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IOTA began as a distributed-ledger project built around the Tangle, a design associated with the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine data or value exchange. Its current mainnet is different: IOTA Rebased, a programmable, Move-based network, launched on May 5, 2025. The Tangle remains important to IOTA’s history, but it does not describe the current mainnet’s protocol.
What is IOTA?
IOTA is a digital-asset and distributed-ledger project. Its original design, introduced in 2015, used a directed acyclic graph (DAG) called the Tangle and was framed around IoT devices exchanging data or value. The project has since changed direction and architecture. The IOTA Foundation describes today’s network as a programmable blockchain platform with Move support, validators, and on-chain assets.
It helps to separate three things often blended together in older explanations:
- The Tangle: IOTA’s original DAG-based ledger concept and historical IoT focus.
- Rebased: the current mainnet protocol, launched in May 2025, built around Move and validators.
- IOTA’s applications: the use cases and integration tools the Foundation is developing or promoting. These are project-stated priorities, not proof that each use has broad real-world adoption.
The Foundation presents Rebased as object-centric and highlights features and goals including staking, scaling, low fees, and safety. Those descriptions are IOTA’s own; the available official material does not establish like-for-like independent benchmarks against other networks. See the IOTA documentation for current technical materials.
How the Tangle fits into IOTA’s history
IOTA’s technical-history account says the project introduced the Tangle in 2015. The DAG-based approach was associated with a goal of feeless transactions and use in IoT and machine-to-machine settings. Earlier network history also included a Coordinator, a component involved in transaction confirmation. IOTA describes later work toward decentralization and programmability.
That history should not be read as a description of today’s implementation. Rebased followed the Stardust network and represents a substantial redesign; the current mainnet uses Move rather than simply continuing the earlier Tangle implementation. In particular, historical claims about feeless token transfers or how token holders participated in the old design should not automatically be applied to Rebased.
What changed with IOTA Rebased?
The IOTA Foundation announced that Rebased mainnet went live on May 5, 2025, following the Stardust era. The new network foregrounds programmable applications, Move smart contracts, validators, and composable on-chain assets. This is a change in both protocol and wallet environment, not just a renamed version of the old network.
The Foundation’s whitepaper describes the IOTA token on the new mainnet as an object of type 0x2::iota::IOTA. It says one IOTA is divisible into one billion NANOs. These technical details refer to the Rebased mainnet described in the 2025 whitepaper.
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For the May 2025 transition, IOTA said users could load existing wallet credentials into the new wallet rather than manually move their tokens. The Foundation’s whitepaper says 4.6 billion IOTA tokens were migrated from Stardust and remained accessible at the same hexadecimal addresses. These are details of that migration, not a promise that future upgrades will use the same process. Consult IOTA’s Rebased mainnet launch announcement and current wallet guidance for instructions that apply now.
The migration also changed wallet support. IOTA said Firefly would no longer be supported after the upgrade and directed users to a new wallet. Its migration guidance said Ledger hardware wallets would continue to be supported, while noting that the Ledger Nano S had been deprecated on Ledger Live and required manual installation at that time. Hardware-wallet compatibility can depend on the specific model and current software, so check the latest IOTA and Ledger setup instructions before choosing or configuring a device.
How IOTA describes its current use cases
The Foundation highlights several application areas for the current network. Its materials describe these as opportunities for IOTA technology; they do not, by themselves, demonstrate completed deployments or measurable outcomes.
- Trade and supply chains: sharing digital trade data across borders and coordinating information between participants.
- Product lifecycle integrity: recording or checking information associated with a product as it moves through its lifecycle.
- Digital identity: verifying identities, credentials, or related claims.
- Decentralized finance: building financial applications using on-chain assets and programmable transactions.
- Real-world-asset tokenization: representing assets on a blockchain. IOTA’s 2026-and-beyond manifesto names commodities, critical minerals, trade receivables, and warehouse receipts as targets, along with related financial applications; these are strategic aims, not evidence that the assets have already been tokenized at scale.
The Foundation also describes an integration stack with components for identity, tokenization, hierarchies, gas sponsorship, notarization, and audit trails. Treat these as the project’s product positioning. A claim that a particular customer, government, or industry has successfully deployed one of them needs separate evidence from that organization or another primary source.
What IOTA’s tokenomics figures mean
IOTA’s 2025 whitepaper describes 767,000 new IOTA tokens minted at the end of each 24-hour epoch. It says this corresponds to an initial annual minting rate of 6% of total supply. The same document says tokens are burned automatically as a function of network usage. These are protocol and tokenomics descriptions, not a current circulating-supply figure or a guaranteed staking return; the figures are dated to the 2025 whitepaper and should be checked against current network documentation.
How to assess IOTA’s claims
Whether IOTA is suitable for a particular application depends on evidence beyond its design goals. The official materials reviewed describe features and intended use cases, but they do not provide independent, comparable measurements for throughput, finality, costs, energy use, adoption, or safety. A fair comparison with another network would use the same test conditions and examine:
- Transaction throughput and finality under stated workloads.
- Transaction costs, including how any fee sponsorship works.
- Validator participation and concentration.
- The smart-contract model and developer tools required to build and maintain an application.
- Energy use and hardware requirements.
- Production deployments supported by evidence from customers, regulators, or project operators.
Without that common evidence, IOTA’s performance and adoption claims are best presented as the Foundation’s claims rather than as independently established advantages.
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