2020: a year to remember. From Mainnet Launch, to the release of Sheikah Wallet, a growing community, and a successful Testnet Incentive Program, 2020 has been monumental for Witnet. Thanks to all those community members who have played a part in Witnet’s biggest year to date 🚀
🏁 Oh how far we’ve come
Since its inception, the Witnet community has been on a mission to connect smart contracts to the rest of the world in the most decentralized, secure and “trustless” way possible.
In 2020, the Witnet community made huge leaps towards fully realizing this goal. At the start of the year, Witnet was running on a Testnet, with incomplete or non-existent tooling. Despite the fact that the network was live and functioning, the protocol was still missing many of the components necessary to allow it to scale and monitor data requests on Mainnet.
Here’s an overview of how far we’ve come in 2020. …
On 23 December, the Witnet community held the 1st of a series of Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) events.
Contents:
1. Could you elaborate on an extension to the roadmap and a marketing plan to attract new projects?
2. What are the greatest differentiators (and thus strengths) compared to other oracle projects such as Chainlink, Band, Tellor, DIA, API3, …?
3. When will Witnet be on an exchange?
4. How is Witnet related to Aragon?
5. How you know there are 1 million Witnet Nodes in the Network?
6. Are there any plans to wrap the WIT token to the Ethereum network and create a Wrapped WIT token?
7. In an article you said you’re looking for integration with Eth2.0, Polkadot, NEAR, Cosmos, Oasis etc .. …
The Witnet developers want to say farewell to 2020 with our biggest network upgrade so far. Find out about the whys, hows and whens, and join us in the Community AMA this Wednesday 23 December!
2020 2020 is coming to an end, with lots of memories we might hope to leave firmly in the past.
However, one thing that came to life in 2020 that’s proudly here stay is the Witnet Mainnet. Since it was released on October 14, the network has seen an astonishing growth, with near to 1 million nodes competing for producing blocks and solving data requests.
The number of new features, integrations and ecosystem efforts in the pipeline is huge, and while everyone wants to get them all implemented during 2021, there’s no reason to wait for next year to start making things happen. …
The release of the Mainnet is only a first milestone in Witnet’s mission to enable Web 3.0 apps that are truly decentralized and censorship resistant. This is what’s to come.
It’s been exactly 3 years since the Witnet whitepaper was published as a preprint on arXiv. Since then, everyone involved in the project has made a titanic effort to turn this decentralized oracle network into a reality.
Where we are now
The result of all this commitment and sacrifice is outstanding. The Mainnet was launched only 6 weeks ago, yet the network statistics are already staggering:
- More than 75,000 blocks have been appended to the chain by almost 48,000 different mining nodes, who collectively minted 18,750,000 WIT tokens.
- 18,000 data requests have been published and resolved.
- 520,000 transactions transferring WIT tokens have been made.
- Early estimates indicate that the actual number of nodes “waiting in line” for their opportunity to mine a block is close to 1 million. …
Witnet Mainnet 1.0.4 (witnet-rust 1.0.4) is here! Set up or upgrade your nodes now.
What to expect?
At 9am UTC on Wednesday 14th October 2020, Witnet made the monumental and long-anticipated transition to Mainnet. A huge thank you to everyone that helped get Witnet to this point.
In each block (a new one every 45 seconds), 250 $WIT tokens is mined by successful block proposers. Get your nodes set up now to ensure you’re earning rewards.
Upgrade now! Different setups, different upgrade methods
The process will depend on your setup. Please identify which of the following setups you have:
- I’m running a node on Docker.
- I’m running a node on Docker Compose.
- I’m running a node with systemd.
- I’m running the binary directly from the release or the source code. …
Here we cover some frequently asked questions regarding the WIT token.
If you can’t find an answer to your question here, feel free to reach out to the community on Telegram or Discord.
Contents:
1. What are WIT tokens and what are they used for?
2. How can I mine or earn WIT tokens
3. Where can I buy or trade WIT tokens?
4. Where can I store my WIT tokens?
1. What are WIT tokens and what are they used for?
WIT tokens are native to the Witnet blockchain, and fuel and secure the Witnet network.
They are used as a tool to incentivize Witnet’s distributed network of mining nodes to retrieve and report web data (e.g. …
What are WIT tokens?
WIT tokens are a native token on the Witnet blockchain. Each WIT token is made up of 1,000,000,000 NanoWITs. They are used as a tool to incentivize Witnet’s distributed network of mining nodes to retrieve and deliver web data (e.g. sports results, stock prices, weather forecasts, information from other blockchains, etc) using the Witnet protocol.
They also function as a form of collateral on the network, to ensure that node operators are not susceptible to bribery and abide by the rules of the protocol.
How can I use my WIT tokens?
Create and Deploy Data Requests
They can be used as a tool to deploy and pay for data requests on the Witnet Network. …
Witnet Testnet 9.3-b (witnet-rust 0.9.3-b) has been released: this covers the instructions on how to upgrade, ready for the network launch on Wednesday 22 September 2020.
What’s new?
The syncing issues faced in Testnet 9.3 have now been fixed (🤞) and tested, in preparation for the launch of the Witnet Mainnet, due on October 14th 2020.
Blocks mined in T9.3-b will count towards Phase 2 Mainnet WIT token allocation.
This release bootstraps a new network with the same genesis block from 0.9.3. However, balances and reputation scores will be reset.
Upgrade now! Different setups, different upgrade methods
The process will depend on your setup. Please identify which of the following setups you have:
- I’m running a node on Docker.
- I’m running a node on Docker Compose.
- I’m running a node with systemd.
- I’m running the binary directly from the release or the source code. …
Node operators participating in Phase 2 of the Witnet Testnet Incentive program are required to complete the following steps by September 30th 2020
Node operators participating in Phase 2 of the Witnet Testnet Incentive program are required to complete the following steps by 30th September 2020 in order to claim their Witnet Mainnet Tokens (WITs).
- Sign up to the Witnet Testnet Incentive program. A few days after registering, you will have received your Witnet ID (e.g. WIT_3GEU33), which is your unique identifier for the program.
- Complete the KYC process through WeStart.
- Start running a node and monitor it to ensure it’s operating normally.
- Prove ownership of your Witnet node as described below.
If you are participating in the program exclusively with other types of contributions (bug hunting, documentation, memes, etc.), steps 3–5 are not required, and the September deadline for KYC does not apply to you. …
Witnet Testnet 9.3 (witnet-rust 0.9.3) has been released: this covers the crucial updates (and what they mean for the network), followed by instructions on how to upgrade.
What’s new?
Testnet 9.3 builds on the stability and security of the 9.1 and 9.2 networks — which have been up for 7 weeks in total — and adds the only big features that were missing before the launch of the Witnet Mainnet, due on October 14th 2020:
- A way more secure consensus protocol. Witnet now uses a newly implemented consensus protocol that provides a better balance between security and finality. This is possible thanks to “superblocks”: special checkpoints in the blockchain in which a supermajority of the network (>⅔) is required to sign special messages that enable building strong consensus. …
