by Lydia Ludmila 
- Shimmer ensures public validation of major network upgrades
- IOTA token holders will be able to stake their tokens directly within the Firefly wallet
- Innovation testbed with the necessary rewards for the developer community
IOTA (MIOTA/USD) Foundation has launched Shimmer, an incentivized staging network with a native token $SMR to accelerate the development roadmap of IOTA and ensure public validation of major network upgrades and thorough testing.
Holders to stake tokens directly within wallet on platform
Shimmer’s launch will run parallel to the introduction of staking rewards. IOTA token holders will be able to stake their tokens directly within the Firefly wallet for the first time. They will also be able to earn staking rewards in the form of Shimmer tokens.
In line with IOTA’s goal to become a fully decentralized, programmable multi-asset ledger, Shimmer will introduce a number of upgrades, including:
- Programmable multi-asset ledger
- Smart Contracts
- Full decentralization
- Sharding and further optimizations
Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation, commented:
Launching Shimmer was an easy decision by our team to further accelerate and secure our path towards full decentralization with IOTA. As we’ve seen with the success of Kusama and Polkadot, the Shimmer network will become an incentivized staging network offering crucial testing and public validation to our ambitious development roadmap.
In order to begin building use cases and applications corresponding to the official IOTA development roadmap, Shimmer will provide an innovation testbed with the necessary rewards for the developer community.
These include DeFi with lightning-speed transactions, a limitless amount of tokenization possibilities, custom zero-fee smart contracts, and NFTs that can be generated and traded at no minting or trading cost.
Innovations will happen on multiple layers
With Shimmer, the community no longer needs to wait for audited and completed product releases. It has an entire ecosystem of applications available to it. Innovation will happen through DeFi on the application layer, but also with new features on the base protocol layer, such as multi-chain smart contracts, advanced output types, sharding, and feeless tokenization.
Fully democratic community governance
The community will have full control over the Shimmer network, which will be powered by the Shimmer token. Shimmer token holders can earn at least 8% APY from staking their tokens. The network will launch after completing the public token distribution at the beginning of next year.
