IOST to Focus on NFTs, DeFi, and Expanding their Global Reach
From now on, the primary focus of the IOST blockchain—an enterprise-grade, highly scalable, and decentralized network, will be on NFTs, DeFi, and geographical expansion.
Global Expansion Beyond China, South Korea, and Japan
Already, IOST has struck partnerships with companies and software development groups in South Korea, China, and Japan.
Their plan, therefore, is to join hands with even more firms as part of their marketing, education, and outreach campaigns. Here, they will help in advocating for blockchain and DLT solutions in individual or enterprise operations.
At the same time, IOST—which is an alternative to Ethereum considering its relatively low transaction fees, high throughput, and ability to handle intensive dApps without sacrificing any blockchain tenets, plans to attract even more developers and artists keen on exploring the world of DeFi and NFTs.
IOST Focus on DeFi
Statistics reveal that there are several reasons to be part of the expansive DeFi campaign. In Ethereum alone, leading DeFi protocols manage over $41 billion of various digital assets.
These are decentralized solutions disrupting lending, trustless swapping of tokens, and more. It is along with this that IOST is keen on building a vibrant DeFi ecosystem, making it one of their focus in 2021.
They are building on the efforts of 2020 when, in the face of the coronavirus disruption and the exponential rise of DeFi governance tokens, they tweaked their roadmap, focusing on DeFi. Their efforts have paid off.
As details reveal, the IOST platform has struck several partnerships with DeFi leaders. Here, they provide a reliable platform for their operations in addition to technical expertise, leading to smooth operation and growth.
Indispensable in the DeFi ecosystem is a reliable stablecoin whose reserves are audited. Aware of this, IOST—early this year, announced their support of the HUSD stablecoins.
Compliant with the IOST IRC21 standard, users can register an account with the Stable Universal—the issuer, and receive an equivalent amount of HUSD on the IOST network via a set of cross-chain tools.
At the same time, Huobi Global has announced the support of the IRC-21 HUSD stablecoin specifically for the IOST ecosystem.
According to Terry Wang, the CTO of IOST, the availability of a stablecoin is vital in unlocking opportunities in DeFi—a facet the project wants to develop in the next two years.
Added to their multi-prong approach and gravitation of cross-chain DeFi, the availability of open finance solutions would help in accelerating adoption. Towards this end, IOST also has connected with the Gravity Network (an oracle) and Polkadot for interoperability. Through Gravity, IOST becomes another public chain, joining Ethereum, Tron, Waves, and EOS.
Besides critical partnerships and a launch of an IOST-specific stablecoin, IOST is already the home of vibrant DeFi protocols like the Watermelon, WaxGourd, Pumpkin, Aegis Finance, and more. The community anticipates the growth of DeFi in IOST in the coming years.
Accelerating its development, the protocol announced the DeFi Incentive Program v2.0 in Aug 2020, a $6 million fund to boost the continuous growth of DeFi in its ecosystem. This was on top of the Noah Oracle.
IOST as the Home of NFTs
The team is now training their eyes on further growing its NFTs sphere where artists can get all the tools in a low-fees environment. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are unique tokens that are not exchangeable. They are often in limited-supply (provably scarce), indivisible, and can be traced—just like any other token in the blockchain.
As per trackers, over $433 million worth of NFTs has changed hands in Ethereum alone. The same, as with any other technology, can be successfully replicated in IOST.
In anticipation, IOST launched the IRC-721 NFT standard in April 2020. This standard is accessible to developers/artists who can easily mint NFTs via IOST. Users, via the Jetstream web wallet, can mint their NFTs via My Unique Asset.
Already, IOST is almost concluding its year-long NFT campaign. Collectors of all the nine NFT tokens stand a chance of winning and redeeming a Mystery Box.
Interestingly—and a unique feature specific to the IRC-721 standard is the ability to re-use NFT assets across different games/platforms in the vast IOST ecosystem. An interoperability feature is also active.
Following a partnership with Platinum Egg, the first NFT marketplace launched in early2021. The TokenLink NFT Marketplace is for gamers to swap NFTs and game items.
https://twitter.com/IOST_Official/status/1371280002680029189
For its innovation, IOST is now recognized by CEDEC2019—Japan’s largest Developer Conference for Entertainment Games.
In the coming days, IOST will also add an “NFT +DeFi” feature on Donnie Finance. This comes just when Donnie Finance’s TVL rose above $10 million on Mar 16.
