Launching the Public Demo Network of Gravity protocol
In 2019, an analysis of technology trends that pertain to the blockchain industry led researchers from the Waves ecosystem to conclude the following: in order to build products that are appealing and accessible to everyone, befitting the requirements for mass adoption, it is necessary to focus on data provision and interoperability. This triggered the team to pursue research that led to what is now the Gravity Protocol, the first blockchain-agnostic cross-chain communication and data oracles solution.
A few months later, a research paper about Gravity protocol was published. This work is a culmination of months of research and experimentation with various architectures of oracle networks using decentralized applications such as Neutrino, Lombardini and Waves Oracles.
Roadmap
Since Gravity Protocol is an open-source project, the Gravity development team has committed to developing as transparently as possible, based on an open roadmap that designates several significant milestones.
The most anticipated milestone is the launch of the Gravity main network with the industry leaders as operators of the Gravity network nodes. Having projects committed to maintaining Gravity is the start of a global ecosystem and a proof of the intended goal of an open blockchain-agnostic oracle network. This release is planned for the end of 2020.
Before the mainnet launch, the team plans to make several important interim releases focused on solving specific problems, described as follows:
Public Demo Net
This is a demonstration network that uses pre-automated scripts and fully controlled nodes to show how Gravity will operate. This example shows potential system actors & data flows within the Gravity network. In addition, it contains the first version of the back-end, suited for developing and debugging the Gravity portal client application. The main aim of this release is to serve as a visual reference demonstration to the architecture described in the documentation in order to engage developers in the open source process.
Public Dev Net
This is a stable version of the network with fixed instances of custom target chain networks. This network is designed for public testing and debugging of upcoming updates to Gravity, as well as for synchronizing with the regular updates of the supported public networks.
Public Test Net
This is a public, complete copy of Gravity’s mainnet, integrated with the popular public test networks of the target chains. This network is designed for financially safe testing of the data provision process. One of the challenges that the team will need to solve is that it requires constant conflict resolution during updates and rollbacks of test networks of target chains.
Public Demo Net
We are pleased to announce that the public demo network has successfully been launched. This product is publicly available for study purposes for potential users: node operators and dapp developers.
From the technical point of view, the demo network represents the first implementation of the Proof of Concept, or the first MVP of Gravity protocol and its User Interface, which is called the Gravity Portal.
Through the Gravity portal, users can already see which target chains are currently supported by the Gravity network, the general statistics on pulse operations, data records in the blockchains, as well as a number of operators of Gravity nodes and their public profiles. Another important feature for users is the ability to explore existing nebulae and available data feeds. If you want to find out more about the innovative concepts behind Gravity such as pulse and nebulae, see our FAQ.
As a global open source initiative, Gravity would immensely benefit from external collaboration, meaning that your feedback is crucial for long-term success of the project. We invite you to explore our documentation and give feedback to the dev team!
For more information, you can read the Gravity Whitepaper, visit the Gravity website, join the community on Twitter or Telegram or contact press@gravity.tech.
