IOTA Co-Founder Dominik Schiener Outlines Vision to Bring the $35 Trillion Global Trade Economy Onchain

• IOTA has increased real-world integration with live trade systems in Kenya and the UK, and talks are active in ASEAN countries.
• Deflationary fees, staking, and locked deposits make the IOTA token valuable as more trade volume is conducted on the public mainnet.

IOTA has announced a detailed plan to bridge the entirety of the $35 trillion global trade economy to public blockchains with regulated, technology-neutral, and production-ready infrastructure. According to IOTA co-founder Dominik Schiener, the project’s approach focuses on tokenized assets, digital identities, and data integrity rather than the speculative aspects of crypto. This strategy, according to the IOTA Foundation, is already live across markets in Africa and Europe, and is expanding into Asia.

IOTA’s network is now fully integrated with the Trade Worldwide Information Network (TWIN), a production-grade system operating on the IOTA Mainnet. It digitizes documents and secures trade data in real time. TWIN is currently live in Kenya, starting with flower exports and expanding to all commodities in 2026, as we reported. In the UK, over 2,000 poultry consignments between Poland and Britain have been recorded on the IOTA network, streamlining regulatory and customs procedures.

https://t.co/wcpHOz85mP

— Dominik Schiener (@DomSchiener) January 22, 2026

The IOTA token functions as a utility asset within this system. Every shipment creates around 26 transactions, and just 1% of the global trade market would generate over 650 million transactions yearly.

IOTA Gains Ground in Africa and Eyes Expansion into ASEAN Region

The ADAPT initiative is IOTA’s most ambitious deployment to date. Built in partnership with the AfCFTA Secretariat, the Tony Blair Institute, and the World Economic Forum, ADAPT aims to digitize trade infrastructure for 1.5 billion people in Africa by 2035. Border clearance times are expected to drop from 14 days to hours, while cross-border payment fees could drop by over 50%.

As CNF described earlier, IOTA has rolled out RealFi solutions on its mainnet, such as the tokenization of EV chargers via its collaboration with Bolt Earth. The ecosystem is also growing, with applications like Salus (for mineral tokenization), Orobo (digital product passports), and ObjectID (verification for physical goods) now live.

Karen O’Brien, CMO at IOTA, commented, “Crypto doesn’t win by speculation; it wins by solving real economic problems.”

She added that IOTA’s focus on trade, identity, and tokenized assets is building a trust layer that governments actually use.

Meanwhile, adoption across Southeast Asia is beginning to accelerate. According to Salima, IOTA’s negotiations with several ASEAN countries are entering advanced stages. Regulatory frameworks are being finalized, with some nations already preparing formal agreements. Although progress is fragmented, momentum is building.

Salima also pointed out that the collective 650 million inhabitants of the region and developed tokenization law make ASEAN an ideal target of onchain trade infrastructure.

At the network level, IOTA has kept on improving its architecture towards long term scalability and security. In the transition to a Move-based Layer 1 in 2025, as described by CNF, it also implemented deflationary tokenomics, burning fees on all transactions, and token deposits are required to store digital assets.

Combined with an 11% APY staking reward and enterprise accumulation, this structure is designed to reinforce $IOTA’s long-term utility as adoption scales. However, the IOTA price has continued to move in the red zone after failing to breach the resistance at $0.090. At press time, the IOTA price was trading at $0.08901 a 2.3% decline.

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