IOTA Market Update: Pollen testnet v0.2.4 updates fail to stop bearish momentum

The IOTA Foundation has recently announced a new version of the Pollen testnet - v0.2.4, which includes many network improvements and brings IOTA closer to complete decentralization. The update has fixed a “race condition” in the context of “messages db” - an error that occurs when two or more operations happen simultaneously. The race condition also prevented the elimination of entries from missing messages even though they had been received from other areas within the mainnet network.  

In the new upgrade, IOTA has improved APIs and the Tangle BadgerDB interaction by adding end-point “value-tips.” The update also includes integrating the decentralized random number generator (dRNG) to the mainnet for the first time. The IOTA team members have recently tested the dRNG module to great success. 

This module's integration marks an essential step as it enables easy resolution of conflicting transactions, which is allowed by using dRNG votes to divide them. This, in turn, ensures that the consensus model is more immune to attacks from external forces. The IOTA Foundation wrote:

A dRNG can be implemented in very different ways, for instance, by leveraging on cryptographic primitives such as verifiable secret sharing and threshold signatures, by using cryptographic sortition or also with verifiable delay functions. After reviewing some existing solutions, we decided to use a variant of the drand protocol, originally developed within the DEDIS organization, and as of December 2019, is now under the drand organization. This protocol has been already used by other projects such as The League of Entropy.

IOT/USD daily chart

These updates have failed to generate any bullish momentum for IOT/USD. IOT/USD bulls had previously failed at the $0.2874 resistance line. The price has since charted three consecutive bearish days, during which the price dropped to $0.273. Three technical indicators suggest that further price drops can be expected:

• The RSI is trending next to the oversold zone.
• The SMA 50 is on the verge of crossing over the SMA 20, to chart a bearish cross pattern.
• The MACD shows sustained bearish momentum.

All these show that IOT/USD has more downside potential. The price can drop down to the $0.263 support level. If this level doesn’t hold firm, IOT/USD can potentially drop down below $0.24.

Key levels