IOTA Reborn: Why 2024 Was The Most Defining Year Yet for IOTA

• After years of building away from the limelight, IOTA finally burst out in 2024 with the Rebased protocol, real-world asset tokenization, institutional adoption, and more.
• The price also finally broke out after a multi-year lull, reclaiming the $1 billion market cap for the first time in two years as internal developments and the bull market pushed the token.

2024 was a landmark year for the crypto industry, with dozens of tokens hitting new all-time highs, led by Bitcoin, which broke past the six-figure barrier for the first time. However, while many saw a price spike this year, few matched it with even bigger developments on the tech side. IOTA was one of these few: the project finally recaptured the $1 billion market cap for the first time in nearly three years, while on the tech side, it launched Rebased, its most significant upgrade in years.

The Year of IOTA

IOTA’s crowning glory this year happened towards the end of the year, but it overshadowed what most projects have been building the entire year. As we reported, the IOTA Foundation announced in mid-September the launch of IOTA Rebased, nine years since it first launched in 2015.

Rebased marked a fundamental shift back to the basic vision that the IOTA founders when the network launched: offering a blockchain that works but is not based on the flawed concepts everyone else in the market relies on.

The two key targets with Rebased were programmability and full decentralization. The IOTA team had been working on these two foundational tenets of blockchain technology for years.

In terms of programmability, it introduced smart contracts on IOTA EVM mid-this year.  A partnership with the SUI team pushed the IOTA Foundation to explore the integration of MoveVM into its L1, but this turned out to be cumbersome. Additionally, it would be introduced on the IOTA EVM and the IOTA L1 as two distinct code upgrades, which wasn’t ideal. With Rebased, IOTA now has built-in programmability, which would have taken years to build into the protocol.

Rebased also finally solved decentralization for IOTA. The network has long relied on Coordicide, a central node that facilitates transaction processing. However, it has gradually transitioned away from this centralized structure, with Rebased as the final puzzle piece.

IOTA’s Year of Adoption and Recognition

Away from the technical aspects, IOTA had its best year yet on the adoption and recognition front. It was one of three finalists on the European Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement project (EBSI PCP), with the IOTA Foundation announcing that it had completed the third and final phase of the project in August. The project, spearheaded by the European Commission, seeks to produce blockchain applications that can impact the region.

As a member of the project, IOTA developed three key solutions on its Tangle network: a digital product passport for electronics, another one for plastics, and an intellectual property rights management solution.

The Trade Worldwide Information Network (TWIN) was yet another landmark achievement for IOTA’s real-world adoption. TWIN, as we reported, is an evolution of the long-running Trade and Logistics Information Pipeline (TLIP), through which IOTA has been transforming trade in African and European nations.

This year, demand for TWIN exploded, with founder Dominik Schiener revealing that “there’s a lot happening behind the scenes, and next year, we will definitely see several more countries coming online.”

TWIN has also received the endorsement of key leaders, led by Sir Tony Blair, the former British premier who now heads global transformation through the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Blair touted the IOTA blockchain as the best solution to “modernise trade by replacing outdated, paper-based processes with secure, digital alternatives using distributed-ledger technology (DLT).”

IOTA has also become one of the big players in the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs), a sector that’s expected to be worth more than $10 trillion by the end of the decade. In an exclusive interview with CNF in June, Schiener described tokenization as the “silver bullet of cryptocurrencies.” He added:

The ability to tokenize assets and make use of them in an immutable, self-determined fashion that does not require any middlemen is what’s missing in our current, highly digitized life. It also is the biggest untapped market…

IOTA’s tokenization journey has excelled in the Middle East, where the Foundation set up operations in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The region has become a blockchain hotspot, and unlike in Western and Asian markets, the governments are leading in this adoption.

In late October, Schiener launched an investment fund that tokenizes US Treasuries on the IOTA network. Schiener’s Abu Dhabi-based firm Realize partnered with Neovision Wealth Management on the project, which he believes will hit $200 million in assets in the long term. Today, there’s over $4 billion in tokenized treasuries on blockchain networks.

IOTA’s price also surged this year, marking its return to the top 100. It hit a yearly high of $0.492 in early December, pushing its market cap past $1.7 billion. It has since retraced to trade at $0.28 at press time for a $1 billion market cap.