Meet Assembly 1: Your Key to Open and Decentralized Worlds

Build your world with sharded smart contract chains and connect anywhere

TL;DR:

Assembly will be a decentralized, scalable multi-chain network for smart contracts.
Build and customize your own smart contract chain, with the shared security and interoperability of a global network.
Use the ASMB token to govern the network or earn staking rewards for helping to secure smart contract chains.
Excited about a new smart contract ecosystem? Let's build together. Your entry point into a new world starts here https://assembly.sc

What is Assembly?

Assembly will be a decentralized, scalable multi-chain network for smart contracts to build global ecosystems and accelerate the decentralized revolution. Built and anchored into the feeless base layer of IOTA, Assembly opens a world where smart contracts are able to scale to mainstream adoption, without sacrificing security, interoperability, and composability.

Assembly empowers builders to create and shape interoperable decentralized token economies on a feeless, multi-chain network. Thanks to the flexibility of the Assembly network, Web3 builders are able to use their preferred smart contract language, and virtual machine, and customize fee and reward structures for their dApps without compromising security. As a result, anyone can build a decentralized smart contract application without being limited by issues inherent to the current market, such as cost, scalability, interoperability, and centralization.

There are no restrictions or boundaries in Assembly; anyone can participate. Every network participant can interact with and launch smart contracts. Anyone can delegate their stake to validators and earn staking rewards and fees for securing smart contract chains. Anyone can become a validator, receive a stake, and set up a node to become part of the network.

Extending smart contracts with a decentralized validator marketplace

The Assembly network is the decentralized and permissionless network of the IOTA Smart Contracts framework. Smart contracts are anchored into the IOTA Tangle, making them fully immutable and secure. Assembly, as an extension of this framework, will be a fully decentralized pool of validators that are incentivized to secure and validate smart contract chains. The protocol is permissionless, allowing anyone to deploy smart contract chains or become a validator. The only requirement is to run a node and have a small amount of ASMB tokens to stake as a security deposit.

The Assembly network will host one primary chain, called the Main Assembly, which is responsible for operating the core functions of the network. It is the primary smart contract chain through which validators, stakers, and smart contract developers interact. This will include the Token Contract (the global ledger of ASMB token ownership), Validator Contract (registry of all validators and trust scores), Staking Contract (staker information and staking reward distribution), and the Marketplace Contract (coordination system of the Assembly network connecting validators with smart contract chains). Anyone can become a validator of the Main Assembly, with validators rotating periodically.

The Assembly network provides a fully decentralized validator marketplace where smart contract chains can compete economically. Smart contract chain owners can incentivize validators through unique fee and reward structures. Chain developers can set their smart contract execution fees as low as zero by offsetting transaction costs with different token incentives. These innovations offer builders a powerful toolset to reduce entry barriers and connect the next billion users to decentralized economies.

Sharded smart contract chains

The architecture of the Assembly network is based on IOTA Smart Contracts, which leverage the IOTA network as an immutable trust anchor and as a trustless bridge for feeless interoperability between smart contracts.

The structure of the IOTA distributed ledger allows smart contract chains on the Assembly network to be executed in parallel. Smart contract chains do not impose any limitations or restrictions on other chains. This leads to unprecedented scalability. Assembly will be sharded and can scale horizontally without compromising on security, interoperability, and composability. The feeless nature of the IOTA Tangle will allow anyone to build on Assembly, making it a toolset to revolutionize DLT accessibility and take Web3 mainstream.

Assembly (ASMB) token: Security, governance, and staking

The Assembly network will be secured and governed by the ASMB token. Embedded at the core of the network, the ASMB token is designed to fuel the Assembly ecosystem. The protocol’s objective is to provide the necessary incentives to keep the number of validators and their staked ASMB tokens as high as possible while disincentivizing misbehavior through slashing. The ASMB token serves three essential purposes within the network:

Providing security for the next billion crypto users

The Assembly network will be secured through validators and token holders staking their ASMB tokens. Users can stake their ASMB tokens to any validator, even if they are not interested in running one themselves. Staked ASMB tokens will contribute directly to the security of the Assembly network and are used to secure smart contract chains. Stakers will be rewarded through staking rewards consisting of newly minted ASMB tokens, and a share of the transaction fees or other token incentives collected by validators for executing smart contracts. This staking is not to be confused with IOTA token staking. Read more on the Assembly Wiki here.

Every IOTA token holder will soon be able to stake IOTA tokens and participate in the open token distribution for the ASMB tokens. In total, 20% of the initial token supply of Assembly will be distributed to IOTA stakers over the next two years. The first staking period is scheduled to last for three months and will coincide with the already announced staking for the Shimmer network. IOTA holders will receive two tokens if they participate in the staking period. This will mark the beginning of the Firefly wallet’s journey to become a launchpad for new token economies.

The upcoming update of the Firefly wallet will allow users to stake IOTA tokens and will automatically reward them with Shimmer and Assembly tokens. So if you want to participate, you only need to download the Firefly wallet and use it to stake IOTA tokens.

Securing the network

Malicious behavior in the Assembly network may lead to staked tokens being slashed by the protocol. The current approach revolves around fishermen – honest validators that provide proof that a validator (or a committee of validators) has produced an incorrect state update. In fact, any node in the network can provide proof that a validator, or a committee of validators, has produced an incorrect state update.

This means a chain is secure from misbehavior as long as it has just one honest validator in its committee. Nodes are encouraged to report misbehavior by being rewarded with part of the slashed tokens. Given that smart contracts are deterministic (meaning that the output should always be the same given a set of inputs), proving fraudulent and malicious behavior is almost trivial as state updates are easy to check and verify. Malicious behavior could lead to a significant percentage of the validator's stake being slashed - the precise amount will depend on the severity of the misbehavior.

A token for decentralized governance

Assembly aims to be a truly decentralized network. ASMB token holders will be the network’s main stakeholders. You can use your tokens to participate in Assembly’s governance through Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) that will govern the network and the ongoing improvements to the core protocol. Every token holder may submit new proposals at any time; the proposal will be fully implemented if it gets a majority of the vote, thus democratizing Assembly and fostering innovation at the same time.

ASMB: Fair and open token distribution

The governance function of the ASMB token fairly distributes power into the hands of token holders. With a fair token distribution, the network aims to fuel innovation from Web3 builders and anyone interested in developing solutions on Assembly. Most of the Assembly tokens will flow directly or indirectly into the Assembly and IOTA ecosystem to encourage builders to use the network and launch their Web3 applications.

Close to 70% of the entire ASMB token supply is reserved for developer incentives, community-governed DAOs, grants, and other governance incentives. The most important actors in Assembly will be its community of builders and innovators. As such, most tokens from the initial token distribution are reserved for DAOs and builders, providing unique opportunities for early adopters of Assembly to fully embrace this new ecosystem.

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