On Sunday, Skycoin (SKY), a blockchain-based distributed internet project, announced that the beta release of its Skywire would take place on Tuesday, May 22.

Attention #Skyfleet! The entire #Skycoin team is excited to announce that the #Skywire Testnet will officially begin on May 22nd! Build your #Skyminer, prepare for launch, and read up on this fast approaching, pivotal event:https://t.co/fkqmacosS4$SKY #TheNewInternet — Skycoin (@SkycoinProject) May 15, 2018

In the announcement, the Skycoin team outlines its plans during the testnet phase and the ways its community can get involved in return for Skycoin payment.

“The soon to be released formal version of Skywire will allow the Skycoin team to test the functions of fundamental applications, the performance of nodes and various miners, and develop a fair economic system. In the meantime, those who meet our standards for testing will be rewarded with Skycoin in order to incentivize the growth of our ecosystem.”

Skycoin already has a fairly large network established for the Skywire, with over 2,300 official nodes and thousands of DIY nodes spread around the globe. The official nodes are running on custom hardware, called Skywire Miners, developed and sold by the Skycoin team. This hardware functions as a miner for Skycoins while acting as a specialized VPN.

In the testnet phase, the network functions as an overlay since traffic between Skywire nodes must travel over the existing Internet unless the nodes are directly connected over Ethernet or WiFi. It’s important to note that for miners to receive rewards during this phase, they must submit an application to the official team, regardless if they are running an official Skyminer or a DIY miner.

In order to receive rewards, nodes must be active at least 75% of each reward period, and those with DIY nodes will be whitelisted into the network at a rate of 50 per week. The coming Skywire software can run on the Mac OS, Linux and Go environments, but not Windows, currently.