Read the full announcement blog post from IOHK here and check out the IELE testnet here.

We are excited to announce the IOHK launch of the second Cardano testnet, which is for the IELE virtual machine (VM) and follows the recent launch of the KEVM testnet. The technology is not only an important step on the Cardano roadmap, but also for the industry – in offering robust and reliable financial infrastructure. Developers now have the opportunity to play around with the smart contracts technology that will eventually be offered as part of Cardano, and to provide their feedback, which we look forward to receiving over the coming months.

Smart contracts are software programs that are immutably stored on the blockchain. They are executed by virtual machines and store their data in that same immutable infrastructure. Smart contracts offer a significant benefit to many businesses looking to optimize their operations. Many industries – including automotive, supply chain, real estate and healthcare – are investing in research to understand how this technology can make their businesses more competitive.

IELE is a virtual machine, with its attendant low level language, designed to execute smart contracts on the Cardano blockchain. It has been developed by Runtime Verification in partnership with IOHK who provided funding for the project.

The IELE language and its VM is completed. It is now in the process of being integrated into Cardano, which will provide a blockchain to store and retrieve data. While the integration is taking place, developers have the opportunity to use the IELE VM along with the Mallet and Remix Tools to create and execute smart contracts on the IOHK testnet site.

You can also start getting a feel for the capabilities of both IELE and its VM – and even learn to write IELE code directly!

Additional Video Content:

In this video, IOHK Director of Education Lars Brunjes explains the DAO Attack on Ethereum and shows that the same attack does not work in IELE, which has been designed from the ground up with security in mind.

In this video, Grigore Rosu, a professor in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and CEO of his startup Runtime Verification, describes the process and research that he had been working with IOHK since June 2017 to develop new technology based on formal semantics for Cardano, including a new virtual machine.

In this video, IOHK Director of Education Lars Brunjes discusses the IELE-smart contract language, compile a simple Solidity contract to IELE, optimize the resulting IELE by hand and then deploy and test the contract, all using the Mallet command-line tool.