IOTA’s Shimmer Testnet Records Temporary Setback, Here’s How

The IOTA ShimmerEVM network has announced it ran into a temporary setback on Sunday as users of the testnet which went live recently recorded an error accessing the protocol. In the tweet it shared, the ShimmerEVM Network revealed that it is experiencing heavy congestion which is currently challenging its chain limits.

While the exact visitor count that overwhelmed the protocol was not revealed, the team said the setback is helping it strategize to discover a way to improve performance in the long run. While it confirmed that its team is working relentlessly to resolve the issues, the community has rallied round in support.

The ShimmerEVM is the IOTA spinoff that has been under development to help introduce smart contracts to the latter. At the current pace of evolution in today’s blockchain ecosystem, more primary non-smart contract focused layer-1 protocols are seeing increasing need to jump and follow the bandwagon.

The ShimmerEVM was designed to bridge this gap and the testnet has been deemed a very necessary one to stretch and test the limits of the protocol before the mainnet launch. According to one IOTA community member, @iota_penguine, it is better to encounter these challenges at this time than when the mainnet is live.

It's much better to encounter such challenges in the testnet of #ShimmerEVM than on the mainnet.

Thanks for the transparency & kudos to the team for working towards resolving this issue! ❤️

— IOTA Penguin ✨ (@iota_penguin) May 7, 2023

IOTA ShimmerEVM: Lagging Behind in EVM Pivot

With the ShimmerEVM testnet campaign still ongoing, the protocol and the broader IOTA ecosystem can be said to be lagging behind other core protocols like EOS and Filecoin, both of whom made the move into smart contract support recently.

As reported earlier by Coingape, the Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) went live back in March after months of active development. The FVM launch was a very pivotal one and support was given to the protocol by Binance exchange at the time.

Additionally, EOS also pivoted into the smart contract scene when it launched its WebAssembly (WASM) protocol. 

With the number of high profile protocols launching their smart contract compatibility, the ShimmerEVM appears to be coming late to the party overall. However, a solid protocol development and accompanying utility can help it compete with its peers around now.