# IOST (IOST): D-Score 51/100 — Moderately Decentralized

**BlockIndex D-Score: 51/100 (Moderately Decentralized).** IOST (IOST) is a Layer 1 cryptocurrency using Other consensus. IOST: Scalable sharded Layer-1 with Proof-of-Believability consensus and BNB Chain L2 integration for institutional tokenization and DeFi.

_Source: https://blockindex.ai/coin/iost · Data by BlockIndex.AI · Updated 2026-06-19_

## D-Score breakdown (0-100, higher means more decentralized)
| Component | Score |
| --- | --- |
| Overall D-Score | 51 |
| Node distribution | 18 |
| Initial distribution | 0 |
| Governance | 15 |
| Age and history | 13 |
| Autonomy | 5 |

## Key facts
- Layer: Layer 1
- Consensus: Other (Other)
- Launch: Other (2018)
- Founder: Terrence (Terry) Wang; Arthur Tang; Blake Jeong
- VC funded: Yes
- Max supply: 90,000,000,000
- Circulating: 33,999,051,873 (37.8%)

## Market data (as of 2026-06-19)
- Price: $0
- Market cap: $26.19M
- 24h volume: $5.29M
- 24h change: -3.12% · 7d change: -5.64%

## About
IOST (Internet of Services Token) is a multi-year blockchain project that emerged from an academic and enterprise-oriented background with the explicit ambition of delivering high-throughput, low-latency infrastructure for decentralized applications, institutional tokenization and Web3 payments. The project traces its origins to an enterprise seed round in late 2017, a public testnet launch on June 30, 2018 and a mainnet migration in early 2019. Over time IOST has maintained an institutional-facing narrative — establishing the IOST Foundation, research initiatives such as Theseus and the Bluehill accelerator, and a governance model that emphasizes community proposals and on-chain voting. In early 2025 the community passed a governance proposal to issue a BEP-20 representation on BNB Chain to facilitate liquidity and cross-chain settlement, a decision that underscores IOST’s hybrid posture between native-layer functionality and cross-chain interoperability.

At the technical level IOST is characterized by a sharded architecture (branded as Efficient Distributed Sharding) and an unconventional consensus algorithm described in project materials as Proof-of-Believability (PoB). The chain was designed to be developer-friendly — notably providing JavaScript smart contract support — and to scale via horizontal sharding and reputation-driven validator selection. The project’s technical stack emphasizes throughput and low-latency finality: public materials cite historically large processing volumes (over 930 million processed transactions) and claim sub-second L2 latencies when batching transactions for settlement on BNB Chain. Key platform features include the Liquidity Engine — a mechanism that separates principal and yield into P-Bonds and Y-Bonds to enable capital-efficient tokenized bond instruments — as well as sharding primitives and tooling aimed at institutional tokenization.

IOST’s tokenomics and economic design have evolved. The project reports a maximum supply of 90 billion IOST with earlier snapshots showing variable circulating and total supply figures as the protocol and related BEP-20 issuance were enacted. CoinMarketCap and project updates in 2025 document both legacy native supply figures (CoinMarketCap snapshots) and governance-approved BEP-20 issuance (21.32 billion BEP-20 tokens proposed in January 2025 and subject to scheduled unlocks through March 2030). Project reporting in March 2025 referenced roughly 44 billion IOST minted overall and approximately 22 billion in circulation. The project’s monetary policy has been described in public materials as targeting ~3% annual inflation within a capped supply framework, with governance-controlled unlock schedules for cross-chain representations.

Governance at IOST blends foundation-led initiatives and community voting. The IOST Foundation is repeatedly referenced as the organizational steward for research and accelerators, while governance mechanisms enable community proposals and token-holder voting — the January 2025 BEP-20 issuance vote is a clear example. Leadership is documented in public sources (founder profiles and core team listings) with Blake Jeong identified as CEO since 2019 and Terrence (Terry) Wang and Arthur Tang identified as founders/co-founders. The materials provided do not present exhaustive on-chain DAO mechanics but do show active community participation in governance decisions, and the project’s roadmap emphasizes continued development in DeFi, NFT verticals and a planned decentralized stablecoin.

Finally, while IOST demonstrates a substantial historical footprint and active ecosystem engagements, several DSCORE-critical datapoints remain incomplete or require primary-source verification: precise node counts and node-level classification, explicit premine/PIP values, audited smart contract addresses for BEP-20 issuance, and detailed block-level telemetry (TPS, block time, block size, total blocks). Those items are necessary for a complete and validated DSCORE calculation and should be sourced from official explorer endpoints, audited token contracts and on-chain governance records.

## Links
- Website: https://iost.io/
- Whitepaper: N/A
- GitHub: N/A

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About the D-Score: BlockIndex.AI rates decentralization from 0 to 100 across node distribution, initial distribution, governance, age and history, and autonomy. Methodology: https://blockindex.ai/dscore