A Cauldron of Colors
The upcoming Chrysalis implementation of IOTA will enable numerous technical improvements. Cleaner code libraries leading to easier developer contributions, faster and more accurate transaction finality leading to “production readiness”, reusable addresses for human ease-of-use, and much more. We’ve covered all of the details of Chrysalis in a previous article.
These glitzy new features … “White Flag Approach” … “Atomic Transactions” … are highly anticipated in IOTA 1.5. However, in keeping with the core ethos of IOTA, let’s not overlook what these things mean to the real world. Businesses, governments, and people use this stuff.
One such real world application enabled by Chrysalis is the introduction of “colored coins” for the first time on top of IOTA.
The term “colored coin” first came about to describe a way in which users could transfer not only Bitcoins on the Bitcoin blockchain, but transfer physical-world digitized assets layered on top of Bitcoins on the blockchain. It’s a method that utilizes additional metadata scripted into the transaction itself.
Coloring of coins can be thought of as adding a fourth layer to the network:
