Project Entroverse — IOST’s Path to EVM Compatibility, Cross-Chain Bridge & Interoperable Blockchain Network

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IOST

7 min readMar 31, 2022

To create a future where different blockchains no longer operate as close-off siloed but instead, as an interconnected building block of a bigger ecosystem, the IOST Foundation is thrilled to unveil a strategic launch of our Secret Weapon- Project Entroverse.

Project Entroverse gears towards capitalizing on the craze of Dapps on Ethereum and its network to ramp up the IOST ecosystem. This kick-off enables IOST to inch closer to becoming a powerful and compelling interoperable blockchain network.

The Project Entroverse entails a variety of solutions starting off with the IOSTSWAP- An IOST-ETH Cross-chain Bridge, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, and more to be announced in April, designed to aggressively drive and fuel the growth of the IOST’s developers ecosystem.

What benefits will Project Entroverse bring to developers and users?

Developers can easily integrate Ethereum protocols with IOST. Reusing contracts saves their time and energy writing contracts and codes and creates opportunities for them to move chains easily.
EVM users will be able to operate with familiar Ethereum applications in the IOST network and enjoy the superior benefits of the IOST mainnet including up to 99% lower gas fees (compared with Ethereum) and high throughput (up to 8000 transactions per second) and instant transaction confirmations, thereby eliminating the thresholds and improving congestion and slow user experience.
IOST users will be benefiting from a broader pool Dapps thus enjoy an improved and more elevating user experience as EVM-based applications and their on-chain assets come to the IOST network.

IOST CEO, Jimmy Zhong highlights:

“ From creating competition to enabling collaboration, the IOST team sees embracing Ethereum blockchain and its community as a way to move forward and upward. In a cryptoverse where individual projects rely on ever-increasing levels of collaboration and interaction, it is not only desirable but also vital for IOST to kick off a cross-chain bridge, EVM compatibility function, and Project Entroverse. The race to get a share in the blockchain industry is increasingly daunting but we will never let these challenges get the better of us. We are thrilled about this big launch and the monumental growth it brings”

Stay tuned with us for more good news for Project Entroverse this April!

An Interoperable Blockchain World

From Bitcoin — a Peer-to-Peer electronic cash system, to Ethereum — a decentralized, open-source, and distributed computing platform, to Decentralized Finance (DeFi), the versatile use of blockchain technology has ballooned over the years, reshaping a wide array of mainstream industries and making it a force to be reckoned with.

In 2021, blockchain-based apps faced an unprecedented growth in demand and reached more mainstream users than ever. With a never-seen influx of funds, talents, and users, the whole crypto industry’s performance skyrocketed in a short span of time. The exponential growth of the Dapps’ userbase further highlighted the shortcomings of the performance of public blockchains such as Ethereum. It opened the doors to a multi-chain-oriented development of the blockchain world. During this time, the positioning of Ethereum slowly evolved from the “world’s computer” concept to a “global financial settlement layer,” and the development of sharding technology and Layer 2 were also halted, which further outstands the critical position of interoperability in the future.

Meanwhile, IOST, Solana, Terra, BSC, and other new-generation public chains took advantage of their unique advantages, performance-wise, to bring in users that were deprived of joining DeFi by Ethereum’s insanely high gas costs at more reasonable prices. Moreover, the situation that many users had to face — shortage in funds and liquidity leads us to the same conclusion: Interoperability is fundamental to the future of blockchain technology. Looking back at 2021, whether the newly launched chains, with BSC, FTM, and other forks of Ethereum as representatives or projects with different underlying architectures such as Solona and Terra, all of them are compatible with Ethereum through EVM, which has boosted the rapid development of their ecosystem’s Dapps.

IOST is a project with its own underlying architecture, is committed to providing a safe, convenient, and high-performance blockchain infrastructure, and continues to explore blockchain applications to serve its global partners and users. Based on in-depth analysis and discussion about the industry’s future and a lot of preparation work, IOST sets to develop and launch “Project Entroverse”, building an EVM development environment in the IOST network to connect with other ecosystems starting with Ethereum, which shall provide more choices for IOST developers and thus further accelerating the growth of the IOST ecosystem.

