$SMR is the native token of the Shimmer network, the official incentivized staging network of the IOTA distributed ledger technology (DLT). It serves as the network's economic backbone, facilitating value transactions and interactions within the Shimmer ecosystem. Users of Shimmer use the $SMR token to launch new DeFi applications, DEXs, NFT, DAOs, and other dApps. It is also used to reward participation by the community in the Shimmer network, in the form of freshly minted SMR tokens.

What is IOTA?

The IOTA DLT – known as "The Tangle" – goes beyond blockchain by providing scalable and feeless DLT, with the goal of being the most reliable DLT infrastructure for Web3 applications and digital economies. IOTA uses its unique open-source technology to solve three fundamental problems with blockchain: high fees, scaling and centralization, and by avoiding the energy-intensive miners common to traditional blockchains, IOTA promotes itself as a green alternative in the crypto market.

IOTA currently relies on an additional security feature issuing milestone called "the coordinator"; once this is removed, and the network becomes fully decentralized, both IOTA and Shimmer will be secured by the Multiverse consensus. The Shimmer network helps to accelerate the transition to a fully decentralized, permissionless, and feeless network.

Visit www.iota.org for more information.

What is Shimmer?

Shimmer is the official validation network, helping to properly test and harden any new feature and the leaderless Fast Probabilistic Consensus mechanism. Shimmer is a rapid innovation playground with short development cycles, allowing developers to build applications and use features that are not yet available on the IOTA mainnet, before moving their applications onto the main IOTA network (though it is envisioned that Shimmer will evolve into its own community-governed network after the launch of IOTA 2.0, and several projects will choose to remain on Shimmer).

Several new updates are developed by IOTA, each one bringing it closer to reaching its goal of being the most scalable, affordable, and efficient DLT network. But, given that these updates potentially open the door to bugs and other vulnerabilities, each one needs to be thoroughly tested before they are released on the IOTA mainnet.

The Shimmer network is where updates are put to the test. It receives all features earlier than the IOTA mainnet and makes these features available for use, testing, and adoption before they are available on the IOTA mainnet.

Shimmer is designed as a development network, an ambitious ecosystem that mirrors the IOTA network with all of its applications and frameworks, use-cases, and economy, and which users can explore, test, build on – and even attack. To incentivize users, Shimmer is also host to its own token economy (SMR).

What is the Shimmer token ($SMR)?

Through its own token economy, Shimmer offers opportunities for users to put the Shimmer network thoroughly to the test. Before its launch, the Shimmer token is awarded to anyone actively staking the IOTA token during a period of three months. This makes Shimmer the first DLT project to fairly distribute its entire token supply on IOTA, with more to follow. During the staking event prior to the network launch, users are rewarded with one $SMR every 10 seconds for each staked MIOTA. Once the Shimmer network has been launched, users can stake Shimmer tokens to help secure the network and get rewarded with even more Shimmer tokens.

The $SMR token also plays an important role in encouraging attackers to put the Shimmer network to the test and find certain loopholes or attack vectors.

Overall, the Shimmer token has the following utility:

- Staking rewards: Users are awarded Shimmer tokens when they stake on the Shimmer network, as well as receive Mana (the IOTA reward mechanism that promotes users' transactions and messages, voting rights, etc., which secures the network. By staking, earning, and delegating $SMR tokens, users contribute to the growth of the Shimmer network. - Access to innovations: Using the $SMR token fast-tracks users to the latest innovations of IOTA, giving them an early advantage in developing dApps and participating in the ecosystem. - New yield opportunities: Any new economy that wants to thrive needs participating users. Token holders will be able to benefit from a vast ecosystem of new DeFi, NFT, and GameFi dApps. The token utility of Shimmer will be expanded with the growth of the ecosystem.

Beyond being a test laboratory for innovations before integration with the IOTA mainnet, Shimmer is designed to evolve into its own ecosystem and community. The $SMR token is an integral part of that evolution.