Mainnet Milestone: Nocturne is Live

Testnet is live!

We are pleased to announce that Nocturne, the Dusk testnet, is live as of 22:00 on October 1st!

The Nocturne rollout is staggered, to allow us to build the network in a sustainable way, inviting the community to join as we go. We have separated the rollout into stages to ensure smoothness and stability for all. 

Read on for the rollout plan, how you can join, and what this means for mainnet. 

Please note: The rollout plan is subject to change depending on how testnet performs, and bugs and issues found, so please treat this as an intended guide, not a precise schedule. There are some variables depending on how testnet performs. 

We will continue to communicate with you and provide updates. 

Stage 1: Nocturne is live

The first stage of the rollout was done internally, with the Dusk development team successfully launching the first clusters, alongside community members and professional node operators who joined the “dry run”. 

This has been structured as:

500K tDUSK per node, with us running 100 nodes

100K tDUSK assigned to each member of the 10 people dry run group

The dry run group consists of long time community members and professional node operators.

Nocturne began producing blocks at 22:00 on October 1st, and is now considered stable enough to move to the next stage of the roll out. 

Stage 2: Opening the Faucet and Staking with The Rusk Wallet

As of today, October 2nd, the faucet for Moonlight transactions is open. This makes it possible for everyone to get 1100 tDUSK and stake through the Rusk Wallet. 

This is open to all community members who wish to participate. To request tDUSK from the faucet:

• Join the Dusk Discord server.
• From the team members, locate the bot “Dusk Testnet Faucet.”
• Right-click and select “Message”.
• Send !dusk as a command. The bot will reply, asking for your Testnet wallet address.
• Done! Your transaction will be queued, and you will see it in your wallet once processed.

There is currently a limit of 1 transaction per user/wallet every 24 hours.

For more information, you can refer to the faucet docs.

To run a node on Nocturne, operators can follow our existing node running guide. If you ran a Nocturne node before, be sure to reset your node first. Keep in mind that there’s no need to unstake, and that you’ll need to get new tDUSK, as we reset the full Nocturne state.

Stage 3: From Lunare to Nocturne Testing

The next stage will revolve around testing and optimization, with no specific new tasks or updates for the community. You can still use the faucet, deploy nodes, and engage with Nocturne. 

The Dusk team will move its testing focus from devnet to testnet, to see how the network performs under pressure with our own and community-run nodes.

The team will run ongoing tests, implement optimizations, and ensure that Nocturne is running smoothly and as expected. 

Stage 4: Mainnet

Testnet is the final stage before we launch Mainnet. 

We are so excited to be so close to launching and bringing years of work, research, and development to fruition. 

Assuming everything goes smoothly with testnet, we will be ready to launch Mainnet as planned. 

If there are unforeseen issues, we may have to adjust our launch date to allow for the issues to be fixed before launching. 

We will communicate as we go and keep everyone informed. 

Thank you for joining us on this journey, and we are pleased to have Nocturne up, running, and laying the foundation for mainnet!