Announcing Assembly and the ASMB Token

Your Keys to Open and Decentralized Worlds

Decentralization is opening our world. The ability to program trust has empowered us to finally take back control of our digital ecosystems. The closed, hierarchical systems controlled by centralized institutions are being replaced with open, collaborative networks owned by everyone. Self-governing digital spaces under the ownership of their community are creating new possibilities of participation and value creation for people around the globe. We are moving towards Web3 by transforming the internet as we know it – inviting everyone to become a part of open worlds, built and connected through a decentralized, trustless infrastructure.

We are still at the early stage in this journey to decentralize everything. Transaction costs, scalability, interoperability and centralization are still issues that persist throughout the space. Every scaling solution currently on the market introduces a different set of dilemmas, trade-offs and limitations. We have yet to connect the first billion users to our decentralized economies. The most significant innovations are yet to be built. Mainstream adoption is in sight, but we must address current issues while not forgetting the ideals of decentralization, censorship resistance, permissionless innovation and community ownership that got us to this stage.

Short-term success in the crypto market is based on speculation and hype; long-term success is based on ideals, community and culture. Only the solutions that follow a clearly defined purpose and preserve their values will ultimately prevail.

Our decentralized future is inevitable. The only question is, how do we get there?

 

Today we offer a new path to decentralize our future: Assembly.

Assembly is a permissionless multi-chain network to build, connect and deploy smart contracts. The protocol allows anyone to create their own sharded smart contract chain, with the flexibility to define their parameters, virtual machine (VM) and validation requirements and even customize fee and incentive structures. Every smart contract chain built on Assembly is a fully sharded network, limited only by its own throughput while benefiting from the shared security and trustless interoperability of the global network.

Assembly will be the open network to build and connect open worlds. It will be a flourishing ecosystem of purpose-built smart contract chains and dApps that are able to seamlessly interact through a feeless and highly scalable base layer. The unique technical foundation of Assembly is a launchpad for new innovations in DeFi, NFTs and DAOs that were previously held back by the limitations of blockchain.

The name Assembly stems from its meaning: the action of gathering together as a group for a common purpose. In this case, the purpose is the fully decentralized and scalable execution of smart contracts.

Assembly answers three fundamental questions:

1. How do we connect our open worlds and trustlessly bridge crypto assets across all networks?
2. How do we scale to current levels of Internet applications, without sacrificing decentralization and security?
3. How do we reach mainstream adoption and go from 10 million early adopters to eight billion?

Assembly addresses the limitations of current scaling solutions by using the feeless base layer of IOTA as an immutable trust anchor and as a trustless bridge for feeless interoperability of smart contracts. Through this layered architecture, Assembly becomes a multi-chain network securing and connecting many different kinds of independent smart contract chains. This unique architecture fully parallelizes the execution of smart contracts, enabling the entire network to scale horizontally. The formula is simple: more smart contract chains = more transaction throughput on Assembly.

Instead of limiting transaction throughput to a single blockchain, Assembly opens a new world where purpose-built blockchain networks can be created, secured and connected through a single protocol and shared token infrastructure. Assembly is a network of networks, where assets and data can be freely exchanged across the entire ecosystem. No more trusted bridges, exorbitant fees, long confirmation times, or security risks from hidden multi-sigs. With Assembly, you are in control of your assets and your data and can freely participate in the entire ecosystem.

The novel architecture of Assembly is based on the IOTA Smart Contracts framework. The permissionless network consists of a shared pool of validators which secure smart contract chains and anchor state commits to the IOTA Tangle. For their work, validators are rewarded with staking rewards, transaction fees, or other token incentives defined by the smart contract chains. Misbehavior of validators is provable and can be easily detected, which ultimately leads to stake slashing and the rotation of the validator by the protocol. Anyone can become a validator, requiring only an operational node and a small amount of staked ASMB, the native token of the Assembly network.

Assembly is an ecosystem of limitless opportunities. dApp developers and teams who were previously limited by the costs and throughput capacities of traditional blockchains are empowered to push against the boundaries of innovation. Even seemingly uncontrollable issues such as MEV (Miner Extractable Value) are no longer a problem on the Assembly network. Developers accustomed to writing smart contracts in Solidity and who prefer the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) will enjoy full compatibility with the existing and well-established infrastructure. Assembly is agnostic to the preferred development languages or environments and will support all of the most powerful and versatile smart contract languages.

Assembly’s vision is to fully realize the potential of decentralized technologies and to offer a protocol and a permissionless network capable of mainstream adoption.  In total, 70% of the entire token supply will be distributed to the community’s most dedicated builders, innovators and participants helping Assembly and IOTA to evolve into one of the biggest crypto ecosystems.

