Countdown to the OriginTrail’s Testnet Launch Begins
The OriginTrail team is getting really close to one of the main milestones of the project: the testnet launch, scheduled for June 29th. As part of our journey to this point, we committed to a dynamic bi-weekly sprint schedule, in order to bring the OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN) to the beta stage and prepare it for deployment in the wild. Each of the releases has so far brought significant progress in terms of planned features, code quality, research and related findings. There is one final release before the testnet, the Lunar Orbiter. It is coming up on June 18th and has a finalized feature set. You can check out the history of our releases on our roadmap webpage.
The testnet presents the beta stage of the system, with features of the network rounded, testable, and operating with test tokens. It is important to bear in mind that the network is still not production-ready, and therefore bugs and problems are expected to occur. Although we do not expect to have to make major changes to ODN following the testnet launch, we must point out that we could end up having to. That, after all, is the idea behind launching the testnet — to test, correct and improve. Therefore, the purpose of the testnet is twofold: we will have the ability to try out the full range of ODN features, with live use cases, and work out the technical and UX problems that might arise, as well as the chance to test out assumptions regarding game theory and incentivisation.
The goals for the testnet period are to:
- Discover and patch as many bugs as we can find with the software. We intend to leverage the power of our community and are planning to launch a bug bounty program;
- Fine-tune the network incentive mechanisms, which we have been iterating upon in the previous months and optimize the formulas driving it;
- Observe market forces and formed agreements;
- Get as much different data sets as we can from different use cases, so we can identify the most important needs of companies sharing data via the protocol and improve the data layer;
- Test and improve the user experience of running a node — both setup and operation — with our UX team and the community.
In preparation for the event, we have already started performing user research, onboarding, and extensive internal testing, as well as freshening up of the documentation on our Github and simplifying the installation process. Soon after launch, we will make sure to establish frequent communication with ODN node runners via several channels, including an ODN tech community center, which will contain the latest information on how to work with the network, setup a node and various other tutorials. On the other hand, we will be monitoring the specific needs of the use cases onboarded to the testnet, including the potential need for integration of new standards and how well the data layer performs in general.
Buckle Up and Join Testnet Prep Today!
We will be engaging with our community a lot in the next 16 days. Here are the community activities that we can announce today:
- JUST IN: 🎓Survey for future node holders. Interested in joining the testnet? Go ahead and fill in our survey. This will help us onboard you to the new tech community center managed by our engineers and UX experts who can provide you with guidance and will gladly discuss your feedback.
- SOON: 🐛Testnet bug bounty. We are going to be giving out TRAC rewards for the top performing nodes in the network. Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks.
All of your feedback is very valuable and highly appreciated. It has helped us immensely with the project so far and we are looking forward to much more of it in the testnet period.
Towards the Launch of the ODN Mainnet
As stated earlier, the testnet efforts are intended to prepare us for the smoothest possible transition to the production environment of the mainnet, which is scheduled for launch in Q3 this year. Apart from testing and iterating on the feedback, we will be introducing more companies to the network, who will be utilizing it for various different use cases in their supply chains. Finally, our tech team will be increasing communication activities with the community.
Join us on our mission and help us with building the future of transparent supply chains.
