POA Network is excited to announce our official status as one of four new authorities validating the Kovan network! The Kovan test network has been an integral cog in the overall Ethereum ecosystem, providing a secure testing environment to many projects including MakerDAO and Golem, and we’re extremely excited to begin our official support!

Parity recently announced their intention to shut down their Kovan authority node. After this decision, POA Network, as well as several other interested parties, stepped up to bring a brand new set of validators to the Kovan network. This ensures the continued safe and secure operation of Kovan for the foreseeable future.

Parity is working closely with POA Network to see this initiative through and have guaranteed their full support during the transition. Parity has also included the new authority specifications in the master branch of Parity as part of their next release.

The transition will bring notable advantages to the network including:

4 second block times (instead of 12 seconds) making it the FASTEST Ethereum testnet.

On-chain upgradability.

POA on-chain governance model and balloting to manage network changes.

Long Term Support (LTS) of the network.

A hard fork will occur with this transition, but the outcome will NOT result in a network split. This is simply an upgrade from one validator set to another, with the intention that the new validator set will be more robust and involved to ensure the Kovan network continues to thrive and support developers.

The new set of validators supporting Kovan going forward are:

This hard fork upgrade will be supported by Infura and Etherscan who will be switching their endpoints. Along with Parity, GridSigularity will also upgrade their nodes to reflect the change.

Stay tuned for more updates regarding the Kovan network!