“A new era has dawned” – IOTA Upgrade Chrysalis is here

After months of waiting, the day has finally come. Today IOTA completes the switch to the Chrysalis update.

The day of decision has finally come for IOTA. Today, Tanglenet is making its long-awaited switch to IOTA 1.5, better known as the “Chrysalis Upgrade”, during the day. Among other things, the update is intended to improve the average time the network needs to confirm transactions. This process currently takes around two minutes; according to IOTA 1.5, processing should only take ten seconds.

Among other things, this is made possible by a new algorithm for determining so-called milestones. These are bundles of transactions that have been signed by the coordinator. Because every transaction in IOTA confirms a previous one, network nodes have to wait for their transaction to appear in a milestone. The new algorithm for selecting these milestones should increase the number of confirmed transactions per second significantly. In addition, the IOTA update also makes changes to the security concept and the resilience of the network. According to Chrysalis, electricity consumption should be reduced by up to 60 percent. You can read here what users need to consider when converting the network.

“A new era has dawned for IOTA,” said co-founder Dominik Schiener Press release quote. It also says:

We now have an enterprise-ready platform that will delight both industrial and home users with its improved features, industry-standard upgrades and energy efficiency. Our engineers have worked diligently to lay the foundation for Coordicide and more,

Dominik Schiener, co-founder and chairman of the IOTA Foundation

Next stop: IOTA 2.0

The introduction of the Chrysalis update clears the way for IOTA 2.0. So far the consensus mechanism of the Tangle network has been based on Proof of work, in which the coordinator (Coo), a kind of centralized node, signs the individual transactions (milestones). To do this, the Coo checks the individual milestones of the network. If he discovers an incorrect transaction, it will no longer be accepted by the other milestones.

The problem here is the centralization of the verification process, which would theoretically allow IOTA to prioritize transactions and freeze tokens. In addition, as a centralized control mechanism, the Coo offers a target for attacks that, if successful, could shut down the entire transaction network. IOTA is aware of this problem and would like to begin with the “Coordicide” update to gradually rebuild its consensus mechanism towards more decentralization. With the changeover to IOTA 1.5 completed today, the network has already taken the first step towards this.