IOTA Goes Fully Decentralised With Major Rebase Upgrade

IOTA’s Rebase upgrade launches May 5, introducing a fully decentralised DPoS consensus, smart contracts at Layer-1, and staking rewards of 10–15% APY for token holders.
The upgrade adds full EVM and Move compatibility, enabling Ethereum-style smart contracts, dApps, and cross-chain functionality with sub-second finality and high throughput.
IOTA shifts from its centralised coordinator model to a validator-run network with 150 permissionless validators, aiming to position itself as a scalable and DeFi-ready platform.

The IOTA Foundation has confirmed its long-awaited Rebase upgrade will go live on May 5, introducing a fully decentralised network architecture, staking functionality, and smart contract support at Layer-1.

The transition replaces IOTA’s current Stardust protocol with a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) model, marking the first time the network will operate with community-run consensus. This means IOTA will now have a validator-based governance model, replacing the coordinator system with 150 permissionless validators.

According to IOTA, this shift enables sub-second finality and throughput exceeding 50,000 transactions per second, a notable step for a network that has often been criticised for centralised control:

“IOTA Rebased would significantly shorten our time to market to introduce programmability and full decentralization to IOTA. We believe that this direction has the best chance of leapfrogging IOTA and creating significant value for its token holders, and ecosystem.”

IOTA

That also means that, for the first time, IOTA holders can receive staking rewards, ranging from 10% to 15% APY, if the documents hold up, funded by inflation and the new fee burn. Validators in the genesis include the IOTA Foundation itself, Luganodes, Stakin, Nansen, and a smattering of early community picks.

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Full EVM Compatibility

The blog post also confirmed that the upgrade will include full EVM compatibility, opening doors to Ethereum-based smart contracts and decentralised applications (dApps). There are some additional features, like cross-chain interoperability and modular infrastructure, which are expected to improve compatibility and flexibility across IOTA’s ecosystem.

Investor sentiment has picked up ahead of the upgrade. The IOTA price is currently trading around US$0.183 (AU$0.29), up more than 8.5% in the past 24 hours.