IOST (IOST) Ecosystem Continues to Flourish in H1 2021, A Quick Recap
Decentralized, high-performance smart contract platform IOST (IOST) had nothing short of a spectacular first half in 2021.
The IOST ecosystem grew at an unprecedented pace during the first six months of the year and taking into account what’s in the pipeline for the project, things look extremely promising heading into the second half of 2021.
Let us quickly revisit some of the many milestones achieved by IOST in H1 2021.
Staying True to the Roadmap
IOST continued to assert its dominance in the smart contract landscape throughout the first half of 2021. As reported by BTCManager on June 11, IOST trumped the likes of Ethereum, EOS, and Tron for the fourth consecutive time per the latest ranking from the Centre for Information and Industry Development (CCID).
In addition to the aforementioned, IOST was able to successfully check numerous milestones in alignment with its H1 2021 Roadmap.
These achievements include having a stable, steady, and zero-downtime mainnet hosting over 587 million transactions, operating a holistic DeFi ecosystem that accommodates major stablecoins such as HUSD, JPYA, and USDA, and successfully concluding the testing of core functions of the cross-chain bridge in Polkadot.
Further, IOST witnessed a booming NFT market on its network as a slew of quality projects launched on the platform to offer innovative NFTs to users.
A Booming NFT Ecosystem
Earlier this year in March, IOST released their updated roadmap which broadly talked about the project’s focus on DeFi and NFTs. While we have already discussed the ballooning DeFi market being developed on top of IOST, the NFT ecosystem is not far behind.
In March, IOST announced it was giving away its “The Wind” NFTs to 200 lucky winners of its community in a gesture to thank the community members for their unparalleled support for the IOST ecosystem throughout the years.
In April, IOST stated the Platinum Egg team had released audio track NFTs on IOST-based NFT marketplace TOKENLINK.
Similarly, in June Singapore-based Emogi Network announced it was launching Revival – an NFT marketplace built on top of the IOST network. Revival differs from the vast majority of NFT marketplaces, especially those built on Ethereum, in that it offers a multi-chain aggregating NFT portal unique with a margin reward mechanism and rapid transactions at minimal costs.
On a recent note, BTCManager reported how Revival was slated to feature famous Chinese street artist Edison Zhang’s collection – a testimony to the amount of trust IOST enjoys in the Chinese market.
Exchange Listings
An indicator of a fundamentally strong and healthy digital asset is the number of exchanges it is listed on. A higher number of exchange listings showcases the high level of trust the crypto exchanges put in a particular asset and IOST is no different.
On June 3, BTCManager reported that IOST continues to bag exchange listings with major listings on exchanges such as Gate.io, Crypto.com, BitPanda, Latoken, WazirX, and TokoCrypto.
Enviable Network and Community Growth
It won’t be a stretch to say IOST experienced one of its best phases in terms of network and community growth during H1 2021. The numbers speak for themselves.
IOST’s Twitter followers skyrocketed from 193,720 followers in December 2020 to 247,498 in June 2021 while its Medium Blog subscribers increased from 6,392 to 7,143 in the same period.
In terms of network growth, IOST unveiled two new mainnet upgrades – Olympus v3.5.1 and Olympus v3.6.0 with fixes of minor bugs and issues and support for new integrations.
Similarly, other technical metrics show how IOST has cemented itself as a leading smart contract platform supported by an increasing number of developers flocking to the network due to its easy deployment and minimal gas costs.
Some of the mainnet growth statistics are as follows:
(Source: IOST)
(Source: IOST)
(Source: IOST)
(Source: IOST)
Other Integrations
Besides the aforementioned accolades, IOST had multiple significant integrations during H1 2021.
For instance, on May 7, BTCManager reported how IOST had joined forces with crypto staking service provider Moonstake to enable a seamless IOST staking experience for users.
In the same vein, in March IOST partnered with the Apron Network to establish a multi-chain architecture geared toward developers to help them choose from a range of supported blockchain networks to build applications on.
What’s more, in February this year, IOST holders also enjoyed airdrops from IOST-based DeFi protocol Donnie Finance that airdropped 10% of its governance tokens to IOST holders.
With the rapid pace of development and integrations in its flourishing ecosystem, expect IOST to continue its dominance in the smart contract platform for the coming years.
