IOTA: Send NFT christmas postcards to your loved ones – Ecosystem development updates

• IOTA-based DEX Iotabee launches platform to allow IOTA community members to create and send NFT Christmas postcards to their loved ones. 
• The platform leverages several of IOTA’s unique NFT capabilities.

Iotabee, the first decentralized exchange on the IOTA network, has launched a non-fungible token (NFT) platform.

Iotabee announced in a tweet that the platform is especially for the Christmas holiday season. It allows the IOTA community to mint and send out customized NFT Christmas postcards to their loved ones over IOTA’s canary network, Shimmer.

GM #IOTA community,
Will you be interested to sending out an NFT postcard to your loved ones for this Christmas 👀#Shimmer #NFTs pic.twitter.com/4oyh6CEeNW

— Iotabee (@iotabee) December 19, 2022

The project is one of the latest arrivals on the nascent NFT ecosystem of the IOTA blockchain. However, it already leverages some of the very unique features that NFTs on IOTA have.

The NFT postcards cost only 1 SMR token to create and send. Minting is also free while the postcard will live forever on the immutable Shimmer network layer 2 blockchain.

These perks are only some of the selling points of IOTA NFTs. Dominik Scheiner, the co-founder and chairman of the IOTA Foundation, noted during an interview with CryptoCoinShow that IOTA NFTs have three main layers.

The first is free minting for holders of IOTA tokens. The only payment involved in creating IOTA NFTs is for storage space on the blockchain. Similarly, IOTA couples NFTs with their on-chain data. This allows IOTA NFTs to store their metadata on the blockchain and not on NPFS.

Meanwhile, the third layer he noted was NFT wallets. With the feature, one NFT can own multiple other NFTs. A use case for this is for gaming NFTs where the main in-game characters can own other purchasable assets or accessories as NFTs too.

Shimmer Network has IOTA ecosystem progressing rapidly

The IOTA only launched these NFT capabilities with the launch of Shimmer network last month. Shimmer network is a separate layer 1 network that has similarities with Polkadot’s Kasuma. Its launch has introduced tokenization to IOTA. It also extends IOTA’s Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) with an execution layer.

Scheiner explained during his interview with CryptoCoinShow that this means that IOTA now supports EVM-compatible smart contracts. With this capability, IOTA has seen its decentralized applications ecosystem, which was non-existent before, come alive.

“Shimmer takes the good things of IOTA and adds new capabilities,” Scheiner said.

ICYMI: We interviewed @DomSchiener Chairman of @iota, about the launch of their canary Network @shimmernet, a layer 1 for launching #DeFi dApps, #NFTs, and more.

You don’t want to miss this interview & launch!https://t.co/qdV3woaqqW

— Crypto Coin Show (@CryptoCoinShow) December 18, 2022

More than 70 dApps are already building on IOTA including several DeFi platforms and stablecoins, he added. He also revealed that IOTA has also launched initiatives to incentivize projects including a dedicated support team called TouchPoint and a grants program.

EVM projects can also come over to IOTA now through a bridging partnership the network signed with Multichain.