What is Chrysalis?

The name "Chrysalis" represents a fundamental, natural transformation into a mature design. A fitting name for the upcoming major upgrade where IOTA will implement significant improvements in performance, stability, reliability and security. It will also replace some exotic aspects (e.g., Winternitz One-Time Signature) of the protocol with established standards, and provide a wide range of new tools for developers, enterprises, and exchanges.

Chrysalis is the most comprehensive upgrade in the history of IOTA. It affects all aspects of the protocol, libraries, wallets, and software implementations developed by the IOTA Foundation. It truly marks a "new era" for IOTA by becoming production-ready and providing a base for upcoming features such as smart contracts and digital assets (tokenization). With these features, the community will be able to start many innovative startups, such as scalable automated market-makers, feeless decentralized financial platforms, or applications with powerful oracles and smart contracts.

The Chrysalis update already includes many aspects required for the removal of the coordinator. Many groundbreaking changes are anticipated with the upgrade, so only a few adjustments are needed for the actual Coordicide. This will allow enterprises, developers, exchanges, custodians and other partners to also begin implementing their solutions with the launch of Chrysalis.