Witnet Mainnet in October! Launch of Testnet 9.2; a more fair and precise network, Testnet 9.3 on the way, superblock-based consensus model completed, CLI for claiming nodes, troubleshoot and debug data requests in real-time, Sheikah v2.0 and more.

🚀 Mainnet Launch Date in October!

We’re happy to announce that Witnet is aiming to transition to Mainnet on 14th October 2020, as long as everything runs smoothly in the coming weeks. Thank you to all of the community and everyone who has helped to get Witnet to this point.

🤑 Witnet Testnet Incentive Program Phase 2

Please note: U.S persons, and those under the age of 18 are NOT permitted to participate in this phase of the program. Please see the Program Terms and Conditions for full details.

You can still sign up for Phase 2 of the Testnet Incentive Program! We are looking at a much broader participation, with no limit on the number of participants, and plenty of ways to get involved, regardless of your background or technical skills. Accordingly, the Witnet Foundation has allocated:

• Up to 25,000,000 WIT tokens (1% of the total WIT supply)
• Up to 30,000 $DAI

Full details on the program (and how to sign up) can be found on the page below.

🐛 Phase 2 Bug Bounty

As part of the Witnet Testnet Incentive Program, the Witnet Foundation has launched a Bug Bounty Program.

For uncovering a critical bug or successfully attacking the network, participants can receive bounty awards of up to 5000 $DAI, according to the guidelines laid out in the article below.

As an example, this potential DOS bug, as highlighted by Harsh Jain, was addressed as part of the Bug Bounty Program. You can see the implemented Github fix here.

🏗️ Development Update

Witnet Testnet Version Updates

On Wednesday 19th August, the community successfully launched Testnet 9.2

The launch of Testnet 9.2 saw block counting resume for the Testnet Incentive Program, and >27000 additional blocks have now been successfully minted onto the network by participating nodes.

This new network is more fair, resilient and precise, addressed by some of the updates below.

Testnet 9.3 will be launched in early September

Improvements highlighted below are ready to go live in the coming weeks.

Node

• Improvements have been made in T9.2 to the block mining algorithm to ensure a more fair distribution of rewards and prevent reputation oligarchies. Now, when multiple block proposals are made from reputed nodes (i.e. those with a reputation > 0) for the same epoch, the winning block will no longer be elected based on the node with the highest reputation, but at random.
• The superblock-based consensus model has been completed. That means:

1. The chain will revert to the previous consensus point if ⅔ of the signing committee does not agree upon an upcoming superblock.
2. In the case of multiple disagreements, the committee size slowly reduces over time.

• A trapezoidal distribution of the reputation will be live in T9.3: Identities are ordered by reputation and will obtain an eligibility value aligned with their ranked position and the total active reputation of the whole network. This means nodes with reputation >0 also have an equal probability of solving a data request.
• A claim CLI method has been implemented so that participants in the Witnet Testnet Incentive Program can sign their nodes and prove the ownership of their nodes with views to claiming their Mainnet rewards.
• Tally creation will be mandatory from T9.3 onwards. As a result, the tally fee will been removed, making data requests cheaper.

Sheikah — Desktop Wallet App

• The RADON engine — which is the virtual machine in charge of executing data requests inside Witnet nodes — will now support reporting partial values. Requestors can now enable and disable the auto-try function within the editor, and will now be able to troubleshoot and debug data requests in real-time
• Data requests are now saved automatically on the Sheikah Data Request editor
• The new Sheikah v0.2.0 has been released — you can view the code and try it out on the Testnet here.

📺 Keep up-to-date on our YouTube

With crucial Witnet updates being deployed constantly, you can now keep up-to-date with all Witnet-related developments on our fortnightly Community Sprint Reviews; subscribe to the Witnet YouTube Channel now.

The latest Community Sprint Review is viewable below.

For more Witnet-related content:

• Join the Witnet Testnet Incentive Program 🤑
• Read the Witnet whitepaper 📃
• Check out Witnet’s code on Github 🤖
• Read Witnet core documents❓
• Subscribe to our blog 📬
• Join the community Telegram group and Discord 💬
• Follow @witnet_io on Twitter 🐦