IOTA (IOTA) is the native coin of its own Layer-1 network, originally a DAG-based "Tangle" ledger later upgraded to "IOTA Rebased." The May 2025 upgrade introduced a delegated-proof-of-stake chain with a Move-based smart-contract virtual machine.
The network also operates an EVM-compatible smart-contract layer, IOTA EVM, where the native coin serves as the gas token. IOTA functions across both the Move-based and EVM-compatible environments of the network.
IOTA differentiates itself through real-world trade-infrastructure deployments rather than purely financial use cases.
Government and enterprise pilots include an Argentina national health-authority system for tamper-proof organ-transplant document verification and the "ADAPT" Africa digital-trade initiative in Kenya, Nigeria, and Morocco with the AfCFTA Secretariat, Tony Blair Institute, and World Economic Forum, reporting roughly 95% pass rates in testing. A UK maritime supply-chain-tracking deployment secured five core signatories. The token underpins these networks as the gas asset for the dual Move/EVM smart-contract architecture introduced by the 2025 Rebased upgrade.
IOTA is a utility token that also carries governance participation rights through staking.
Circulating supply is approximately 4,611,637,615 IOTA against a total supply of 5 billion, with a fully diluted valuation of $200.9M versus a market capitalization of $185.9M as of 2026-09-01.
Supply was fixed at 4.6 billion after the 2023 "Stardust" upgrade, but the May 2025 "IOTA Rebased" upgrade removed that fixed cap: 767,000 new IOTA are minted per epoch, partially offset by fee burning, making net emission a function of minting versus burn rather than a strict cap.
IOTA launched via a 2015 initial coin offering, predating the IOTA Foundation's legal establishment.
In 2017, early investors donated 5% of the total token supply to help fund what became the IOTA Foundation, which the Berlin Foundation Supervisory Authority officially recognized on November 3, 2017. The IOTA EVM smart-contract layer was deployed separately on 2024-03-14, nearly a decade after the network's 2015 founding.
IOTA runs on its own Layer-1 network, a delegated-proof-of-stake (DPoS) chain called "IOTA Rebased" since its May 2025 upgrade from the original DAG-based "Tangle" ledger. Rebased uses a Move-based smart-contract virtual machine alongside an EVM-compatible layer called IOTA EVM.
Under Rebased, a validator committee initially forms from the top ~50 stakers meeting minimum requirements, with a stated design goal of scaling to as many as 150 permissionless validator slots.
IOTA was founded in 2015 by four co-founders: David Sønstebø, Sergey Ivancheglo, Dominik Schiener, and Dr. Serguei Popov.
Popov and Ivancheglo are described as the protocol's principal technical architects (designers of the Tangle data structure), while Schiener and Sønstebø served as public-facing leaders. Ivancheglo resigned from the IOTA Foundation board on June 23, 2019, following a dispute with Sønstebø; the Foundation officially parted ways with Sønstebø on December 10, 2020. Schiener has continued as a public leader of the project into 2025-2026.
The IOTA Foundation, a German non-profit foundation ("Stiftung") based in Berlin, develops and maintains the IOTA network today.
Officially recognized by the Berlin Foundation Supervisory Authority on November 3, 2017, it is described as Germany's first crypto foundation. Its stated mission is development and standardization of IOTA technology and ecosystem adoption. The Foundation has funded ecosystem programs including a roughly $10M commitment to tokenization/trade startups announced in February 2024 and the TWIN trade-infrastructure initiative active in Kenya, Nigeria, and Morocco.
IOTA combines on-chain, stake-weighted consensus governance with off-chain community input through a public forum.
Since the May 2025 Rebased upgrade, token holders can stake or delegate IOTA to validators self-custodially, gaining participation rights in network governance. Protocol changes, including the Rebased upgrade itself, were put to a community vote through the IOTA governance forum, referenced in the Foundation's "IOTA Rebased Governance Vote Starts Today" blog post.
IOTA's most recent major milestone was the "Starfish" consensus protocol, which went live on Mainnet on April 23, 2026.
Zokyo Audits reviewed IOTA Smart Contracts and IOTA EVM code in March 2024, reporting a 100/100 score with only 11 informational-severity findings and no critical, high, medium, or low issues.
Security audits were also a stated prerequisite for the May 2025 Rebased mainnet launch. On February 12, 2020, a compromised third-party MoonPay SDK led to theft of funds from Trinity wallet users, with losses estimated at $300,000-$1.6 million. The IOTA Foundation shut down the network's Coordinator node within 25 minutes and stated the core protocol itself was not breached.