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- The IOHK team has announced that they will continue the Shelley Incentivized Testnet (ITN) for testing and prototyping at least until the Mainnet is deployed
- In the long term, the ITN could be used for the development of the following Cardano epochs: Goguen, Basho and Voltaire.
- Staking pool operators can vote on the future of the ITN from 25 to 28 June.
The IOHK team has listened to the community and announced the continuation of the Shelley Incentivized Testnet (ITN) for the summer. The ITN will initially continue as a testing and prototyping network until the launch of Shelley. After that, if it proves successful, the IOHK team could use it in the future development of Cardano.
CNF reported that there will be a vote on the future of the ITN. As the launch of Shelley Mainnet is imminent, the ITN should be discontinued according to the original plan. However, IOHK recognised the value of ITN.
CEO of IOHK and inventor of Cardano (ADA), Charles Hoskinson made a series of videos announcing IOHK’s intentions to keep the ITN going. Hoskinson said there were already some plans to keep the ITN as an experimental platform for exploring new or rejected concepts. In addition, a dynamic similar to that of Bitcoin and Litecoin could be established, in which the ITN would have its own value, Hoskinson said recently.
A vote to decide the future of Cardanos ITN
As IOHK also explained, the launch of Shelley remains a top priority. Furthermore, the Jormungandr team behind the ITN is separate from the team working on Shelley’s leek. In the long term, IOHK intends to use the ITN as a tool for the design and development of the future Cardano epochs: Goguen, Basho and Voltaire. As part of Shelley’s launch party, the Jormungandr team will already present the first progress of the ITN.
Initially, IOHK is particularly interested in continuing the rewards for another month, in order to receive the support of the community. With this in mind, from today, 25 June, until 28 June, between the 195th and 198th epochs, the operators of the staking pools will be able to vote on whether they wish to continue with the ITN, as IOHK explained:
Everyone can reclaim what they have already earned once we have the main network Shelley. That’s just a potential additional month. So all new rewards would be payable as of epoch 199 (2020-06-29 19:13:37) – the date of the voting results will be known, and the reward pots will be increased by 95M Test-ADA if the proposal receives a majority of “Yes”.
This first vote will be “technocratic”, and IOHK requires the operators of the stake pools to have Jormungandr node version 0.9x installed in order to participate in the voting process. If the operators vote “Yes”, the entire Cardano community and all ADA owners can vote before IOHK makes a final decision. The latter vote could take place in July, as IOHK wrote:
To be successful, this first vote needs 50% plus one of the electorate (relative to their ITN percentage) to say yes. Voters who abstain will be counted for participation, but will not be counted ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If the community votes ‘yes’, we will put 95M Test ADAs into the reward pot. This amount is equal to the total monthly payment of rewards to the ITN, which we believe is fair. This amount will be visible on the block chain and via the Explorer backend.
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