A few days ago, I had a phone call with @ kowei1995 Ko Wei and learned that @ iota IOTA has gone through a lot of grudges and relationships in the past 10 years. After listening, I was still unsatisfied and reviewed some materials. While I still haven't forgotten, I would like to share them with everyone. When writing books before, whenever we talked about distributed systems, we had to first mention that they included blockchain and directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), because IOTA invented this DAG mechanism (yes, IOTA is not blockchain) But the road to DAG did encounter some setbacks. It turned out that they had iterated four major versions in the past 10 years. Moreover, from the latest version 3 to the current version 4, there has even been a holy war in the community, known as IOTA Rebased, a showdown between "idealism (sticking to originality)" and "pragmatism (surviving and making money)". Tell me about the situation at that time - the entire community was forced to choose between two options: Option A: IOTA Rebased (Practical) Abandon the original IOTA 2.0 code, directly Fork Sui Move language smart contract, and make adjustments to adapt to IOTA. The advantages are obvious, as Layer 1 smart contracts can be used immediately, with extremely high TPS (50k) and mature technology, allowing for immediate acceptance of large orders like the "Africa Trade Project". The disadvantage is that it is considered as' surrenderism ', abandoning IOTA's unique technological path that has persisted for 7 years. Option B: Continue with the original IOTA 2.0 (Idealist) Continuing to develop the IOTA team (represented by core developer Hans), we have been working on a native consensus without coordinators for many years. In terms of advantages, namely pure originality and truly unique DAG technology, theoretically more in line with IOTA's original vision. Disadvantage prominent - slow. How much longer do we need to develop? I don't know And it is very difficult to implement smart contracts in L1. You should know that Hans is the "god of technology" in the eyes of the IOTA community. Around 2019-2020, the two former tech founders (CfB and Popov) gradually faded out or left, and it was Hans who saved IOTA. PS: The controversy surrounding CfB is also quite high. The Qubic mining pool we talked about last time, the dual spending Monero coin, is CfB's new project. Hans is the main builder of the original IOTA 2.0 theory. Fortunately, in the end, Hans considered the overall situation and expressed regret for not being able to achieve the original vision, but he supported Rebased. This largely quelled the anger of some tech enthusiasts and allowed the community to reunite on the brink of division. So, now IOTA uses a combination of DAG consensus and Sui Move smart contracts (similar to Ethereum using PoS+EVM). DAG is still there, partially preserving the soul of IOTA. But infrastructure such as wallets need to start using Sui compatible wallets. So, after the holy war, realism within the community defeated idealism with a slight advantage. However, pragmatism also has its benefits. It is precisely the tilt towards Sui Move smart contracts that has enabled the IOTA Foundation to gain adoption of IOTA in Africa. For example, they have obtained recognition from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and allowed IOTA to pilot digital trade document (paperless) orders in Kenya and Rwanda, which are backed by billions of dollars in annual trade in the African Free Trade Zone. These systems can also bring some real cost burning and deposit locking to IOTA when anchoring each cargo, document, certificate, and identity. PS: AfCFTA @ AfCFTA still has a high gold content. It benchmarks against the European Union, with 54 out of 55 countries in the African Union joining AfCFTA. IOTA's ability to become an official partner of AfCFTA means that it has received endorsement from governments across Africa. This is much harder and more stable than obtaining cooperation from a private enterprise. Finally, people tend to be emotionally inclined towards idealism and dislike pragmatism. But pragmatism really brings real income and orders, and people will forgive it. A poignant story, fortunately with a good ending.