The Chrysalis Token Migration Starts Now!

IOTA Foundation ·

IOTA's new dawn is upon us. And today's token migration marks the beginning of our next chapter as we make our most significant protocol upgrade of the IOTA network with "Chrysalis".

The Chrysalis update comes with a cutting edge level of security, magnitudes higher resilience, vastly improved transaction speeds and throughput capacity, and at the same time, a much lower energy footprint. Chrysalis also brings a complete overhaul of IOTA’s developer tooling, making IOTA easier than ever before to develop with. Anyone can develop use cases on IOTA without having to fear major breaking changes down the road - on the way to full decentralization with “Coordicide.” In exactly one week, IOTA becomes enterprise-ready.

The Chrysalis update marks the most extensive change in IOTA’s history, touching upon all aspects of the IOTA protocol, libraries, tools, documentation and software, which wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the whole IOTA ecosystem.

Our partners from business and industry have provided us with invaluable insights into real-world requirements. And the immediate IOTA community has contributed extensively to this update. Compared to the humble beginnings of IOTA, this update was a truly collaborative process, and we are proud of how IOTA and the community have grown and matured over the years.

The past weeks leading up to the update were exciting and challenging. We hope that we were adequately able to inform anyone interested in the progress made during the last leg of this momentous protocol upgrade. This article addresses all information needed to migrate tokens, referencing all prior publications in more detail on several aspects.

Token migration

Starting today, April 21st, 2021, token holders can begin migrating their tokens to the new address and encryption scheme introduced by the Chrysalis network update on April 28th 2021.

Tokens transferred to the new network using Firefly between the 21st and 28th of April will be credited to their owners under the new address scheme after the Chrysalis update. Those tokens will be locked until the network migration on April 28th - they can't be moved in the meantime. Locked tokens will then become available right after the start of the Chrysalis network on April 28th.

Please note that the migration of tokens between the 21st and 28th of April 2021 is not mandatory. Token holders will be equally able to migrate tokens after the Chrysalis network update on April 28th, at least until Coordicide, for which the IOTA Foundation estimates being able to present a fully decentralized release candidate later this year. During this “Fluid Migration” period, token migration will not be locked and will become available on the Chrysalis network in a short period of time.

During the migration period from April 21st to April 28th, the legacy network will continue to operate as usual. After April 28th, only migration transactions will be possible in the legacy network. That means that after April 28th, users still holding tokens in the legacy network will only be able to send tokens to the migration address using Firefly but will no longer be able to send tokens to any other addresses in the legacy network (e.g. for payments, addresses maintained by exchanges, etc).

In case you are interested in seeing the flow of tokens between networks, we added an additional page to https://chrysalis.iota.org showing the amount of tokens being migrated from the WOTS-based “legacy” network to the Chrysalis network. We are curious to see how the token supply will transition to the new network.

Firefly desktop version

When the migration period ends (April 28th), our previous Trinity wallet is officially being discontinued. Today we are releasing the first full version of Firefly, our new much-improved wallet. In case you were testing the beta version of Firefly, the new version will install as a separate application, but feel free to delete the Beta. You can find the official Firefly download on our new Firefly website here: https://firefly.iota.org.

Please note that until the Chrysalis network update on April 28th, Firefly can only be used to migrate tokens. Only after the Chrysalis network update on April 28th, Firefly can be used for regular IOTA transactions.

Firefly token migration guide

Firefly provides a seamless process to migrate tokens. We nevertheless published a Firefly token migration guide, allowing users to take a look at what to expect before starting the process.

In case you run into problems

The network update to Chrysalis effectively means that the whole token supply will be migrated to new addresses, making this event a potential target for scammers. In case you run into any problems or have questions, please be careful who you talk to when asking for guidance and make sure to look at the Security During Token Migration article we published earlier.

Users of mobile-only wallets

Firefly is only available as a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux. Users who have been managing tokens in the mobile version of “Trinity'' can either use the SeedVault generated by Trinity Mobile (or the seed itself) and use it to migrate tokens using Firefly Desktop. We will focus on the development of the mobile versions of the app after Chrysalis.