Assembly opens a world for everyone to create, shape and build. Some of the unique features include:

• Anyone can deploy their own smart contract chain. There are no limitations to the number of smart contract chains in the Assembly network. Anyone is able to build and launch their own network with Assembly.
• Shared security. Every smart contract chain benefits from the shared security of the entire network. The Main Assembly is responsible for important functions, such as validator selection, rotation and punishment. With the introduction of ZKP and validation proofs on layer 1, the Assembly network will be as secure as the base layer.
• Fast and reliably cheap smart contracts. Transactions confirm quickly with predictably low fees. dApps are able to set competitively low (even zero) fees due to the underlying feeless structure of the IOTA Tangle.
• Trustless and feeless interoperability with atomic composability. Assets and data can be moved across chains and smart contracts without any transaction fees or reduced trust requirements.
• No MEV. Because of the consensus protocol of Assembly, Miner Extractable Value (MEV) is no longer possible. Transaction ordering is randomized and not in the control of validators. Don’t get sandwiched.
• Flexible development environment to build dApps tailored to your needs. Assembly empowers developers to use their preferred language, VM and validation requirements, as well as define execution fees for users and incentives for validators. Assembly takes dApp customization and composability to the next level, empowering builders with the right framework to scale and go mainstream.
• Scalability with the right incentives. Assembly is a sharded smart contract network, where each smart contract chain is limited only by its own scalability and is not hindered by the rest of the network. Every smart contract chain can define its own incentives and fees (potentially even feeless), empowering developers with new possibilities for dApp usability and UX.
• EVM and WebAssembly. Assembly will have full EVM compatibility. This means that all Solidity smart contracts and all innovations built on Ethereum today can be ported over to the Assembly network easily. In addition, Assembly supports WASM, empowering developers to use Rust, Go (TinyGo) and TypeScript for their smart contract development.

ASMB Tokenomics

The ASMB token will be the native token of Assembly to secure, govern and grow the network. Assembly is a permissionless network utilizing a variation of Proof of Stake; as such, the ASMB token plays an essential role in its security and Sybil protection. Securing the Assembly network requires value being locked into it – and put at stake – to guarantee validators do not collude or misbehave otherwise.

The protocol provides the necessary incentives for validators and stakers to secure smart contract chains and the Assembly network, while disincentivizing misbehavior through slashing. The ASMB token is essential to the operation of the Assembly network, and serves three distinct purposes:

1. Staking. Token holders stake their ASMB tokens and either become validators themselves or delegate their stake to a validator. Staked ASMB tokens directly contribute to the security of the Assembly network and are used to secure smart contracts. Stakers are rewarded through staking rewards consisting of newly minted ASMB tokens (as part of the yearly inflation), and the transaction fees or other token incentives collected for executing smart contracts.
2. Slashing. If misbehavior of a validator is detected and validated by the Main Assembly, the stake of the validator may be slashed. The slashed amount depends on the severity of the offense, but could lead to a significant portion of the validators stake to be slashed. Slashed tokens are burned by the network.
3. Governance. Crucial for any decentralized system is the approach to decentralized governance. Since ASMB token holders are the main stakeholders of the Assembly network, they are able to directly influence the direction of the network through its governance protocol. Any ASMB token holder is able to submit new proposals and get other participants to vote on it, with the outcome being fully enforced by the network.

The decentralization of Assembly will not only happen through its sharded architecture but also through the open token distribution. 70% of the entire token supply of Assembly will be reserved for developer incentives, community-governed DAOs and grants. This will be one of the largest token distributions in crypto history, aimed at rewarding participants in the network and empowering the ecosystem to fully own and govern Assembly. More details on the token distribution will follow shortly.

The Assembly network fully leverages and builds upon the token infrastructure provided by IOTA. Assembly will become one of the main drivers of adoption for IOTA and the IOTA token, increasing its utility by becoming an essential part of the ecosystem. As part of the Assembly token distribution, 20% of the initial token supply will be distributed to IOTA token holders over the next two years. This distribution to IOTA holders will help to bootstrap the Assembly network and provide incentives for one of the largest crypto communities to become a part of the ecosystem.

The open distribution of Assembly tokens will start on the IOTA Firefly wallet within the next few weeks. If you want to be part of Assembly and get tokens before the mainnet launch, you only need to stake your IOTA tokens in order to receive ASMB tokens for free.

Start building

The Assembly mainnet will launch in 2022: you can follow the active development on our GitHub repository. With the beta release of IOTA Smart Contracts already live, builders interested in Assembly can already get productive and prepare for the upcoming mainnet release.

More details on funding support and developer incentives will follow very shortly. You can already now learn more about Touchpoint, which will be Assembly’s dedicated builders and startup support program.

Over the coming days we will be publishing a series of articles and resources that will articulate the magic behind Assembly’s technical foundation. If you are interested in starting to build, here are the most important Resources:

• Assembly Wiki
• Documentation
• Youtube Tutorials
• IOTA Smart Contracts Beta release
• IOTA Smart Contracts Whitepaper
• Tokenization Framework specifications

Join the community

Assembly is an ecosystem of new opportunities that can now be realized by its community. Through the open token distribution of 70% of the token supply, Assembly will become a fully community-owned and community-governed project which incentivizes builders, dApps, DAOs and creators of all kinds to be a part of the ecosystem.

With today’s announcement of Assembly, the journey has officially begun. We invite everyone to join us to build and connect open worlds. Let’s decentralize the world.

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