, contention on shared objects and propagation to full nodes. Not comparable with any other chain's figure.
- Unclassified: 50,000 tx/s 1628Unclassified; do not compare.Stated in the IOTA Foundation's December 2025 year-end review as 'over 50,000' with about 400 ms average finality; no method, window or load description is given.The Foundation's November 2024 proposal for IOTA Rebased gave '50k+' as the target for its then Mysticeti-based design, before mainnet existed, so the 2025 figure may restate a capacity claim rather than report a measurement. No observed mainnet window or independent measurement was found; do not compare.
Scaling layers
- IOTA EVM (IOTA Smart Contracts chain) · Sidechain, mainnet 19202122
IOTA calls it a layer 2. A separate committee of chain validators runs the EVM, jointly holds a split key that controls the chain's Anchor object on IOTA L1 (which holds all of the chain's L1 funds) and posts signed state commitments about every ten seconds. No fraud or validity proofs were found in the reviewed docs, so users trust more than 2/3 of that committee, which the chain owner can rotate.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Built into the protocolLimited scope | Limited to exchanges on IOTA itself. Kiosk, which IOTA's docs describe as part of the IOTA framework and native to the system, lets an owner list an item at a price that anyone can buy in one transaction under the creator's transfer rules, so the payment and the item move together. Programmable transactions run up to 1,024 commands all-or-nothing, a building block for other exchanges. No protocol-level cross-chain hash-time-locked swap was verified. 1112 |
| Authenticated data publication | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; the nearest feature found is IOTA Notarization, a Foundation toolkit that stores data or its hash in an on-chain object that is either locked for good or updatable with a version counter. Data kept in the object is chain state, which the current definition does not count, and the toolkit has no off-chain replication or subscriptions for data recorded only by its hash. Absence of another feature was not exhaustively verified. 17 |
| Light clients | Built into the protocolLimited scope | Consensus produces what a light client checks: checkpoints are signed by more than 2/3 of the committee, and the last checkpoint of each epoch names the next committee, so a client holding the genesis checkpoint can verify later checkpoints and, through them, transactions and objects. Limits: the command-line light client in IOTA's repository fetches data from a full node and GraphQL endpoint and must sync end-of-epoch checkpoints daily; wallet adoption was not reviewed. 67 |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | No payment or state channel network anchored to IOTA was found in the reviewed sources. |
| Programmable spending | Native (protocol or core-team software) Earlier definition | Move contracts govern objects; one transaction can chain up to 1,024 commands; native multisig mixes Ed25519, secp256k1 and secp256r1 keys; and account abstraction lets Move code decide whether a transaction is authorized. 11131426 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; no way for a sender to cancel or reclaim a payment was found, and the other evidence is building blocks. Account abstraction, enabled on mainnet in node release v1.25.0 (June 2026), lets an account's sign-in rule be Move code, which the docs use for key rotation and recovery without changing address, spending limits and time locks, but no recovery or delay module live on mainnet is cited. Native multisig allows up to 10 weighted keys, a plain multisig threshold. Issuers of regulated coins can block addresses; the docs describe no seizure. 13141526 |
| Rollups | Unknown | Absence was not verified, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown rather than not present. The earlier review recorded IOTA EVM, which IOTA calls a layer 2, as a sidechain because its own validator committee signs state commitments onto IOTA without fraud or validity proofs in the reviewed docs, and found no other rollup settling to IOTA. 2021 |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | ThinPools Finance (IOTA L1) | Pools Finance says it is the first DEX live on IOTA's Move-based layer 1, with liquidity pools and farms; the Foundation's 2025 review lists it as the ecosystem's exchange for spot trading, and the Foundation's mainnet page showcases it. Exchanges on IOTA EVM were not reviewed, and liquidity depth was not measured. 242833 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | ThinVUSD (Virtue) | VUSD is minted on IOTA through Virtue's over-collateralized debt positions backed by IOTA and stIOTA. USDT0 on IOTA L1 is minted against USDT locked in a dedicated Ethereum contract and can move only to and from Ethereum, so it is a bridged representation and is recorded under bridges, not as issuance on IOTA. Circle's USDC list and Tether's supported-protocol list do not include IOTA, so no issuer-native fiat stablecoin was found. 31323435 |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | No algorithmic stablecoin with material usage was verified. VUSD is backed by over-collateralized debt positions, not an algorithmic mechanism, so it is listed with native stablecoins. 32 |
