IOTA Is About to Move the World’s Rocks — and Unlock $7 Trillion in Global Trade

• With McKinsey estimating a $4.7 trillion funding need for mining infrastructure and a $2.5 trillion trade finance gap, IOTA’s initiative aims to unlock trapped capital by solving the “trust shortage”.
• IOTA continues expanding across Africa through initiatives like the TWIN Foundation.

The demand for modern world rocks such as copper and lithium is rising amid the strong growth in electric vehicles, and the need for rare earth elements in smartphones and AI systems. Yet, as global demand for these critical minerals surges, capital investment has stalled. The IOTA blockchain has once again stepped in in order to build blockchain-backed trusted digital rails and enable full transparency in the supply chain.

IOTA and Salus to Address Infrastructure Backlogs with Mining and Mineral Supply Chains

According to McKinsey, the world needs $4.7 trillion by 2035 to expand mining, refining, and energy infrastructure to meet mineral demand.

The problem lies not in scarcity but in trust. Mining projects face high risk, opaque supply chains, and strict ESG rules that limit funding without verifiable traceability. This has left trillions of dollars sitting idle while mineral demand continues to climb.

To solve this, IOTA and Salus are building blockchain-based “digital trust rails” that enable full transparency in mineral supply chains. In Rwanda, the partners are already tracking tantalum, a key metal used in chips and batteries, by assigning each shipment a digital twin on IOTA’s network. This allows banks and financiers to verify the origin, ownership, and movement of materials on-chain, enabling secure and compliant financing.

By bringing transparency to the global minerals trade, IOTA and Salus aim to unlock both the $2.5 trillion trade finance gap and the $4.7 trillion minerals capex gap. This will unlock a combined $7 trillion in trapped capital. As they put it: “We don’t have a minerals shortage; we have a trust shortage.”

During the third quarter of 2025, IOTA already gained some ground in terms of expanding its global footprint, as reported by CNF. A key milestone was the deployment of the non-sharded version of Starfish on DevNet. This marked a crucial testing phase that allowed developers, node operators, and ecosystem partners to interact with and stress-test the protocol ahead of its mainnet release.

Expanding Footprint in the African Continent

Over the past few months, the IOTA network has been expanding its footprint in the African continent with several key initiatives and has launched its TWIN Foundation. Unveiled on May 8 at the AfCFTA Digital Trade Forum in Lusaka, Zambia, the initiative seeks to transform global trade by developing an open, decentralized infrastructure accessible to all.

Dominik Schiener, IOTA’s co-founder, already noted that the network is putting RWA tokenization into practice by the tokenization of physical commodities like coffee, and other rare earth metals in the African continent.