Dear IOST community,

Over the last few years, blockchain projects have been grappling with what has come to be known as the scalability trilemma. Trying to find a balance between scalability, security and decentralization isn’t easy, and many projects have been cutting corners too much in one area and compromising the integrity of their blockchain in others. At IOST, we are developing solutions to this trilemma, and working to build a truly functioning decentralized infrastructure.

As a result of this continued work and development, we are excited to announce the second iteration of our IOST testnet today — Everest v1.0. Some of the most exciting features of our newest version include:

Supports smart contract programming with JavaScript — world’s most popular programming language according to Github

First Blockchain to support smart contact Domain Name System (DNS) and Flexible Access Control on upgrade/removal of contracts

First Blockchain to support Multiversion Concurrency Control (MVCC) in storage layer, enabling high performance storage with MVCC cache

Redesigned Virtual Machine that resolves many design issues in EVM and EOS - performance benchmarked 10x faster than EOS and 200x faster than Ethereum

Everest v1.0 marks a new stage of the IOST blockchain development and incorporates many of the new technologies and systems we have been working on this past year. We’ve worked diligently to introduce significant updates to our technology from our first release — Everest v0.5 in June 2018 — and are very excited to reach this milestone of releasing version 1.0 to the public.