From Testing to Reality: Mainnet is Coming to Light as Testnet is Wraping up

Announcement: We are thrilled to announce that the culmination of the Massa testnet program is fast approaching, ushering in the highly anticipated mainnet era. With most of the mainnet’s innovative features already developed, we are ready to embark on the final phase of our journey. Testnet 26, slated for September 2023, will be the definitive close of the testnet program, paving the way for the our mainnet’s grand debut in October 2023.

The objective of Massa’s testnet program is to evaluate and enhance the security, scalability, and overall usability of the blockchain architecture under real conditions during its development phase. Engaging a large group of participants in the testnet enables the network to approximate future mainnet conditions, in particular with respect to heterogeneous hardware and connectivity.

We released the first version of the testnet very early, on July 16th, 2021, when basic consensus, peering and transaction processing were ready. The Massa testnet drew 350 participants in its inaugural month of July 2021. Since August 2021, the testnet has been organized in monthly episodes with updated software released each month on GitHub and installed by all node runners.

The number of nodes has grown to 8,000+ in recent months, with at least 6,000 stable nodes. The widespread adoption of Massa and its straightforward staking process surprisingly helped in building this extensive network of node operators. Presently, the Massa testnet holds the distinction of being the most decentralized testnet in blockchain history. It continually offers insights into the functioning of decentralized networks.

We are deeply grateful to all the node runners for their continuous support in testing the Massa blockchain. We acknowledge your resilience in weathering the bugs, reboots, and load testing — hurdles that are a typical part of any testnet environment. A big thank you to everyone for enduring these hiccups and for fostering a supportive and engaged community that has been instrumental in this development phase. Your contributions have propelled us toward the upcoming mainnet launch, a milestone we eagerly anticipate together.

During episodes, we often performed stress tests to assess the number of transactions per second that could be achieved while keeping the decentralized network stable. While in the first episodes, we reached hundreds of transactions per second (300 tx/s in episode 4, 700 tx/s in episode 5), with continuous improvements and optimizations we were able to achieve 4,000 tx/s from episode 18, with 6,000+ stable nodes. The testnet pushed the limits and showcased the remarkable efficiency and stability inherent in Massa’s architecture.

The node hardware requirements increased slowly during the testnet period, with 4-cores cpu and 8 GB of RAM reported as stable. For the mainnet, we recommend the following hardware: modern 8-cores CPU, 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of SSD. We will not require anything more than this to allow most people to afford the staking hardware, and these specifications are widely accessible today.

Since the testnet launch, apart from optimizations to improve scaling, many features have been released episode after episode. The chronology of the main milestones was the following:

• Jul ’21: Testnet Launch
• Sep ’21: Endorsement System
• Nov ’21: Robust API
• Jan ’22: Smart contracts
• Mar ’22: Efficient operation propagation
• Apr ’22: Autonomous smart contracts
• Sep ’22: Storage limits and costs
• Oct ’22: On-chain websites
• Nov ’22: Efficient bootstrap
• Jan ’23: Full gas system
• Mar ’23: Multi-staking protection
• Apr ’23: Denunciations and Slashing
• Jun ’23: Versioning system

Among these features, two are groundbreaking: autonomous smart contracts and on-chain web. Massa’s autonomous smart contracts have the unique ability to autonomously activate to handle operations, based on time or data triggers, thus eliminating the need for centralized bots and keepers. Massa also introduced a method for on-chain storage of frontends on *.massa websites, offering the same level of transparency and immutability to the frontend that smart contracts enjoy. With Massa, users can interact with DApps without any error-prone intermediaries. And this summer, they will soon initiate their authentic Web3 journey by accessing these decentralized websites through Massa Station (new name for Thyra).

From episode 23, the testnet now has all the necessary features to transition to mainnet. The remaining work before mainnet will thus focus on improving the stability of the node, verifying the security of the full codebase, and adding other less important fixes and improvements. In this regard, a security audit has been started in April 2023, and is bearing fruits today with code improvements in the pipeline.

Massa mainnet is scheduled for October 2023!

In the near future, we plan to release the Massa White Paper in June 2023, which will provide the thorough details of Massa’s vision, technology, governance and tokenomics.

