Building off years of hard work and the success of Minimal Viable Pocket (MVP), the Pocket Network team is especially excited to launch phase one of the Pocket Core Testnet!

Phase One features include:

Pocket Core Daemon Pocket CLI Pocket-JS Pocket-web3-provider Pocket Node Deployments Pocket Faucet for test tokens

For specific details, read What to Expect from Testnet Phase One.

Pocket Core Testnet Phase One represents the transition from our previous MVP architecture to an architecture of a truly permissionless, resilient, and redundant design .

Here are the before and after photos:

Phase one of Pocket Core Testnet launches with baseline support for Ethereum, Open Applications Network (previously AION), POA Network, xDAI Chain, Tezos, Lightstreams, and many more. During testnet, a developer will need to stake POKT test tokens to access the Pocket protocol and connect their application to any of these blockchains, while node operators have to stake POKT test tokens to begin servicing relays to and from an application’s desired network. To learn about the monetary policy of the Pocket Network, seek the Pocket Economic Paper.

Because of our unique architecture and support for many blockchains, the protocol can enable developers to build a multi-chain application by using Pocket to seamlessly interface with and easily pull features from these different blockchains. The same principle could be applied to their respective testnets, so in other words, an application would be able to connect to both a testnet and mainnet, then smoothly flip between the two when either in testing or production mode. This is also useful for de-risking your proof-of-concept development across multiple chains.

By extension, this also means node operators can run multiple Pocket Nodes in tandem with full-nodes of different external blockchains, which supports the security and progressive decentralization of not only Pocket but also a diverse set of blockchains.

To get started building an unstoppable application and supporting decentralized infrastructure, check out the newly designed Pocket Developer Portal. The dev portal has sections for both developers and node operators.

It is important to bear in mind that this is a testnet. It can, and probably will break. To minimize this, the Pocket developer team is launching two independent testnets, one internal and the other external. The internal testnet operates as a staging environment of sorts, where the development team will be able to test, break, and fix things. This will feed into bringing stability to the external testnet. Hop into the #noderunner channel in our Discord to coordinate on running your public testnet node and to stay up to date on changes. During this period, the Pocket development team will be resetting the external test network every three days at 12:00 PM EST.

If you run into any problems, please seek support from the dev team in the #support channel on our Discord server.

Connect with Pocket:

As an open-source project, you can keep up with our progress on Github.

For updates, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our monthly newsletter on Substack.

Join us on Discord to talk with the team and community.