Ledger Nano users

As mentioned previously, users managing IOTA tokens through a Ledger Nano hardware wallet should wait to migrate their tokens until the Ledger integration into Firefly has been fully tested and released.

Ledger Nano support will be available in Firefly a couple of weeks after the Chrysalis update goes live. It is recommended that Ledger Nano users simply wait to migrate until it is ready.

In case any Ledger user doesn’t want to wait, they can transfer their tokens to a non-Ledger based seed or to an exchange supporting the migration prior to April 28th. After April 28th, only migration transactions will be possible in the legacy IOTA network.

Users holding tokens on exchanges

As stated before, we have been actively coordinating and working with all major exchanges, supporting them to upgrade their infrastructure to support Chrysalis. If you keep your tokens on exchanges, the exchange will take care of the token migration for you. Your funds are safe at all times. Even if an exchange will not support the Chrysalis upgrade on the 28th April, nearly all exchanges have committed themselves to work on the integration shortly thereafter. Keep in mind that all exchanges have their own and pre-scheduled release cycles, which might or might not affect how quickly and when they are able to support the network update.

Current Status Update on Exchange Support:

  • Bitpanda will fully support Chrysalis at launch
  • Bitfinex will fully support Chrysalis at launch
  • Binance will fully support Chrysalis after launch. Currently finalizing integration and awaiting the Mainnet upgrade to be successfully completed
  • Upbit is currently working on the Chrysalis integration
  • OKEx will begin with the integration of Chrysalis in May
  • Huobi will begin with the integration of Chrysalis in May
  • Bittrex has received all necessary documentation and information. We have not yet received written confirmation on when they will support the integration
  • Liquid has received all necessary documentation and information. We have not yet received any written confirmation on when they will support the integration

If an exchange does not support Chrysalis at launch, it simply means that deposits and withdrawals will be disabled until that exchange’s integration of the new Chrysalis libraries is complete. Trading can continue and is not affected by the integration efforts.

A note on potential “dust”

To prevent “ledger bloat” through so-called “dust attacks”, a simple and effective countermeasure has been defined for the Chrysalis network: in order to transfer values smaller than 1 MIOTA to a destination address, the destination address has to hold a minimum amount of 1 MIOTA. This amount hasn’t been defined as a permanently fixed value and solution, and is just a solution for the time being.

This in turn means that only values larger than 1Mi can be migrated to an address in the Chrysalis network, as already mentioned in our previous article explaining different aspects of the Firefly Token Migration.

To prevent dust amounts from the legacy network not being able to be migrated, Firefly sweeps tokens held on multiple addresses and sends the sum of them to the destination address in the Chrysalis network. While doing it, Firefly tries to “bundle” amounts smaller than 1 MIOTA to amounts larger than 1 MIOTA.
In rare cases, it can nevertheless happen that dust on multiple addresses cannot be collected by Firefly in ways that would create sums larger than 1 MIOTA (for example if the sum of the dust on all addresses does not add up to more than 1 MIOTA).

Whether for Trinity users or Ledger users, Firefly will always try to create an ideal combination of addresses containing dust to combinations larger than 1 MIOTA in order to be able to migrate them successfully. In case Firefly isn’t able to combine small dust amounts to bundles larger than 1 MIOTA, the dust cannot be migrated.

The “sweeping” feature integrated into Firefly should be understood as a convenience feature, but not as a guarantee. As explained above, there are theoretical cases in which Firefly will not be able to create appropriate bundles amounting to more than 1 MIOTA.

Users having many addresses that hold IOTA tokens of less than 1Mi who want to avoid losing dust in the migration process should therefore manually send all dust to an address amounting to more than 1 MIOTA before starting the migration process.


Keep in mind that after April 28th, only transactions to the migration address will be possible but “collecting” tokens on one address in the legacy network will not. Sending dust to a “collection address” will therefore only be possible before April 28th.


In case you have any questions about the token migration, visit us on our #help channel on Discord but keep in mind how to avoid potential scammers offering their “help”.