| Bridges | First-partyIOTA EVM Bridge (IOTA L1 and IOTA EVM), LayerZero and Stargate (IOTA L1 since December 2025), USDT0 route (Ethereum only) | The IOTA Foundation runs the bridge between IOTA L1 and IOTA EVM through the chain's Anchor object. LayerZero lists a Move implementation for IOTA L1 separate from IOTA EVM, and the Foundation announced LayerZero and Stargate transfers to IOTA L1 on 3 December 2025. USDT0's IOTA route connects only to Ethereum. Risk: IOTA EVM funds on L1 are controlled by the EVM chain's validator committee through a shared key, without fraud or validity proofs. LayerZero transfers depend on the verifier and executor set each application configures. USDT0 on IOTA depends on the Ethereum lockbox contract and its operators, and on Tether's USDT on Ethereum. 2122293031 |
| Block explorers | First-partyIOTA Explorer (IOTA Foundation), Iotascan, IOTA EVM Explorer | IOTA's docs list the Foundation's explorer for mainnet and a separate explorer for IOTA EVM; Iotascan describes itself as an explorer and analytics platform for IOTA, and its operator was not identified. Listing is not a quality or completeness check; explorer data is provider-indexed. 181936 |
| Hardware wallets | First-partyLedger (through IOTA Wallet), Keystone (through IOTA Wallet and Nightly) | See custody rows. The Foundation's IOTA Wallet signs layer 1 transactions with the IOTA app on a Ledger device and, since the third quarter of 2025, with Keystone. Ledger's IOTA page points to third-party wallets. Trezor's IOTA page lists only the IOTA EVM sidechain, through MetaMask or Rabby, so Trezor has no layer 1 path. 23273739 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | Through an intermediaryIOTA Wallet (IOTA Foundation browser extension) with the IOTA app on the Ledger deviceSame as native: No | Can: Install the IOTA device app from Ledger Live's app catalog on Nano S Plus, Nano X, Flex or Stax (Nano S only by manual install) Can: Import up to 10 Ledger accounts into IOTA Wallet and approve IOTA layer 1 transactions on the device Can: Connect the Ledger to MetaMask, the only third-party wallet Ledger's own IOTA page names; as an EVM wallet it would reach the IOTA EVM sidechain rather than layer 1 accounts (an inference) Cannot: Manage IOTA inside Ledger's own wallet app, according to Ledger's IOTA page, which directs users to third-party walletsThe device app is maintained in the IOTA Foundation's GitHub organization, and the status rests on the Foundation's IOTA Wallet, not on the MetaMask path Ledger names. Staking from a Ledger account in IOTA Wallet was not confirmed in the reviewed pages. 233740 |
| Trezor | None foundSame as native: No | Cannot: Manage Move-based IOTA layer 1 accounts: the only network Trezor's IOTA page lists is IOTA EVM Cannot: Manage IOTA in Trezor Suite, which the page marks as not supporting IOTATrezor's IOTA page lists the IOTA EVM network through MetaMask or Rabby on Safe 3, Safe 5 and Safe 7. IOTA EVM is a separate chain with its own validator committee, so that path reaches IOTA held there, not the layer 1 accounts where most activity, staking included, happens; it does not count as support for this network. 2139 |
Public data
iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for IOTA yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Tokens and assets | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Transactions | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
-
Release v1.32.1 enabled an optimistic fast-commit rule in Starfish on mainnet
Node release v1.32.1 introduced protocol version 36, which turns on Starfish's optimistic commit rule and a redesigned leader schedule on mainnet, alongside view functions for Move packages and Move-based authentication for gas sponsors. The release set the earliest mainnet activation at the start of epoch 507 on 24 September 2026 and warned that validators left un-upgraded could be removed from the committee.
- Implementation:implemented in node v1.32.1
- Release:mainnet release v1.32.1 published 2026-09-23
- Activation:protocol version 36 reported active at epoch 510 by the public RPC on 27 September 2026; no Foundation announcement of activation was found
Sources: iotaledger/iota releases — [Mainnet] v1.32.1 (external site) · IOTA Foundation blog — IOTA & TWIN Progress Update: Q2 2026 (external site) · IOTA Documentation — Network Overview (external site)
-
Move-based account authentication was enabled on IOTA mainnet
Node release v1.25.0 (protocol version 28) enabled Move-based account authentication on mainnet, so an account's authorization can be decided by a Move function instead of a single key. The Foundation's Q2 2026 update described account abstraction as live on mainnet. IOTA's documentation pages still label the feature a testnet and devnet release candidate.
- Proposal:specified in improvement proposal IIP-0009
- Implementation:implemented in node releases during 2026
- Release:mainnet release v1.25.0 published 2026-06-17
- Activation:enabled on mainnet by v1.25.0 according to its release notes; wallet support not reviewed
Sources: iotaledger/iota releases — [Mainnet] v1.25.0 (external site) · iotaledger/iota releases — [Mainnet] v1.32.1 (external site) · IOTA Foundation blog — IOTA & TWIN Progress Update: Q2 2026 (external site) · IOTA Documentation — Account Abstraction (external site) · IOTA Foundation blog — IOTA Q1 2026 Progress Update (external site)
-
IOTA mainnet switched its consensus protocol from Mysticeti to Starfish
The IOTA Foundation announced that mainnet had adopted Starfish, its successor to Mysticeti. Node release v1.21.1 (protocol version 24), published on 22 April 2026, switched consensus to Starfish on all networks, and the Foundation's Q2 2026 update gives 23 April 2026 as the mainnet go-live date. Starfish separates block headers from transaction data and is designed to keep committing when some validators lag.
