IOTA is a blockchain infrastructure for global economies where data, assets, and identity interact freely and securely, enabling anyone to exchange value directly without permission, gatekeepers, or friction and unlocking a new era of scalable, people-owned growth.
The network is secured through delegated Proof-of-Stake with permissionless validators, running on the Starfish consensus protocol for high resilience and speed, with throughput above 50,000 transactions per second and confirmation times under one second. IOTA supports native smart contracts through the Move programming language (MoveVM) at Layer 1, with an EVM-compatible Layer 2 also available.
IOTA's current strategic focus is on digitizing global trade and supply chains — centered on its Trade Worldwide Information Network (TWIN) initiative — alongside digital identity, verifiable data, and government adoption. IOTA (the network's native token) has no fixed maximum supply; new tokens are minted on a dynamic schedule to fund staking rewards.
The IOTA Foundation, a German non-profit, funds and leads development of the network. The project was co-founded by David Sønstebø, Dominik Schiener, and Sergey Ivancheglo; Sønstebø and Ivancheglo have since departed the Foundation, with Dominik Schiener now leading it.
IOTA originated from the Jinn project in 2014 and launched as its own network in 2015–2016 following a token crowdsale. Since then, the project has evolved substantially — moving to a fully validator-based consensus model, adding native smart contract support, and shifting its strategic emphasis from consumer IoT micropayments toward enterprise and government trade infrastructure.
