Introduction
This page provides an overview around the different protocol versions within the IOTA ecosystem.
Name | Release Date | Description | Consensus | Features | Networks |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Legacy Trinary | 2016 | Based on a probabilistic consensus algorithm using random walks on a DAG, the original version of the IOTA protocol | PoA - Coordinator | Bundles, trinary | - |
Chrysalis Phase 1 | August 2020 (IOTA Mainnet) | Replaced the heavy probabilistic consensus algorithm to use the White-Flag approach instead | PoA - Coordinator | White-Flag Confirmation | Legacy IOTA Mainnet |
Chrysalis Phase 2 | April 2021 (IOTA Mainnet) | Switched from trinary to binary for data representation, changed from an account model to UTXO, removed Winternitz One Time Signatures (WOTS) and introduced EdDSA, dust protection and a complete overhaul of all APIs | PoA - Coordinator | Binary, EdDSA, UTXO, Removal of WOTS | IOTA Mainnet, DevNet |
Stardust | September 2022 (Shimmer) | Upgraded the ledger to support multiple assets instead of just the base token, switched the dust protection to a more granular one based on exact byte costs, renamed vertices from "messages" to "blocks", introduced concepts such as FoundryOutput , AliasOutput and NFTOutput . Also added the foundation for ISC anchoring via AliasOutput s. | PoA - Coordinator | Multi-Asset Ledger, ISC support, Byte Cost Based Dust Protection, Blocks as vertices, Bech32 addresses | Shimmer, Public Testnet |
IOTA 2.0 | - | The upcoming version of IOTA running under a PoS scheme with a leaderless consensus algorithm called On-Tangle-Voting. Introduces the concept of mana, which is a resource used to pay for network utilisation. | PoS - OTV | Mana, Staking, PoS, AccountOutput, ICCA | - |