What is IOST, and why does Asia still talk about it?

The short answer

IOST is a public blockchain built for speed, and IOST is also the name of its token. The mainnet went live on 25 February 2019 and still produces a block every half second. Developers write smart contracts in JavaScript, and users pay for transactions by locking tokens rather than spending them. The issuer is the IOS Foundation, registered in Singapore. In March 2025 the project added a second home for its token: a BEP-20 version on BNB Chain, plus a Layer 2 network, under a plan called IOST 3.0.

That is the technical answer. The more interesting answer is about people. IOST was never a top-tier coin in the West, yet it became a familiar name in Japan, where Coincheck listed it in 2020, and in Korea, where Upbit has traded it against the won since 2018. It even picked up a nickname in Thailand. This guide covers the name, the token’s jobs, the history, the people behind it and what changed with 3.0. If you mostly care about buying, our step-by-step buying guide is the faster route.

What the name means

IOST stands for Internet of Services Token. The foundation calls itself the Internet of Services Foundation, and the original pitch was simple: build a public blockchain fast enough for real online services, from games to e-commerce, without the slow and expensive transactions that troubled early Ethereum. The 2018 whitepaper promised throughput of up to 100,000 transactions per second, a new consensus design called Proof of Believability and sharding to split the work across many groups of nodes.

People often mix the name up with the Internet of Things, partly because the letters are so close. IOST has no special link to smart devices or sensors. The “services” in the name means apps and platforms that run on the chain. You will also see IOST confused with similarly named tokens, such as IOTA or IoTeX. These are separate projects with separate networks, so if a wallet or exchange offers you something that looks like IOST, check the ticker and the network before you buy or send.

How close did IOST get to the original vision? Partly. The half-second blocks are real, and the chain has kept producing them for years. The 100,000 TPS figure was never reached on mainnet, and the sharding design was not shipped as described. We look at those numbers honestly on our IOST technology page, including how Proof of Believability works in practice.

What the IOST token does

On the original chain, IOST is less a fee token and more a resource key. You do not pay a few cents per transfer the way you would on many chains. Instead you pledge IOST and receive gas, which refills every day. You buy RAM, the on-chain storage contracts and balances use, with IOST. You vote for block producers with IOST. And creating a new account requires an existing account to lock IOST on its behalf. On BNB Chain, the BEP-20 version is mostly used for trading and for the StakeDrop program.

That design has a practical upside for small users. Because every account starts with about 10 IOST pledged for gas, it can make roughly a hundred ordinary transfers a day without spending anything. The flip side is that tokens locked for gas or RAM have no voting power and take time to free up. For the full mechanics of voting and rewards, see the IOST staking guide. Note one thing IOST cannot do: it cannot be mined. There is no proof-of-work, so any “IOST mining” app is a red flag.

IOST history, from 2018 to v4.0.0

IOST’s timeline is short by blockchain standards but packed. It did not run a public ICO; the 2018 sale went to private and institutional buyers, and the ERC-20 token began trading in January 2018, right as the altcoin bubble peaked. Its all-time high came within days. The mainnet followed a year later, the Japanese and Korean listings gave it a second life, and IOST 3.0 opened a new chapter in 2025.

1. Jan 2018Private sale and first tradingThe ERC-20 token lists around 16 January; the all-time high of about $0.13 follows on 23 January.
2. 25 Feb 2019Mainnet “Olympus” goes liveERC-20 IOST is swapped for native mainnet IOST.
3. 8 Sep 2020Coincheck listingThe first Japanese exchange to list IOST.
4. 2021Bull run and Japan pushOKCoin Japan lists IOST on 15 September; RIZIN NFT marketplace and DON airdrops follow.
5. 21 Oct 2024PayFi and DePIN proposalThe foundation proposes the upgrade that becomes IOST 3.0.
6. 12–13 Jan 2025Second vote passesA day later, DAXA and Upbit issue a caution notice over the new supply.
7. 8 Mar 2025IOST 3.0 launchBEP-20 token contract, Layer 2 on BNB Chain and airdrop rules; snapshot on 15 March.
8. Oct 2026go-iost v4.0.0Mandatory L1 upgrade released on 14 October; exchanges briefly pause deposits and withdrawals.

A 2018-generation chain

IOST belongs to the wave of fast, vote-based chains born in the 2018 bull market, alongside EOS and TRON. Many of its design ideas, from named accounts to RAM, come from that era.

A few chapters deserve more color. The 2021 run was IOST’s best year after the launch hype: the price rose about sixteenfold between January and April, helped by the broad market and by its new Japanese audience. December 2023 brought a different kind of attention, when inscription spam congested the chain and the developers shipped emergency releases that prioritized normal transfers. In January 2024 the foundation joined the Cyberport incubation program in Hong Kong. Then came the long debate over IOST 3.0, which we cover in detail in our IOST 3.0 explainer. For the price side of this history, our IOST price page has the live chart and the key highs and lows.

