Introducing Testnet 2
Gearing up for Mainnet: Lava’s new testnet is live with enhanced performance and security for RPC providers and consumers. lava-testnet-2 also introduces Add-Ons, that allow Lava to easily provide developers with rich APIs!
What are we building?
RPC is the standard communication protocol web3 apps & services use to communicate with blockchain nodes, in order to fetch or submit data to any blockchain.
Lava is building the open standard for blockchain RPC & APIs. A Cosmos-based Appchain that connects providers and consumers of RPC. Lava gives wallets, dapps and indexers the most reliable RPC & APIs, by optimally routing requests through a globally distributed network of node providers.
The launch of the new testnet is a large step towards making Lava the most performant, reliable, and cost efficient way to access blockchains.
What’s new?
Lava’s public testnet has been running successfully for over 6 months, during which Lava served 650 developers with 1B RPC relays, across 20+ chains! Learning from developers, validators, and providers that interacted with Lava, we were able to make incredible progress on the protocol 🫡
The new testnet is an improved version of Lava protocol that carries all of these learnings. We’re really excited to see the new innovation and developments it will bring on the road to Mainnet!
Lava-Testnet-2 implements 5 core features:
1️⃣ TLS Support
When asking for service on Lava, RPC consumers are paired with providers via an on-chain pairing mechanism (consumers ask the Lava blockchain “which providers can I get service from?”). Consumer get a pairing list with top providers, that they can now request service from directly p2p.
To make this communication as safe as possible for both sides, the new testnet requires providers to have a TLS Certificate, which ensures that the data transmitted is kept private and without modifications.
2️⃣ CosmosSDK & CometBFT
We’ve upgraded Cosmos SDK from v0.45 to v0.47, and with it replaced Tendermint Core consensus with CometBFT, for improved performance & security of all network actors.
3️⃣Add-Ons
Lava uses ‘Specs’ to define the types of API calls consumers can make to providers.
Until now, providers were required to support all API methods written in the spec. Now we’re introducing a new Spec structure that allows providers to support ‘Add-Ons’ — optional APIs in addition to the essential RPC methods.
Add-Ons include Archive data, Debug APIs, NFT APIs, Trace Calls, or any other API that exists!
4️⃣ QoS Excellence Reports
When using Lava, RPC consumers are automatically measuring the performance of providers, adding a quality of service report after every interaction. These reports are aggregated on-chain to create a QoS Excellence Report for every provider.
Excellent providers can use this report as an on-chain proof for their expertise and performance over time. A super useful marketing tool!
5️⃣Reduced block time & new timestamp
Lava’s new testnet has a 30 seconds blocktime, x2 faster then the previous testnet. This makes for a better UX for providers and developers, with all activities happening twice as fast!
In addition, a new timestamp was implemented to fix a blocktime slippage issue from lava-testnet-1 💪
*Note: All balances from lava-testnet-1 were saved and added to lava-testnet-2
Onboarding the new testnet
We’re very excited about the upcoming upgrade and would like to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone:
Validators
Onboarding to the new chain is faster and easier — no need to run all the history of our versions including our manual upgrade. Validators need to run the new genesis — exactly like the old process.
Providers
Providers need to drop off of the old chain and register again in the new chain.
It’s no longer needed to mention if the methods you’re supporting (JSON-RPC/REST/Websocket Subscriptions). Now you’re required to define which Add-Ons you support (e.g. Archive data, Debug API etc.).
In addition, the new testnet requires providers to have TLS support. We understand this might present a hurdle for some small providers, and have created a dedicated TLS setup guide to help with the transition.
📚 The new Provider setup guide 📚
About Lava 🌋
Lava lets any node provider monetize their service in a sustainable, peer-to-peer market for RPC. Any developer can get highly reliable and cost-efficient blockchain access, directly from a distributed network of providers. Each earns rewards based on their quality of service — and contributes towards an open access layer for Web3.
