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On Thursday, the Iota Foundation, which oversees developments in the namesake Internet-of-Things transactions blockchain (IOTA), announced that it had been selected as one of five contractors by the European Commission to develop blockchain and distributed ledger technology in the region. According to the announcement, phase 2A aims to advance European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, or EBSI, in five areas:

  1. It will investigate the feasibility of sharding as to exponentially scale the Iota network on EBSI.
  2. Develop an approval weight consensus mechanism that will be highly flexible and allow both permissionless and permissioned use cases.
  3. Ensure any Iota-based solution for cross-border transfers abides by EBSI governance structures and any regulatory requirements from EU member states.
  4. Integrate its GDPR-compliant identity solution with the new framework for EU digital identity on EBSI.
  5. Prepare on and off-chain bridges to other protocols in and outside EBSI, including support for Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Based on the results of the phase 2A development over the next six months, a minimum of three out of five contractors will be chosen to advance to the next stage, where the European Commission will field-test the capabilities of the newly developed infrastructure and applications. Last September, Iota was one of seven enterprises chosen to support the early-stage innovation of the said European blockchain venture. With its signature decentralized acrylic graphs, the Iota blockchain is known for very little energy consumption and no gas fees. Previously, Assembly, a decentralized layer one smart contract network built within the Iota ecosystem, announced a $100 million capital raise from private investors while receiving praise from Dominik Schiener, Iota Foundation’s co-founder and chairman.