IOST Swap- The IOST-ETH Cross-chain Bridge

The swift growth of blockchain has given birth to many different types of chains created to perform different functions and different blockchain applications such as DeFi to serve the increasing demands of the users. But how will these different blockchains communicate with each other? How can transactions be carried out in multiple blockchain networks? This is where interoperability comes into the picture.

In IOST, we work together with the ecosystem partner nodes to develop a variety of enriching Dapps. This time, Sigma — a new partner node in our ecosystem, took the lead in building IOSTSwap. This two-way cross-chain bridge will enable users to freely transfer tokens from IOST to Ethereum and vice-versa, adding more use cases to the assets and bringing vitality to both ecosystems. It is also worth mentioning that IOSTSwap has the same security level as the IOST mainnet and the Ethereum mainnet. Details about IOSTSwap will be unveiled soon.

2. Phase 2: EVM Compatibility- Driving IOST Network Towards New Prosperity

What is an Ethereum Virtual Machine?

Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is a computation engine that acts as a decentralized computer with millions of executable projects.
It acts as the virtual machine, which is the bedrock of Ethereum’s entire operating structure.
It is considered to be the part of Ethereum that runs execution and smart contract deployment.
The role of the EVM is to deploy a number of extra functionalities to the blockchain to ensure users face limited issues on the distributed ledger.

IOST, a pioneering decentralized, high-throughput, gas-efficient Proof-of-Believability-powered smart contract platform built to tackle the scalability trilemma, will now add another competitive advantage- being its EVM compatibility.

Now, the IOST team is exploring integrating more applications and developers to join the IOST network under Project Entroverse. We will create a compatibility layer for Ethereum and other public chains that support EVM (Avalanche, Polygon, NEAR, etc.) on the IOST network, which will provide developers with a complete set of solutions to help Solidity developers use their familiar development languages and tools on IOST, build and port Dapps, and enjoy the fluency of a high-performance network. Through EVM compatibility and thanks to IOST’s performance, we will be able to redefine the possibilities of Ethereum and blockchain applications.

After completing EVM compatibility on IOST, developers will be able to quickly port Ethereum and other blockchain network contracts (compatible with EVM) and run them on IOST.

EVM doesn’t come solo. What is WASM?

Next, IOST will continue with the development of Web Assembly (Wasm) support. Initially designed for browsers, WebAssembly is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine.

Wasm is designed as a portable compilation target for programming languages, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications, and is another virtual machine commonly used in blockchain.
Due to its expanded usage scenarios, Wasm has become one of the more common formats. It can run in all popular browsers and is widely supported by Google, Microsoft, Apple, and other top-tier companies.

The main difference between EVM and WASM is that the latter supports more smart contract development languages. Besides Solidity, you can use a variety of high-level languages, such as C/C++/Rust, to write smart contracts, significantly reducing the threshold and development costs while improving the security of smart contracts, bringing convenience and efficient blockchain technology to more users.

With both EVM and WASM combined, IOST will continue to drive the massive growth of blockchain applications on its network

The use of blockchain applications in mainstream industries is ballooning over the years. Multi-chain competition has become a reality, and interoperability is a key backbone for any leading blockchain project and necessary technology for users. IOST will uphold the spirit of open, accessible, and interoperable blockchain, putting you- our users and developers first and not letting any challenges get in our way of becoming a home for blockchain developers and users.

More information and plans to boost the Entroverse ecosystem will be revealed in April. Stay tuned and watch out for IOST’s official announcements.

About IOST

Backed by major financial and VC firms such as Sequoia, Matrix, and ZhenFund, IOST is a pioneering decentralized, high-throughput, gas-efficient Proof-of-Believability-powered smart contract platform built to tackle the scalability trilemma once and for all. The concluding ranking from China’s CCID ranked IOST as the best blockchain platform under Basic Technology, better than Ethereum, EOS, and every other smart-contracting platform evaluated by the agency. This is a testament to the quality and ability of the IOST team to roll out a better, innovative product and reflective of their true desire to be the best in the sphere.

Being one of the public chain leaders in terms of adoption, performance, and utility, IOST currently has the ever-expanding 620,000 IOST holders in over 20 countries, over 400 nodes, a top staking economy, symbiotic relationships with corporations dotted worldwide.

If you would like to hang out with the IOST community on chat, social media, or discuss product development, we have something for everyone:

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