It’s been quite a whirlwind since our announcement of Sui to the world only four months ago. It feels like several lifetimes have passed, as many crypto and blockchain community members, including ourselves, have witnessed repeated ups and downs. However, Sui team believes that these moments of extreme market volatility present the best opportunity to buckle down and construct the infrastructure necessary to onboard web3’s next billion users.
Today, team thrilled to announce that Sui’s Incentivized Testnet will launch in August, marking the next phase in the creation of a secure, high-performing, and decentralized blockchain network.
Sui team has been hard at work since the initial announcement, finalizing the design and implementation of Sui Move, an improved version of the original Move instantiation in Diem that’s optimized for ergonomic and highly parallelizable code. Also open-sourced the Narwhal/Tusk consensus and integrated it with Sui to support shared object transactions. Furthermore, team released a public DevNet for early Sui builders and partners, launched the Sui Explorer that leverages Sui’s object-centric data model to display transactions in a human-readable way, and introduced fullnodes, which have received an enthusiastic response from our community, with over 5,000 nodes currently running in 65 countries and 271 cities!
We’d like to express our gratitude for the engagement, thoughtfulness, and commitment of our Sui community. We value our partners, investors, DevNet builders, fullnode operators, GitHub contributors, Discord moderators and participants, social media followers, and everyone else who has dedicated their time and energy to Sui. We are fully dependent on you, and our community has repeatedly demonstrated the value and importance of public feedback throughout the early phases of a major undertaking like Sui.
The Sui Testnet Roadmap outlines a steady progression from the first multi-entity Sui network towards a decentralized mainnet operated by an evolving set of independent and distributed validators. The Testnet will gradually introduce and stress-test key features and mechanisms required for a decentralized, production-ready Sui network. The aim is to validate designs, test validator, full node, wallet, and developer toolchains, and build operational experience with a cohesive group of high-quality operators. The transition from Testnet to mainnet will occur when the software’s security and performance are fully assured, sustained operational excellence is demonstrated by initial validators, and the developer experience is validated through compelling Move-powered applications deployed on Testnet.
Sui’s Testnet is organized into a series of consecutive “waves,” with each wave consisting of two challenges: a “sink” for an operational challenge and a “swim” for a Move-based Sui developer challenge.
This is what we know so far about the first three waves of Sui’s Testnet. We’ve provided more details on earlier waves to allow flexibility for augmentations based on what we learn:
Network
For the first time, a multi-entity public Sui network will come together in the Sink challenge. This will test our distributed genesis ceremony, validator configuration, operational coordination, and basic network operations. In the Swim challenge, Sui developers will have the opportunity to deploy on Testnet. More details will be announced soon, but we’ll give one cryptic hint for now: Capybaras!
Staking
The Sink challenge tests Sui’s key economic mechanisms, particularly the Delegated Proof-of-Stake mechanism that secures the network through an array of incentives aligning the interests of all Sui stakeholders. We aim to test the design and implementation of these mechanisms in this wave. In the Swim challenge, we’ll focus on building and deploying financial primitives, particularly staking derivatives and DeFi basics.
Updates
This wave tests our operators as they drill key network operations, such as validator set changes, software updates, and incident responsiveness, to ensure stable and secure high-throughput network operations in the Sink challenge. The Swim challenge is connected to our upcoming Move hackathon during Science of Blockchain week.
Incentives
Sui’s Testnet will feature a menu of incentives for meaningful participation in the Testnet waves, which will be available to network operators, users, developers, and other community members according to clear and well-specified guidelines. The Incentivized Testnet will require hard work from both the Mysten Labs team and the Sui community for success. Our goal is to make the most of the Incentivized Testnet and ensure that Sui is battle-tested and ready for mainnet.
Additionally, during the early waves of Testnet, the Sui Foundation will become a crucial investment partner for the Sui network. The Foundation’s mandate entrusts it with the mission of disseminating Sui education, promoting and bolstering use cases, applications, ancillary infrastructure and services, leading to the network’s long-term success. It will achieve these goals by distributing token grants and providing developer support for users and builders of the Sui network. Stay tuned for more updates!