Dominik Schiener, Co-founder at IOTA, which claims it has “re-engineered the principles” of existing distributed ledger technology (DLT) to offer a fee-less, open-source, secure data and financial exchange protocol, has revealed that one of the biggest upgrades in IOTA’s history is “right in front of us.”
It's getting real. #IOTA $IOTA https://t.co/CUkU8hvM2x
— Dominik Schiener (@DomSchiener) April 5, 2021
Schiener confirms that in less than 3 weeks, IOTA is “going to enter a new era of rapid ecosystem growth.”
As noted in an update from the developers, they’re pleased to announce the official start date of the Chrysalis Network Migration – which is set to take place on Wednesday, April 21st 2021. The migration period that will “allow users, exchanges and custodians to prepare their token migrations ahead of the network upgrade (will begin 7 days prior to the network upgrade).”
The IOTA network upgrade itself will “officially happen on Wednesday, April 28th, 2021.”
During the past year, the IOTA developers have reportedly been working to transition the IOTA protocol “towards production readiness, taking the real-world needs and requests of our ecosystem into account.”
The developers added:
“We have successfully removed some of the exotic aspects of the IOTA protocol and replaced them with industry standards. The first phase of Chrysalis deployed on the IOTA network in August 2020. We are now in the final phase of the biggest upgrade in IOTA’s history.”
The public Chrysalis testnet has reportedly been live running since December of last year, with components “gradually added to the network until it was feature complete with the Chrysalis specifications.” The announcement further noted that developers and IOTA enthusiasts can “already read up on the new developer documentation to get started with developing on Chrysalis.”
The development team also mentioned:
“With the public beta release of Firefly next week we will make it possible for anyone to experience the future of IOTA ahead of the mainnet upgrade. (Hint: a couple of seconds for proof of work, below 10 second confirmation times and reusable addresses are absolutely amazing).”
Although they were “a bit short” of their planned and estimated Q1 release, the “sheer magnitude” and “careful execution” needed for the Chrysalis upgrade must not be “underestimated nor should the upgrade be rushed,” the developers noted.
They also mentioned that they’ve rebuilt the “entire IOTA tech stack (node, libraries, wallet) from scratch, including a token transition from the old WOTS signature scheme to the new EdDSA signatures.”
The developers confirmed that they’ve now completed several audits from three “independent” companies, and their team is “continuously peer-reviewing and optimizing wherever possible.” They added that “all of this is to ensure that Chrysalis will be a smooth and secure transition into a new and exciting future with much higher performance, stability, reliability and security. A New Dawn, so to say.”
The IOTA team pointed out that they’re “technically mostly ready to commence the network upgrade,” but the launch date was changed because they wanted to “provide exchanges with more time to officially support the transition.” The team also noted that many exchanges have “predefined update cycles that can neither be skipped, nor shortened nor changed at will.” They added that clearly, they have “rather rigorous vetting and security processes that cannot and should not be changed on a whim.” They further noted that they’ll “ensure that we better accommodate for these timeframes in future upgrades.”
The IOTA team added:
“When it comes to the token migration, Firefly will guide you through the whole migration process painlessly (we will publish a step by step guide ahead of time). In the process, our new wallet will automatically create destination addresses in the Chrysalis network for your tokens. The heavy lifting of the migration is fully automated through the Firefly wallet and token holders (including Ledger wallets) are guided by a simple interface. In short, the migration of your tokens from the current IOTA network to the new Chrysalis network will be painless, easy and quick.”
They continued:
“With the network migration, close to the whole token supply will be transferred and many transactions will be made. The migration event is therefore a high value target for hackers and scammers. When you download the Firefly wallet, please make sure you only download the official one in order to safely transfer tokens to your new address(es). There is no officially recommended way for users to migrate their tokens other than Firefly. Naturally we keep an eye out for any potential fake wallets or unofficial migration instructions.”
They also mentioned that in order for you to “absolutely ensure you download the official wallet, only download from our dedicated network migration status page https://chrysalis.iota.org or directly from https://iota.org.” The IOTA team cautioned that “don’t use e.g. Google search and don’t follow any links directly published on social media, even if they appear to have been published by the IOTA Foundation.”
As a reminder, the IOTA team noted that token holders are “not required to migrate tokens ahead of the Chrysalis network update and have the option to migrate tokens after the network update for a prolonged period.” They added that “as we get closer to the migration, we will publish more videos, tutorials and guides to provide you with the necessary information to successfully complete the upgrade to Chrysalis.”