- Implementation:implemented in node v1.21.1
- Release:mainnet release v1.21.1 published 2026-04-22
- Activation:live on mainnet from 23 April 2026 according to the Foundation's Q2 2026 update
Sources: IOTA Foundation blog — Starfish on Mainnet: Reliable Blockchain Consensus for Global Trade (external site) · iotaledger/iota releases — [Mainnet] v1.21.1 (external site) · IOTA Foundation blog — IOTA & TWIN Progress Update: Q2 2026 (external site) · IOTA Foundation blog — Why Starfish Matters (external site)
-
LayerZero and Stargate connected to the IOTA layer 1
The IOTA Foundation announced that the Move-based IOTA layer 1 had been integrated with LayerZero's messaging protocol and the Stargate bridge, extending a connection that IOTA EVM had since 2024. LayerZero's documentation lists a separate Move implementation for IOTA layer 1. The same post said a major stablecoin would soon launch on IOTA; USDT0's docs now list an IOTA layer 1 route that connects only to Ethereum.
- Implementation:LayerZero endpoint deployed on IOTA layer 1
- Release:announced 2025-12-03
- Activation:live according to the Foundation; LayerZero documentation lists IOTA layer 1 mainnet endpoints
Sources: IOTA Foundation blog — IOTA Mainnet Integrates LayerZero and Stargate (external site) · LayerZero documentation — IOTA L1 deployment (external site) · USDT0 Docs — Developer Guide (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for IOTA through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- Current validator count and stake concentration come from one public RPC reading on 27 September 2026 (64 active, 63 in the committee, 18 holding more than 2/3 of voting power), not from a dated primary page.
- No IOTA mainnet incident history or outage post-mortems were reviewed; how the network behaved in any halt is not recorded.
- IOTA's docs disagree on fees: the gas page says fees up to the reference price are burned and only tips reach validators, while the epochs page says computation fees go to the validator reward pool.
- IOTA's account abstraction docs still call the feature a release candidate for testnet and devnet only, while release v1.25.0 enabled it on mainnet; the release notes were followed.
- Throughput figures are unclassified Foundation statements; the figure on IOTA's comparison page matches Sui's published benchmark of Mysticeti, Starfish's predecessor, and may not describe Starfish.
- Who operates the IOTA EVM validator committee and how many members it has were not found in the reviewed docs; they say only that more than two-thirds of its validators must agree and that selection is left to the chain owner.
- No payment channel, state channel or rollup anchored to IOTA was found; the list of scaling layers is not confirmed complete.
- AMM liquidity depth, exchanges on IOTA EVM and the operator of Iotascan were not reviewed.
- Staking from a Ledger-held account in IOTA Wallet was not confirmed.
- Trezor is recorded as having no layer 1 path because its IOTA page lists only the IOTA EVM network and marks Trezor Suite as not supporting IOTA; Trezor-signed layer 1 transactions through any wallet were not found.
- Whether USDT0 is operated by Tether itself was not verified; Tether's own supported-protocol list does not include IOTA.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- Consensus (external site)
- Validator Committee (external site)
- Security (external site)
- Delegated Proof of Stake (external site)
- Comparison (external site)
- Checkpoint Verification (external site)
- iota-light-client README (external site)
- Full Node: Build From Source (external site)
- Full Node Configuration (external site)
- Validator Node Overview (external site)
- Programmable Transaction Blocks (external site)
- IOTA Kiosk (external site)
- Multisig (external site)
- Account Abstraction (external site)
- Creating Regulated Coins with Deny Lists on IOTA (external site)
- IOTA Rebased: Fast Forward (external site)
- Introduction to On Chain Notarization (external site)
- Network Overview (external site)
- IOTA EVM Networks & Chains (external site)
- IOTA EVM Consensus (external site)
- IOTA EVM Validators and Access Nodes (external site)
- ISC Move Packages (external site)
- Importing Wallet from Ledger Device (external site)
- IOTA Mainnet (external site)
- [Mainnet] v1.21.1 (external site)
- [Mainnet] v1.25.0 (external site)
- Q3 2025 Progress Update (external site)
- IOTA 2025 (external site)
- IOTA Mainnet Integrates LayerZero and Stargate (external site)
- IOTA L1 deployment (external site)
- Developer Guide (external site)
- What is VUSD? (external site)
- Pools Finance | DEX on IOTA (external site)
- USDC contract addresses (external site)
- Supported protocols (external site)
- IOTA Explorer - Iotascan (external site)
- IOTA wallet (external site)
- Consensus (external site)
- Safe & secure IOTA wallet (external site)
- ledger-app-iota repository (external site)
Report an error
Found something wrong or out of date? Reporting is free, and every chain goes through the same process. Published corrections appear in the public log.
Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding