2019-12-20 · timestamps by ADAtainment
UPD 12/20/2019
- The Incentivized Testnet launched Friday with installers on Monday, and despite syncing and configuration problems the network has run without a major fork.
- Participation blew past expectations: 340 registered stake pools instead of the 25 to 50 planned for, possibly a thousand before March.
- A release lands on December 23, then a break, with weekly releases, a likely testnet reset and a new Shelley Haskell testnet built for stability rather than speed.
- From January the product managers take over communications with monthly updates, including an appearance on The Cardano Effect.
10 entries
Update on the Incentivized Testnet: launched Friday with installers on Monday, a lot of data collected, and as a test net there are warts, ups and downs, with plenty of comments on Reddit and Telegram.
Cut a few Rust releases, 0.4 and 0.5 alpha release 1, with the QA and DevOps teams sticking around until the 23rd for network tuning, and the logs show one long unbroken chain with no major fork and good node uptime.
Lots of support tickets on syncing and configuration, and it stays rocky for a few weeks because launching this close to Christmas means running on a skeleton crew, a deliberate trade to get an early Christmas present out instead of waiting until January.
The response overwhelmed the plan of 25 to 50 independent stake pools beyond the IOHK, Emurgo and Cardano Foundation infrastructure: about 340 are registered, already past the saturation point of a hundred.
A release comes on the 23rd and the release process changes to timed releases so DevOps and QA can check them, instead of cutting a tag onto the GitHub repo whenever something is available, with considerable stability and user experience improvements expected before January 15.
On whether the Incentivized Testnet gets reset: more likely than not there is a refresh with a new genesis hash to add new functionality, probably without a new snapshot, and rewards would roll over.
Communications change in the new year: the product management team becomes far more visible, with Aparna, the product manager for Cardano, doing a monthly rollup and her product managers such as Nic covering their own domains in monthly YouTube updates, plus a post mortem on the testnet on The Cardano Effect.
The upcoming Shelley test net for Haskell will feel very different from the Rust one: Rust was balls to the wall alpha to explore features, the Haskell team is about software quality and stability, so its user experience should be considerably more consumer friendly.
Hoping to actually get Christmas 2019 off, unlike the Bittrex wallet breaking on December 25 2017 and a personnel issue in 2018.
Closing: one more update in late December 2019, then break time, with regular probably weekly releases starting in 2020, things looking solid by mid January 2020, 340 registered pools and maybe a thousand before March, and monthly product team communications plus releases through January and February.