Who built IOST

According to project materials and secondary sources such as exchange research pages, IOST was co-founded by Jimmy Zhong, who served as CEO, together with Terrence Wang, Ray Xiao, Justin Li, Sa Wang and Kevin Tan. We could not confirm the list on an official team page, because the project no longer publishes one, so treat it as the commonly reported version. Some aggregators even garble the names, which is another reason to read founder claims carefully.

The current face of the project is Blake Jeong, introduced as Co-CEO in 2024 and as CEO in official posts from 2025 onward. The legal entity is the IOS Foundation Ltd. in Singapore. Early backers named in secondary sources include HongShan, formerly Sequoia China, and Matrix Partners China, and ICO trackers put the private sale of late 2017 or early 2018 at roughly $35 million, although sources disagree on the exact price per token and on total funding. In June 2025 the foundation announced a $21 million strategic round led by DWF Labs, Presto and Rollman Management Group to fund its real-world asset plans.

The whitepaper and the roadmap

The original technical whitepaper from 2018 is still the best description of what IOST set out to build. You can read it in the iost-official Documents repository on GitHub. It describes Proof of Believability, a reputation token called Servi, the Efficient Distributed Sharding design and the 100,000 TPS target. The whitepaper link on iost.io leads to an error page, so do not be surprised if you cannot find it there. For the current era, the IOST 3.0 documentation plays the role of a whitepaper.

The official framing splits the project into three phases: IOST 1.0 from 2018 with the original chain, IOST 2.0 from 2022 focused on ecosystem growth, and IOST 3.0 from 2025 with the Layer 2, real-world assets, payments and digital identity. The roadmap targets have been ambitious. The 2024 proposal spoke of $200 million in monthly transaction volume and more than $1 billion of tokenized real-world assets by the end of 2025. We found no on-chain evidence that those targets were met, and the website’s headline figures do not match the official explorer, which counts closer to 1.2 million accounts in total. Read roadmap numbers as plans, not results.

Want some IOST in your wallet?

If your country has a regulated exchange with an IOST market, use it. If not, many readers start by buying crypto with a card, for example on CEX.IO, which has run since 2013, and then move it to an exchange that lists IOST. CEX.IO itself does not list IOST and does not serve Japan.

Open account

Why Japan and Korea took to IOST, and what Thailand calls it

Japan is IOST’s emotional home. Coincheck listed it on 8 September 2020, when Japanese exchanges offered only a small set of approved coins, so the listing gave domestic retail investors easy access to a fast-chain altcoin with a low unit price. OKCoin Japan, now OKJ, listed it a year later, and the FSA register shows four registered exchanges handling it. The foundation backed that with local work: Japan Blockchain Association membership, university classes, the RIZIN FIGHTING COLLECTION NFT marketplace and community events in Tokyo. Our Japan page has the exchange list and the tax rules.

Big in Japan

In a 2025 interview the IOST CEO called Japan the project’s largest community and Korea its second-largest market.

Korea is the trading engine. Upbit opened its KRW-IOST market on 25 July 2018, before the mainnet even launched, and added a BTC market later that year. Bithumb and Coinone also trade it. The weight of Korean demand shows up on-chain: the custody account linked to Dunamu, Upbit’s operator, holds about 30% of all native IOST. Korean exchanges also shaped the 3.0 story, because the DAXA caution of January 2025 was the first big market reaction to the new supply. See our South Korea guide for details.

Thailand added something no whitepaper could: a nickname. Some Thai investors jokingly call IOST เหรียญยาย, which roughly means “grandma coin”, and Thai users search for the phrase surprisingly often. We could not find a reliable source for where the name comes from. Common guesses say it is because IOST has been on Bitkub for a long time, or because the price moves slowly, but those are guesses. Our Thailand page covers Bitkub’s IOST/THB market and local rules.

What IOST looks like after 3.0

IOST in its 3.0 form is two things at once. The original chain still runs, with 17 block producers, half-second blocks and the mandatory go-iost v4.0.0 upgrade that all nodes installed in October 2026. Most Japanese and Korean exchanges still credit this native IOST. Alongside it, the token now trades heavily as a BEP-20 token on BNB Chain, and the foundation runs an OP Stack Layer 2 with chain ID 182 that has seen almost no user activity so far. The supply has grown a lot along the way, which our tokenomics page breaks down.

If you want to see the chain for yourself, the official IOSTSCAN explorer shows blocks, producers and accounts, and our own IOST explorer tool lets you look up any transaction hash or account name. For what was built on top of the network over the years, from games to DeFi, see the IOST DApps page.