IOTA Consensus

Building trust: How IOTA ensures security and reliability for your solutions

Mainnet: Mysticeti (Live)

Testnet: Starfish (Next)

Mainnet: Mysticeti (Live)

Testnet: Starfish (Next)

Mysticeti secures Mainnet today. Starfish is coming to Testnet to improve robustness under real-world network conditions.

A decentralized consensus you can build on

Low Latency, High Throughput and Fast Finality

IOTA’s delegated Proof-of-Stake with independent validators prevents double-spending and enhances transaction reliability. Stakers can indirectly validate by delegating stake to a trusted validator, increasing the commitment to consensus across the network.

Key Features

Low latency

quick confirmations through efficient consensus progress

High throughput

scalable parallel processing

Fast finality

quick irreversible confirmation

Energy efficient

BFT consensus without PoW compute costs

Secure & decentralized

honest-majority validator security model

Mysticeti

Current Mainnet consensus protocol

Mysticeti is a BFT consensus protocol optimized for low latency and high throughput, using a DAG structure to enable parallel block production with strong security guarantees.

Parallel block proposals

multiple validators propose simultaneously to maximize bandwidth and improve censorship resistance

Optimized voting

parallel certification reduces median and tail latency

Three-round finality

blocks finalize in three rounds of communication

Fault tolerance

resilient even if some validators are offline or faulty

Resistant Against External Threats

Best-in class security measures prevent ledger manipulation and attempts to disrupt the network

Transaction Authentication

Authentication features provide security against unauthorized access to on-chain data.

Checkpoint Verification

Checkpoints ensure accuracy with cryptographic hashes and validator signatures.

Cryptography in Smart Contracts

Cryptography keeps your smart contract transactions secure.

Starfish on Testnet.
Why it’s next?

Next-generation consensus improvements focused on robustness under adverse network conditions

In challenging conditions (partial connectivity, unstable routing, or adversarial timing), propagation and latency can degrade. Starfish is designed to keep consensus progress predictable and robust in those environments.

On Testnet - Starfish improvements

Robust under real-world network conditions

Starfish keeps IOTA moving through rough sea

Trade doesn’t pause for storms or port delays. Starfish is the next consensus upgrade that helps IOTA keep progressing when parts of the network slow down, while recovery happens in parallel.

Built for real adoption

The kind of steady operation trade infrastructure needs.

Operations continue

Temporary delays don’t freeze the whole network.

Designed for disruption

Doesn’t hinge on every participant moving at the same pace.

Early access on testnet

Starfish comes to testnet first.

Starfish Upgrade

Next Testnet Consensus

Starfish is a BFT protocol inspired by Mysticeti, built to address observed robustness limitations while retaining high throughput and fast finality.