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Announcement Kadena Public Blockchain Testnet LIVE
3 minutes readkadenachainwebpact

Announcement: Kadena Public Blockchain Testnet LIVE

Kadena is excited to announce that Chainweb–Kadena’s public proof-of-work blockchain–is now LIVE in testnet!

Update: 03/26/19 3:34PM ET: Kadena’s Chainweb testnet is now live in South America (Brazil), bringing us up to 4 global regions.

What is Chainweb Testnet? This version features the core innovation of Kadena’s Chainweb: multiple, braided proof-of-work chains progressing in parallel, each referencing its peer chains, synced over four global regions (Asia, US, EU, LA) to represent a truly distributed, secure, scalable blockchain.

Chainweb Testnet v0 includes:

  • 10 chains — This is the most innovative and important feature of Chainweb. We are testing the security and scalability of braiding multiple Bitcoin-like (proof-of-work) chains.

  • Multiple regions — In order to truly test the speeds of a global network, Kadena’s Chainweb Testnet v0 will test global latencies by syncing across servers in Asia, North America, South America, and Europe.

  • Fully open source — Download and test the network yourself (Github). If you are setting up Chainweb and have questions, head over to #chainweb on our Discord.

  • Process Pact transactions — Kadena’s open-source Pact language is easy to learn, and is purpose-built for blockchain, capturing simple transactions and more complex business workflows; Chainweb v0 intends to support Pact transactions.

Why is this testnet important? Kadena is a fundamental believer in the legacy and integrity of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work protocol. Chainweb is designed to give blockchain scalability AND security through its multi-chain configuration; we believe it is the first of its kind. For more about Chainweb, check out our 101/FAQ and read the whitepaper.

How can I participate in testnet? Beginning with v1 and v2, our testnet will become open to the public to participate in the network. v0 is private but open source on Github, so you can look at the code, compile, and run your own network and tests. *Find something interesting? *Let us know in the #chainweb channel). Sign up for testnet participation updates via our newsletter.

What else is next? Look forward to our next versions (with weekly updates all summer) for the following additional upgrades:

  • Scaling up (via hard fork) to 20, 50, 100 chains

  • Mining client

  • Wallets

  • More dashboards

  • KIPs*, including: coin contract

*KIPs (Kadena Improvement Process) are modeled after Ethereum and Bitcoin’s improvement proposals. We’ll soon publicize the methods by which our community can introduce and execute improvements to our protocol.

**Interested in mining Chainweb? **Our next test version aims to have a mining client, sign up here to get on our Mining Waitlist.