News linked to both this project and an event.
According to an official announcement, the blockchain infrastructure protocol project IOTA has named Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria as the first countries to implement the ADAPT initiative. These three countries were selected through a rigorous evaluation process assessing their political commitment, regulatory readiness, maturity of digital infrastructure, and private-sector engagement. Launched in November 2025, the African Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade (ADAPT) initiative is spearheaded by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat and co-developed with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the World Economic Forum, and the IOTA Foundation. ADAPT aims to build shared digital infrastructure for intra-African trade, covering digital identity, cross-border data exchange, and payment interoperability.
According to official announcements, the blockchain infrastructure protocol project IOTA has completed a major consensus upgrade, migrating the IOTA mainnet from Mysticeti to Starfish. Cross-border trade systems operate across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory regimes; thus, the infrastructure underpinning trade, logistics, and regulatory environments must remain reliable even under unpredictable real-world conditions. As an evolutionary iteration of the consensus engine Mysticeti, Starfish represents a novel prototype of distributed ledger technology that decouples the consensus process from validator synchronization. This design ensures network reliability and stability—even if certain validator nodes experience latency or disconnection—much like a starfish, which can regenerate lost limbs without dying. Starfish’s design goals extend beyond performance enhancement: it aims to reinforce IOTA’s position as a foundational platform for global trade and regulated systems. Starfish recognizes that global trade systems must remain available despite latency, volatility, and partial failures—and with Starfish, IOTA can continue advancing and recovering even amid unstable participation.