Anticipation Discreet's Alpha Testnet Release
It's closer than you think! Learn what you need to do to get ready.
Anticipation of Testnet
Over the past year, the Discreet team has been rapidly developing what is shaping up to be the most sound privacy network to date, and we have no plans of stopping. Discreet will remain in development for years and years and will keep adapting to the (finally) bustling field of zero-knowledge research. We’re super excited to see the explosion of novel research in this area and we can’t wait to participate ourselves through zkxiv, our own research division.
But now for the good stuff; we’re finally at a stage where we can give more concrete details on when fully-working copies of the Discreet daemon & GUI wallet will be shipped for applicable alpha testnet participants:
Participation requirements
In order to participate in the testnet you need:
- 3000 BDIS (if you’d like to increase your balance to 3000 BDIS, you can do so at the 'Buy' page).
- A machine that supports a 64-bit architecture.
- A machine running Linux or Windows.
- An application to participate in the testnet. You can sign up at https://discreet.net/news//apply-alpha.
We fully plan to support macOS, ARM & OpenBSD in the public testnet; more coming on this in a later article.
Node types
In the testnet there will be 3 categories of nodes:
- Bootstrap nodes (more below)
- Shadow nodes (nodes with TCP port 9875 not forwarded/reachable)
- Public nodes (nodes with TCP port 9875 reachable)
If you plan on running a public node and participating in bolstering the network, please let us know through Telegram or elsewhere.
Bootstrap nodes are run by 12 individuals not associated with Juche SIA (the company developing Discreet), this is done to ensure decentralization of authority over the network, and make sure the network can run regardless of Juche SIA. The bootstrap operators are vetted based on ethos alignment with our mission of absolute privacy, technical ability, and devotion to our cause. Currently we have a very promising roster of bootstrap node operators, including individuals with a masters degree in decentralized networks, however, we’re always open to more candidates. If you wish to become a bootstrap node operator, please write your qualifications to [email protected] (this position is subsidized in mainnet Discreet coins).
Expectations during testnet
The testnet will gather information on network performance, and will undergo several changes during its uptime. These changes include, but are not limited to, performance optimizations, feature expansions, wallet updates, and more.
We’re very excited to finally be able to show off what we’ve been working on to the community, and we hope you are too!
Alpha release date & public testnet
We anticipate the alpha testnet binaries will be distributed in mid-July of this year. So get ready. As for when testnet participation will no longer require 3000 BDIS, that’s still to-be-determined, but we promise we’ll be working around to clock to fix and improve any issues found during the alpha testnet so the public testnet more closely represents the final product we're aiming for.
Feedback
We’d love to hear your feedback! Once you receive your GUI wallet, you'll see a tab called “Submit issue”. You can either submit a bug you ran into or just comment on something you thought could be more intuitive. We’re always open to suggestions. You have the option to attach images to these submissions (e.g. screenshots of illustrating your point).
We hope you’re as excited as we are about finally getting access to a network that’s “alive”, testing/working alongside developers, and seeing bugs being squashed in realtime. We sure are!
Downloads
