Dusk Network Launches Testnet 2.0, Upgraded Staking Contract Goes Live With 100+ Nodes

Dusk Network has launched the second iteration of its testnet: Daylight. Among the newly implemented features is the network’s upgraded staking contract, which improves the stability of the blockchain and paves the road for scalable node participation in the near future.

Since the launch of our first version of testnet “Daybreak” in March
2022 the developers at Dusk Network have been working non-stop on
improvements and bug fixes. Today we proudly launch the second edition
of our testnet called “Daylight”. In this article you will be informed
about all the changes and improvements Testnet Daylight will bring to
the Dusk Network.__
Daylight Testnet brings upgraded Staking Contract

The improved testnet allows network participants and the wider
blockchain community to begin transacting on the network,
pressure-testing it for performance and user-experience improvements.

Daylight is an important milestone in Dusk Network’s journey toward
becoming the layer-1 blockchain for confidential smart contracts,
powered by zero-knowledge cryptography.

The testnet is powered by more than 100 nodes at launch, a significant
upgrade from Daybreak’s node economy. Increasing the number of
Provisioners has had no adverse impact on the stability of the network,
bolstering the team’s confidence in onboarding community node runners in
the near future.

In addition to the numerous stability and resilience improvements, the
team also released various user-facing improvements.__
A significantly faster CLI Wallet

A new Command Line Interface (CLI) wallet for users to interact with the
Daylight testnet, fully replacing the old CLI wallet. The new CLI wallet
boasts fast synchronization times and a stable cache mechanism to fetch
user balances quickly. This update aims to fully resolve connectivity
issues.__
Almost ready for… Staking!

The latest deployment features a new staking contract that has been
completely refactored to resolve an issue with the blockchain’s storage.
In addition, block rewards (the reward in DUSK given to provisioners
supporting the network) will now be accumulated instead of being
immediately transferred. This streamlines reward distribution.
Provisioners can now initiate a “withdraw reward” transaction to receive
their rewards. Whilst Daylight isn’t open for community node
participation yet, Dusk Network will begin testing the resilience of the
network with the addition of malicious nodes, as well as some
community-run nodes.

Block Explorer: Gas Tracking & User Experience improvements

The block explorer enables anyone to quickly gauge on-chain activity
and, with today’s upgrade, minor improvements to the user experience
will be noticeable. For example, the TPS statistic has been replaced
with a statistic that indicates the total number of transactions in the
last 100 blocks. In addition, users can now track gas expenditures in
real-time.

Next steps

Since March 2022 we’ve been testing the Daybreak network in a protected
environment. All nodes were hosted by the team, whilst the community
could interact with the network by firing transactions from their CLI
wallets and inspecting network activity through the Block Explorer.
Daylight takes this one step further and grows the node economy
supporting the network, even though this is largely still in a protected
environment, we aim to introduce malicious nodes and invite a small
number of community participants to run their own node. This phase is an
important step to ensure a smooth transition to a fully
community-powered testnet as soon as possible.

We’d love the communities’ early involvement in transacting on the
network, pressure-testing it for performance and user-experience
improvements. So please take the new CLI wallet for a spin.

Get started now! Download the CLI Wallet

Testnet Daylight will require you to download the latest version of
the CLI wallet.

The new CLI Wallet is available on Linux and macOS.