Testnet Episode 3 is coming!

We are happy to announce that we are now at the third episode of our testnet incentive program. Let’s summarize where we are at!

The community & the number of nodes keep growing! With more than 2400 nodes running constantly (a 60% growth compared to episode 1), the testnet proved that there is room for growth! Our community is growing as fast as the network: more than 6000 members (+100% since the end of episode 1) on Discord and over 1200 on Telegram (+50% since the end of episode 1).

What are the next deadlines?

The third episode will start the 6th of October at 12pm GMT.

As usual, the incentive program will continue. To give everyone time to update its node, scoring will only start the 11th of October. Don’t forget to use the same Discord account when registering as your score is linked to your discord id!

What’s new in episode 3?

TEST.3.0. brings several improvements.

TEST.3.0 features a brand new API that is meant to eventually replace the old API (in TEST.3.0, both are present for now).

This new API uses industry-standard JSON-RPC, and is split in two parts:

• a private administration server locally listening on port TCP 33034 allowing the node owner to perform admin tasks
• a public node interface globally listening on port TCP 33035 allowing everyone to use the node to read consensus, or to emit operations, provided that the corresponding port is reachable from the Internet.

A thorough documentation of the new API is coming soon. It will also allow other developers, community members to start building their own explorers and wallets to track the Massa chain activity and interact with it.

The corresponding new and improved client/wallet is also available as a preview (the old one was not dropped yet). It is a work-in-progress, and will be finalized during the episode.

This episode also features heavy performance improvements:

• more efficient and early caching, indexing and pre-hashing
• less useless serializations
• removed a massive amount of redundant inter-node communication
• total number of connections per node reduced from 61 to 31

Many other improvements are also included:

• better documentation
• out-of-the-box IPV6 support
• better code clarity
• test suite improvements
• corrected timing bugs
• better bootstrap process
• logging improvements
• user interaction improvements

Finally, we also changed different things in Episode 3:

• Improvement of the Maxim decentralization factor: we’ve noticed that our old Maxim factor was sometimes inaccurate. The new Maxim factor now takes into account how far an IP is with respect to other IPs (more details on our Gitlab). This new formula should better reflect the (de)centralization of nodes.
• Faucet modifications: the Discord Bot will now give 100 Massa, enough for one roll.
• Scoring modifications: the MassaBot will now report the number of points earned over the episode instead of an estimation of the number of points that will be earned at the end of the episode. The old score was confusing as it could decrease over time.
• Tech requirements: During our traditional end of episode benchmark we noticed that many nodes did not meet the tech requirements. In order to start testing the protocol in more real conditions the testnet will now run 100 tx/s constantly. This will increase the load on your node. If your node does not meet the hardware requirements it is very likely to get desynced, causing your rolls to be automatically sold. Please ensure that your node has at least 4CPUs and 8GB of RAM.

What’s coming next?

Specifications of the smart contract engine have been moving forward, as well as implementation of the EVM compatibility.

We will also release information about the Team, our Roadmap, and our backers in an effort of transparency and to increase the visibility of the project.

Finally, we launched an update of our Website & Explorer UI that should be deployed in November.

Reminder: how to update my node?

If you are using git to manage the code (which you should) update your node using the following commands:

cd massa

git stash

git checkout testnet

git pull

You can also run a node using the executables. In that case don’t forget to edit the config/config.toml file in case your node is routable.

Useful Links:

• Testnet explorer: test.massa.net
• Source code and tutorials: github.com/massalabs/massa
• Telegram: t.me/massanetwork
• Discord: discord.com/invite/TnsJQzXkRN
• Reddit: reddit.com/r/massa/
• Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UChVfdvYpn0eFk4B-T7TGmOg
• All releases & changelogs from all versions

With over 2400 nodes running constantly and a majority of the nodes being routable during the TEST.2.X episode, our testnet is already one of the most decentralized networks.