IOTA announced a new smart contract platform called ‘Assembly’ to accelerate Web 3 adoption. Like IOTA’s forwarding network – Shimmer – users can stake IOTA on Assembly to earn rewards, this time sent as an ASMB token.
What Is Assembly For?
Assembly revealed itself in a blog post on its site earlier today, which was retweeted by IOTA. The platform calls itself a “scalable, multi-chain network for sharded, composable smart contracts.” Sharding is a scaling method that reduces validation time by making smaller groups of nodes validate transactions, rather than the whole network.
Anyone using the protocol can create their own chain of fragmented smart contracts, defined by their own parameters. Virtual machine requirements, validation requirements, and incentive / fee structures are fully composable by developers.
“Every smart contract chain built on Assembly is a fully shared network, limited only by its own throughput while benefiting from the shared security and trustless interoperability of the global network.”
Assembly claims that it will be the “open network to build and connect open worlds” using an unresponsive and highly scalable base layer to host Defi, NFT and DAO. This is a feature that Ethereum has attempted for years, but was chosen due to base layer congestion and high fees. As such, Vitalik offered sharding on Ethereum, alongside other Layer 2 scaling solutions to reduce costs.
The network’s native token – ASMB – will see 70% of its supply distributed to the community. That includes a 20% allocation that goes to stakers of IOTA. With the foundation’s recent launch of its staking testnet, the network’s stakers will be compensated with even greater rewards. The final 30% will go to early participants and the IOTA foundation.
Another network for IOTA?
Despite Assembly’s long list of features on the platform, many were disappointed with the announcement. Considering how IOTA launched smart contracts on its mainnet in October, some find the brand new network is redundant.
Until now, IOTA has been playing the long game. Despite a sleeping price far below its all-time high in late 2017, it is still aiming to become an efficient, zero-fee, human-machine payment network used by billions of people.
“Short-term success in the crypto market is based on speculation and hype; long-term success depends on ideals, community and culture. Only solutions that follow a clearly defined objective and preserve their values will ultimately prevail, ”the Assembly announcement read.
