It's been some time after my last post about IOTA, and a lot has happened since then!
For all that don't know what IOTA is: It is a cryptocurrency using a tangle instead of a blockchain! This means every transaction thats getting broadcasted confirms to other transactions. What is so breathtaking about IOTA? Iota has no transaction fees. Yes, you read right: You pay nothing to broadcast a transaction!
IOTA's birthday: The big announcement
On Oct. 21st, David Sønstebø, founder of IOTA, published the anniversary compendium (https://medium.com/iotatangle/the-anniversary-compendium-18cd74d6abd3#.jc8iw1mim). With the post the IOTA foundation (de facto the public head behind IOTA) released the node version 1.1, ending a 4 week period in which no transactions were possible and the network was down. This happened because significant updates were taken to improve the IOTA network:
-Transactions and addresses are no longer limited to the previous limit of 3812798742493 iota.
-There is a new signature schema which compresses the different security Levels into one. This is the reason why everyone that already had IOTA before 1.1 have to claim these again (for more informations read below).
-The API of IRI itself has been limited to 14 API calls (https://iota.readme.io/docs)
-Multi-signature is live and working
...and much more! Besides, 2 new foundation members have been announced. Gianluigi Davassi and Per Lind are joining the team. Gianluigi has been a backend engineer for N26, a company backend by famous investor Peter Thiel, while Per Lind has been head of marketing at Bang & Olufsen and achieving success at companies like IBM and ResponseTek.
What happened in addition?
Adding to the birthday news, the IOTA community has been working relentlessly on amazing things:
-There will soon be a IOTA wallet for android and iOS: http://iotawallet.info
-There is a new support page for IOTA: Iotasupport (www.iotasupport.com). the site aims at helping new investors to find their way into the IOTA world, providing news, starter tutorials and advice!
-There is a new IOTA blog: http://www.tangleblog.com/#home
I have been holding IOTA tokens before version 1.1! What do i have to do?
This question is easily answered! Because of the new signing scheme introduced with version 1.1, everyone has to claim their IOTA again. Simply go to http://forum.iotatoken.com/t/iota-transition-period-what-you-need-to-do/984 and follow the steps tehre. If you need help or assistance, check out this guide from iotasupport that explains everything in detail: http://iotasupport.com/claimingyouriota.shtml