After mainnet, on-chain governance is the next key feature to be integrated into the core blockchain, expected in 2024. The core governance will empower the Massa community to choose the next directions for its decentralized platform. Technical upgrades might then focus on enhancing user experience or scaling. In this respect, we will explore L2 and sharding solutions to scale Massa further, and study decentralized interoperability and account abstraction to improve user experience.

Rewards for Node Runners

The full details on the Massa mainnet tokenomics will be given in the White Paper. An allocation for node runners has been decided as part of the testnet incentive program: 8% of the total initial supply of 1,000,000,000 Massa, thus 80,000,000 Massa. These tokens will be distributed to node runners who registered to the testnet incentive program, depending on the number of points they obtained.

As usual, your number of points can be asked to MassaBot on Discord, and the leaderboard channel shows the best node runners of all times! Up to testnet 22 included, there were 9,134,230 points obtained in total, by 31,396 discord members, with a best score of 2,619 out of 2,700 possible points.

The 80,000,000 tokens will be distributed to the node runners who:

• Accumulate a minimum of 200 points by the end of testnet 24;
• Are not from ineligible countries (currently USA, China, Iran, Syria, susceptible to change);
• Pass the KYC;
• And provide their Massa wallet when requested in October

Node runners will be contacted by MassaBot on Discord at the end of October to pass the KYC procedure and to communicate their Massa address used to receive mainnet tokens. The token rewards of node runners who don’t do these actions in time will be redistributed to the people who did.

The exact ratio of Massa tokens per point will be determined once we know how many people passed these steps and how many points they have in total. This ratio will be shared before the mainnet is launched. It is expected to be between 8 and 10 tokens per point, and will be capped at 10 in case there are less rewards claimed.

The rewards associated with the provided addresses will be written in the genesis ledger of Massa mainnet, with an on-chain vesting period. 30% of the tokens will be unlocked on mainnet launch, and the 70% remaining will be vested linearly over 24 months.

Also, the most stable stakers will be given the option to receive their rewards as initial rolls instead of initial tokens, and this way to participate in the birth of Massa: the creation of the first blocks of the Massa mainnet. These will be the node runners who accumulate at least 200 points by the end of episode 24 and 300 points in the last 4 testnet episodes (episodes 23 to 26). They will also receive a bonus of 1,000 tokens. The part optionally received as initial rolls is the unlocked part of the reward and bonus.

People who had problems with their Discord account and switched accounts over time will have the opportunity to merge the points of several Discord accounts if they prove ownership of the old account or if they used the same staking address or node ID. They will be able to do so by interacting with the bot from the end of October. At each episode, the points of the best account will be counted.

With your invaluable support, we stand ready to launch the Massa mainnet in collaboration with hundreds of node runners, reinforcing our absolute commitment to decentralization right from the block genesis.

A Special Note to our Massa Ambassadors

We would be remiss not to recognize the invaluable contributions of the Massa Ambassadors. Your unwavering dedication and passion for the Massa project have played an instrumental role in our journey, and your efforts have helped foster a vibrant community. We deeply appreciate your efforts in spreading the Massa vision, hosting meetups, writing articles, translating content, and answering community questions.

Early next week, the Ambassadors will each receive a message outlining the number of tokens awarded in appreciation for their work. Please note, like the node runners, passing KYC is a prerequisite for this. You’ll be later prompted to provide your Massa wallet address for the token transfer; in the same manner as the node runners.

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As we embark on this next chapter in our journey, we want to express our profound gratitude to everyone who has been a part of the Massa story so far. Here’s to the future, to the groundbreaking innovations, and to the vibrant community we are building together — a community that is shaping the course of decentralized technology, each step marking our joint commitment and progress.

Let’s all get ready for the Massa summer, exciting stuff coming up ❤️

About Massa:

Massa is a high-performance blockchain designed to be truly decentralized from the start. Massa testnet was released in July 2021, providing an easy way for anyone to test our protocol, and has been constantly improving since then.

• Website: massa.net
• Testnet explorer: test.massa.net
• Documentation: https://docs.massa.net/
• Source code and tutorials: github.com/massalabs/massa
• Telegram: t.me/massanetwork
• Discord: discord.gg/massa
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MassaLabs
• Reddit: reddit.com/r/massa/
• Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UChVfdvYpn0eFk4B-T7TGmOg