Global trade has had some serious pain points, many of which were baked into the system for decades. The TWIN Foundation solves this by introducing an open-source digital infrastructure powered by IOTA’s feeless distributed ledger. The IOTA Foundation joined forces with five heavyweight partners, TradeMark Africa, the World Economic Forum, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation, and the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade, to launch the TWIN Foundation. This initiative, unveiled on May 8 during the AfCFTA Digital Trade Forum in Lusaka, Zambia, aims to completely rewire the way global trade works by building an open, decentralized infrastructure that anyone can access. In a post on X today, the IOTA team revealed that TWIN already has over 54 decentralized validators and is expanding steadily. They shared a video featuring the founding partners speaking about what they’ve created. Frank Matsaert, Global Lead of Trade and Infrastructure at the Tony Blair Institute and a TWIN Board Member, emphasized, “First of all, it’s Open Access. It’s not owned by anyone, no commercial interest, it’s independent, transparent, secure.” Echoing this, Tim Stekkinger from the World Economic Forum added, There have been commercial attempts before, but they failed. We believe where they failed, we can succeed, because unlike early initiatives driven by private sector owners, a system like this needs neutral, impartial conditions to thrive. And they’re right, the old system was a mess. Trade was still trapped in the dark ages of paper documents, fax machines, and closed-off databases that couldn’t talk to each other. That meant endless delays for verification, repetitive data entry, and far too much human error. Customs processes, licensing, and clearance procedures varied so much between countries that goods could spend weeks collecting dust in ports, racking up costs and driving prices higher. To make matters worse, governments, shippers, and buyers often had to make decisions based on outdated or incomplete data. This is the outdated, fragmented system TWIN is stepping in to dismantle. Back in July, IOTA rolled out an updated whitepaper for TWIN, and it’s packed with some seriously impactful upgrades. At the heart of TWIN is its use of digital identities and tamper-evident document trails, which is a big deal for global logistics. This new protocol can bridge the gap between different data standards used around the world, think GS1 and EPCIS 2.0, so information can move smoothly and consistently through the entire supply chain. On top of that, TWIN uses IOTA’s decentralized trust mechanism, which means companies can instantly verify claims like certifications or operational histories without relying on slow, paper-based checks. Governance isn’t left out. TWIN is run by a council that brings together the IOTA Foundation, global trade organizations, and government bodies. They vote on amendments and protocol updates, keeping everything in sync and moving forward. IOTA’s Network Performance Crypto News Flash has reported that the IOTA network itself just hit its 100-day milestone since upgrading its Mainnet, showing rock-solid stability and steady growth. In that time, it’s processed about 170 million transactions, rolled out 300 new smart contract packages, and hit a peak of 4,734 TPS over a 30-day period. The real kicker? In May, IOTA launched the Rebased Protocol, replacing the old Stardust system and boosting throughput to over 50,000 transactions per second. The market has taken notice, too. At the time of writing, IOTA is trading at $0.202269, with a market capitalization of $791M and a recent drop in its trading volume pushing that down 36% to $44.02M.