Week 19: W/E 1st November 2019
Each week, this is where we’ll share a high-level summary of key achievements and what’s been going on in the program. Remember, for the very latest technical updates you can follow all the commits and pull requests in the community GitHub.
If you are not already part of the conversation, you’ll find a hive of activity over at the stake pool Best Practice Telegram. With almost 3,000 members and loads of engaged users, this is a great resource for anyone interested in contributing to the program. Continued thanks to everyone from the community, especially our amazing Ambassadors.
What’s Up
The change of approach to the way we deliver and test software builds for the Shelley Testnet rollout, through the Nightly and Beta releases, has been a valuable enhancement. It has allowed the IOHK devs team to make breaking changes, while performing further testing that does not affect the main testnet or its users. This has resulted in more fundamental changes to the code base and improvements to its performance evident from the stress tests executed by our QA team.
Since implementing this new approach, there have already been two Nightly releases deployed and another one planned. So please keep an eye out for a potential Beta release next week, subject to Nightly findings.
In parallel with the above, there are additional functionality candidates that are to be added in due course to the upcoming testnet releases that will improve user experience and usability.
Finally, we’d like to continue to thank our community which is working so hard to support the program. The community’s contributions remain vital for us to move faster towards an even more robust network that will support delegation and staking functionalities in Shelley.
Support
New Issues - 16
Closed Issues - 15
Issue Backlog - 16
The IOHK Support Portal has started supporting the Nightly testnet along with the Beta testnet this week. Here, you can find help articles pertaining to the setup and use of these testnets, and have the opportunity to log a support ticket if you run into any issues.
Documentation & Content
This week the testnet website was updated to include instructions on how to obtain the most up-to-date configuration details to use when connecting to the Nightly testnet. This information is maintained by our DevOps team and includes the correct trusted peers and genesis hash to use. Details for the package installers for Windows and Linux were also published on the Testnet Infrastructure page earlier in the week.
We’re also busy working on a new website to support the Incentivized phase of the testnet. This is where we shall host all the info you need to take part and an FAQ section to answer your questions. We still have the ‘Coming soon’ signs up, but you can visit and sign up for an email alert for when the site goes live later this month.
DevOps Update
DevOps has started work on packaging Daedalus installers for the upcoming Incentivized phase. They have also begun work on building components needed for the new v2 Explorer. Additionally, the DevOps team executed performance tests with increasing number of nodes. This week’s test successfully analyzed performance with 255 nodes.
Community Content
Please note, these community resources are shared in good faith for you to use at your own discretion. You’ll always find ‘official’ documentation and instructions within IOHK & Cardano channels.
- Cardano Ambassador, Markus Gufler has made a website dedicated to sharing education content about staking, such as how to build and run a pool on a RockPi device. Watch an introduction video about ‘Cardano on the Rocks’ here.
- One of our newest Ambassadors has also joined in to help support the testnet program. Watch the Cryptoviser’s video about all the things you should know for the upcoming Incentivized phase.
That’s it for now!
Thanks
The Stakepool Testing team