Following a successful trial run by developers in London last week, Cardano (ADA) have opened the Shelley testnet for their community to put the long-awaited Ouroboros consensus algorithm-based network through its paces.
Despite the modest announcement on social media, the move is seen as a major step in the blockchain’s development because currently all the nodes on the Cardano mainnet are governed by the three foundational groups of the project – the Cardano Foundation, IOHK, and EMURGO. The implementation of decentralised Ouroboros should move the platform towards its ultimate goal “…with the majority of nodes run by the community.”
Community-based Testing
The IOHK team are keen to involve supporters of Cardano in testing the network in a variety of situations and have issued an open invite for those interested to download and install their own testnet node.
Any performance data collected from these trials, be it positive or negative, is viewed by the developers as key in building upon this stage as “With every iteration, we lay a stronger foundation for the future.”
Feedback and bug reports will be acted upon during the process to achieve network stabilisation so users are being encouraged to log issues to allow for regular updates on the platform’s GitHub repository.
IOHK believe this testnet stage can be viewed “…like rolling a small snowball down a mountain. It’s only going to get bigger from here.” Once this particular snowball is firmed up and is robust as possible, the team will “…move towards phase three of the rollout later this year: the incentivised testnet.”
A previous article by IOHK indicated the next testnet stage will include rewards for staking ADA. It is envisaged that once the testnet protocol reaches optimal stability it will then be merged into the Cardano mainnet, allowing any generated rewards to become live and spendable.
