Hello everyone, we recently recevied a lot of questions regarding the ARPA DevNet & TestNet, we wrote down some key points for y

02 Feb 2023, 19:55
Hello everyone, we recently recevied a lot of questions regarding the ARPA DevNet & TestNet, we wrote down some key points for you to get a better understanding of the different phases of ARPA Network development. DevNet (ongoing, ETA in Feb) It’s a series of internal tests by our own tech team. The overall purpose is to make sure when we enter into the next phase (Public Testnet), all the basic-level bugs are fixed, and the network can run steadily. The tests mainly include node-related test and smart contract end-to-end integration test, to make sure relative functionalities operate smoothly. *Re the meaning of node, this article may help: *Re smart contract integration: basically, ARPA as a computation network, will provide computation service to clients (usually other Dapps), the communication between service provider and the clients will be done via the smart contract (like user interface) integrated into ARPA Network. Public Testnet (scheduled in Q1) It’s open to public. Interested developers can run their own tests targeting the code (fully open-source), hopefully help us to spot and fix more potential bugs. We may hold events such as bug bounty or hackathon to encourage developers to participate. Also, we may invite node operators (institutional/individual) to set up nodes and test the security and stability of ARPA network. In this phase, we may use test token (or you can consider it as “credits” without actual value) for the tokenomics-related tests, such as node deposit (operators need to make deposit of the network’s token to set up the nodes), and gas fee payment (initiating computation tasks may cost certain amount of network tokens). Mainnet (scheduled in Q2) It’s official, and it’s permissionless. There won’t be many differences between the TestNet (debugged/latest version) in terms of functionality. But the token-related sections will require ARPA tokens (the circulating tokens with actual value). In this phase, nodes need to deposit ARPA tokens when set up, and when they complete computation tasks, they will get rewards in ARPA tokens that they can sell on free market. Dapps/developers can “purchase” computation service and pay in ARPA tokens.