IOTA, a decentralized ledger solution, has revealed today, Oct. 2, that its smart contracts platform IOTA Smart Contract Protocol (ISCP) is up and running in pre-alpha. A number of development tools is also released for engineers who are ready to build on the IOTA network.
Introducing IOTA Smart Contracts Protocol (ICSP)
According to the official statement by the IOTA Foundation, ICSP is a "flexible and feeless" smart contracts implementation based on IOTA's decentralized DAG-based UTXO ledger. All smart contracts are verified by committees that secure the integrity and functionality of IOTA network.
Another milestone! We're proud to release #IOTASmartContracts Pre-Alpha, our platform for scalable, feeless & flexible #smartcontracts for enterprise applications & real-world use cases. Start exploring the early capabilities of the platform today! https://t.co/e3ggGUCCIf#IOTA
— IOTA (@iotatoken) October 2, 2020
What is actually released is an updated version of node software Wasp v0.0.1 ("pre-alpha"), three demo samples of decentralized applications (dApps) powered by smart contracts—TokenRegistry, FairAuction and DonateWithFeedback—accompanied by command-line wallet WWallet ("Wasp Wallet").
Sample dApps include smart contract programs on the Pollen testnet, web dashboards and cryptocurrencies wallets designed to simulate the programmatic experience of IOTA-based dApps development.
Also, WWallet has an in-app admin tool to deploy user instruments to existing smart contracts and the web-server solutions to run them.
Much more releases to come
The IOTA team assures that the next builds will include other crucial tools necessary for smart contract onboarding—namely Wasp Virtual Machine and Rust programming environment for smart contracts. Meanwhile, IOTA invites all tech-savvy developers to experiment with an abstract VM sandbox interface.
Also, API access to Wasp nodes is not enabled yet, and fee rewards functions are not active. All of these tools will be activated in upcoming releases. WASM VM and the Rust environment should be available by the end of 2020.
IOTA distributed ledger network is a unique semi-decentralized environment built around the Tangle data system. It is operated by Coordinator structure, which is the last point of centralization in IOTA.
With the upcoming Coordicide event it will be removed, allowing IOTA to achieve its final stage of decentralization.
