IOTA Launches Nectar DevNet to Achieve Full Decentralization

The IOTA Foundation has launched its Nectar DevNet, a research prototype for its first fully decentralized network. Nectar is the second iteration of IOTA’s three-stage release strategy that will result in Honey. Pollen, the first testnet for IOTA 2.0, was released back in June 2020.

Iota Foundation Launches its Nectar DevNet

Iota Foundation has officially announced launching its Nectar DevNet, a research prototype that transitions towards a feeless, permissionless, and fully decentralized Tangle network.

The Tangle-powered project describes itself as an efficient alternative to its existing proof of work (PoW) and proof of stake (PoS) blockchains since it does not require transaction fees or waste electricity to validate transactions on the network.

Apart from complete decentralization, tokenization capability is another feature of the Nectar Iota 2.0 DevNet including the opportunity to create digital assets like utility coins and nonfungible tokens on the Iota network itself.

Remarking on the milestone, Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chairman of the IOTA Foundation, said:

“Nectar is the living proof that you can have feeless, scalable, secure, resource-efficient, and fully decentralized DLT. It’s a game-changer. Now that we are releasing it to the public, we are excited to see how it performs. The feedback on the DevNet’s capabilities and use cases will be essential as we continue preparing for the final Coordicide update.”

IOTA 2.0 DevNet Open for Anyone to Participate in

The absence of a centralized coordinator is one of the major features of the Nectar DevNet with the legacy coordinator system being replaced by a decentralized Coordicide.

Per the announcement, Nectar will rely on network consensus validation with honest nodes earning rewards in the form of mana. Each time a transaction moves funds, the particular transaction pledges a quantity, or mana, to a node ID. The mana then becomes a sort of Proof of Delegated Token Ownership.

The IOTA 2.0 DevNet is currently open for anybody to participate in and transact without fees and is currently usable and being improved upon constantly. Hence, IOTA specifies in its announcement that there will be issues with bugs and periodic service outages.