IOTA Community Treasury and Genesis Validation

Note. This post relates to unclaimed tokens from previous migration periods. It does not affect users migrating to the new Chrysalis network.

The migration to the Chrysalis network has been a complete success so far with nearly 8000 addresses migrated amounting to more than 720 Ti ($1.4 Billion). An important process of the Chrysalis network launch today is the validation of token migrations by the IOTA Community for the genesis of the new network. This verification ensures that the IOTA community is able to verify the Chrysalis genesis by validating every successfully submitted migration. Ultimately, it is a very powerful mechanism for a decentralized network to vote and agree on the correct ledger state. With the Chrysalis network launch today, the IOTA Community will also get the opportunity to decide what happens to all unclaimed tokens from previous periods.

The IOTA network has had multiple network upgrades in its history, some of which required token holders to migrate and claim their tokens in the updated network. While the vast majority of token holders completed these migrations, a small number of holders did not claim their tokens for reasons unknown to us.

Since the launch of the IOTA mainnet in 2016 and the very first claim period for crowdsale participants, up to and including the most recent claim period in 2017, it has been a constant effort of ours to return unclaimed tokens to their rightful owners. Now in 2021, with several years having passed and with the launch of the new Chrysalis network, we want to give the IOTA community the opportunity to vote on what should happen with all remaining unclaimed tokens from previous periods.

Currently the unclaimed tokens reside in custodial wallets, waiting to be claimed by their rightful owners. We will keep the official claim process open for another 6 weeks from today until June 16th 2021, to allow for potential claims to be sent for verification. If you think you have a valid claim case, please reach out to us via Discord so that our team can assist in processing your claim.

Neither the original terms of the IOTA crowdsale nor any explicit agreement with IOTA token holders stated that unclaimed tokens should be given to centralized entities or to individuals. Instead, in the spirit of decentralization, the IOTA community should be empowered to make a governing decision on how these unclaimed tokens should be utilized within the IOTA Ecosystem after June 16th 2021.

As part of this process, unclaimed tokens from previous migration periods in 2016 and 2017 will remain among the other unmigrated tokens on the Chrysalis network, and can only be moved once the community comes to an official agreement. In several weeks we will empower the IOTA community to make an official governance decision on how these tokens should be utilized. We envision that this could give birth to a decentralized IOTA Community Treasury that would fund and accelerate the growth of the IOTA ecosystem.

If you do not agree with this community governance process, we have already provided significant assistance by creating a fork we call “IOTA Alternative Solution” (“IOTA AS”). In the IOTA AS fork, the unclaimed tokens will remain untouched and not put up to vote by the IOTA community. The IOTA Foundation will continue to support this fork for at least the next 30 days, awaiting a group to form itself and provide a governance structure to further maintain and operate this network moving onwards (see further information below). It will ultimately be up to the community to decide which fork to support.

As part of today’s snapshot validation, the community will be validating both snapshot files for both networks. The snapshot validation process is relatively simple and all instructions are provided in this guide.

Decentralized IOTA Community Treasury in the IOTA Chrysalis Network

In the upcoming vote you will be able to decide on whether to dedicate the unclaimed tokens to a decentralized governance structure (like a DAO): the IOTA Community Treasury, governed by and for the IOTA Community. We see great potential for this kind of treasury to further empower and fuel the growth of the IOTA ecosystem. Other communities, like Polkadot, have already had a lot of success with their own community treasury.

By officially setting up this IOTA Community Treasury, neither the IOTA Foundation nor any other entity would have control over the funds residing within the treasury: the IOTA Community alone would be able to make decisions on how to spend funds from the Treasury, either through grants to support projects in the IOTA Ecosystem, financing Community Events, setting up dedicated educational efforts, or utilizing them in any other way the community sees fit (including burning and airdrops).

IOTA AS - Initial support from the IOTA Foundation for the fork

We understand that empowering the community to make decentralized governance decisions may be against some people’s beliefs on how the project should be run. We also understand that some of you might prefer to continue without touching on the question of how the unclaimed tokens should be used in the future. Other communities such as Ethereum (with Ethereum Classic) and Bitcoin (with Bitcoin Cash, Gold, SV, etc.) have had similar forks in the past.

To provide support to these cases, we are going to deploy a fork of the IOTA Chrysalis network, called IOTA Alternative Solution aka IOTA AS, later today. The launch of IOTA AS will be announced through our public communication channels. The IOTA AS network retains the exact same features of the IOTA Chrysalis network. The IOTA Foundation will continue to assist in operating this network for the next 30 days and will provide support to any group wanting to participate and engage in IOTA AS. We leave it up to the community if and how to continue operating the fork after the 30 day period.

IOTA AS is a typical fork. Anyone holding tokens in the IOTA Chrysalis network at the time of the snapshot will hold the same tokens under the same seed(s) in IOTA AS. Any tokens being migrated from the IOTA Legacy network after the launch of IOTA Chrysalis and IOTA AS will be migrated to the IOTA Chrysalis network as well as to the IOTA AS network.

Please note that in an earlier version of this post we mistakably stated that tokens from the legacy IOTA network would not automatically be migrated to IOTA AS. We corrected this error and apologise for any inconvenience.

Looking into the future

The success of IOTA is determined by its decentralized community and how the protocol is governed. No single entity should be in a position to decide on the future of the network. The setup of an IOTA Community Treasury would open new possibilities for the IOTA network, entering down a path of full decentralization, not just by removing the Coordinator, but also by allowing the growth of the IOTA ecosystem to be decided upon and governed by the IOTA community.

Ultimately, we leave it up to the community to make a decision on what the future of IOTA should look like, and whether to support a decentralized community treasury in the upcoming community vote, or whether to support the IOTA AS fork.