Introducing Bloom: Former Firefly Team to Launch New Wallet

Following on from our recent launch of ShimmerEVM, we are thrilled to announce the upcoming release of Bloom, an innovative new wallet developed by the former Firefly team.

Bloom is a beautifully-designed, user-centric desktop wallet with first-class security. Bloom will be implementing a variety of new features including full EVM support, and later dApp connections with WalletConnect.

This upcoming wallet represents a big step forward for $IOTA ecosystem users, launching with both Shimmer and ShimmerEVM in the same application. Importantly, users will be able to seamlessly transfer assets back and forth between Shimmer and Shimmer EVM without any outside third-party tooling. Over time, Bloom will support the entirety of the $IOTA ecosystem, integrating both Shimmer and $IOTA networks in a single app experience.

Building on a Solid Foundation

Bloom wallet continues the team’s ethos of simplifying the core Web3 wallet experience. Building on top of Firefly's solid foundation, Bloom aims to create the most intuitive, secure and enjoyable wallet on the market.

Leading the talented Bloom team are former Firefly veterans Charlie Varley and Nicole O’Brien, with developers David de Troch, Jean Ribeiro, Mark Nardi and Matthew Maxwell. Independent UX Consultation is supplied by Digital Zen, led by Andrew Brough, former Director of UX and Design at $IOTA Foundation.

Their expertise was instrumental in Firefly's success, and they will no doubt bring their unique talents to spearheading wallet innovation with Bloom.

Enabling Growth Through Open Source

In the true spirit of open source software development, this innovative fork exemplifies the power of open source collaboration. Firefly is built under an Apache 2.0 licence, enabling the Bloom team to freely access and build upon the codebase.

The open-source ethos will continue, with Bloom planning to release additional contributions under a different license. We look forward to seeing what the community creates alongside Firefly and Bloom.

Building toward $IOTA 2.0 and Shimmer EVM

We view this as an incredibly positive development for $IOTA Foundation, the Bloom team, and the broader crypto community in the pursuit of $IOTA 2.0. Bloom will stimulate collaboration, healthy competition and growth across the entire ecosystem.

In the meantime, development will continue on Firefly alongside Bloom. Firefly’s focus shifts to supporting the core protocol only, providing a testing ground for new protocol upgrades, including $IOTA 2.0. Whereas Bloom presents an opportunity to pursue user-facing features and cutting-edge advancements that benefit the entire Web3 ecosystem.

We wish the Bloom team great success and will be cheering them on as they blossom as an independent entity.

You can follow Bloom's progress on X (Twitter) and join the Bloom community on Discord. They will be releasing more information over the coming days. Stay tuned.