A #ShelleySunday update (and some exciting news, ICYMI...)

At the end of another long (and amazing) day, here’s another short update.

The team has been hard at work over the weekend and has made tremendous progress today across all areas. Culminating in another milestone…

Most of you will likely have seen Charles’ tweet earlier today, confirming that we have now endorsed the 1.18.0 node. You can read more about what this means in my post from Friday. But in short, this means we’re now all set for the Shelley hard fork. Launch sequence initiated. All systems go.

The current Cardano Byron mainnet will become the Cardano Shelley mainnet on Wednesday 29th July 2020 at 21:44:51 UTC, starting at epoch 208.

(It felt very nice, typing that…)

That’s going to be quite a moment. We might even live stream it. Let’s see :slight_smile:

Behind the headlines, it’s been a day of refining, testing and locking things down. We’ve released the final hardfork-ready versions of cardano-graphql, cardano-rest and cardano-db-sync. We still have a small amount of work to do on the wallet backend and explorer, as well as continuing to optimize performance across the board. But nothing major now.

A TASTE OF SHELLEY

We’ve also just released a new Daedalus wallet for the Shelley testnet.

Daedalus 1.6.0-STN5 is for the very latest iteration of the #Shelley testnet we have created to give ada holders a taste of the Shelley experience, right before an exciting #SummerofShelley kicks off properly on mainnet.

Connected to the very latest test network (MC4, Node v 1.18) it brings all users significantly enhanced functionality. With it, you’ll be able to restore your Byron mainnet wallets, based on balances taken from the mainnet snapshot captured on 20th July at 12 AM UTC. If you participated in the ITN, you’ll also be able to use this new wallet to check your rewards. To do this, restore your wallet using your recovery phrase for your Daedalus Rewards wallet or Yoroi.

This version of Daedalus is very nearly feature-complete, so it is a very close facsimile of what you’ll enjoy on mainnet after the Shelley hardfork. But of course, this is still a test wallet. Alongside the new features, there are a number of known issues for this wallet which will be addressed in the mainnet release. You can read more here in the release notes. So grab yourself some test ada from the faucet and have a play. And tell your friends. Anyone – current ada holder or not – can have a try.

Please remember to report any bugs you may find with our support desk. We want to get the new Shelley wallet as polished as possible before it’s mainnet debut! (If you are still seeing an older version on the page, just clear your cache or open the page in private/incognito mode and you’ll see the latest builds).

BE EXCITED. BUT BE VIGILANT

An important note to add here. We have been made aware of scammers trying to access private keys by posting fake wallet download links on social channels, especially Telegram. Please be extra vigilant. Cardano is enjoying a super-high profile at the moment, which is great. But with it comes a heightened risk of being targetted by scammers. Please be careful. Download Daedalus or Yoroi ONLY from official IOHK/Cardano/EMURGO sites. Never click on links that look even slightly suspicious or in DMs from people you do not know and trust.

WHAT’S NEXT

Over the next few days, we’ll continue to work very closely with our exchange partners, helping them to get ready for Shelley. This will be a key factor in a successful migration from a Byron mainnet to a Shelley one. Our exchange partners represent the final mile in the Shelley deployment. With 40+ exchanges to work with this is a complex task, but we’ll be keeping you up to date next week on progress and we’ll have our dedicated support team in place to help exchanges if they hit any issues or are taking longer than anticipated to migrate. We’d also appreciate your support in flagging any issues to us, so we can make sure we prioritize.

Along with the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO, we’ll also be pushing out lots more content to the community with all the info you’ll need to know – on Daedalus, Yoroi, reclaiming ITN rewards, staking dates, when you’ll start earning rewards, how safe is my ada (completely safe, by the way) etc. Don’t worry. We’ll have you covered.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST…

Our community never ceases to amaze. Nearly 300 stake pools have already joined the new MC4 v 1.18.0 version of the testnet, which is what we’ll be deploying to the mainnet in just a few days time. That is practically within just one day. This is a remarkable number and indicates not just the strength of our community, but the reality of our decentralized vision. Nearly 300 pools already. Out of the gate. This level of support is incredible, unprecedented and we believe, unsurpassed in our space.

So, after a very busy weekend, we are in a very good place. Hardfork confirmed for the 29th. Core components released. A new Daedalus for everyone to get a taste for the Shelley wallet experience, ready for staking and delegation.

And an incredible community, all ready to go…

11 Likes

Great job indeed. One question - when first Shelley Daedalus wallet is available, will it support restoration of Ledger Nano 24 word seed? Charles has mentioned something but I found no written info about that. Can someone confirm so we don’t need to transfer ADA from Yoroi Ledger wallets to use it in the first Shelley days?

Afaik, It will probably be ready by the end of August.