Please see our demo video of preview testnet, version 0.1 “Firefox”. The video is 5'18", produced by NKN team.

Below are the script from the demo video:

NKN is the new kind of network connectivity protocol and ecosystem powered by blockchain for an open, decentralized, and shared internet.

This is our updated roadmap. You can see there are two major tracks: testnet and mainnet. The v0.1 Firefox that we demo today is the first of a multi-phase approach, toward offering a full featured testnet by January of 2019. An early version of NKN’s Mainnet will be available beginning in March 2019 with the production system launch planned for June 2019. Our mainnet production system launch is 3 months earlier than our previous roadmap.

Our research and development team has been working hard on the development of our testnet. Earlier this month we were very proud to announce that our core code repository was open sourced 3 weeks ahead of our schedule, beating our own expectation.

Today we are pleased to announce three new achievements.

Release our testnet preview demo, or version 0.1 “Firefox” our blockchain explorer for better visualization An experimental client SDK in Javascript for application developers to build on top of NKN

This is our blockchain explorer, showing the real time status of our live testnet preview demo distributed globally.

[Internet Topology section] As you can see in the Internet Topology section, our testnet preview demo includes 15 nodes running globally. You can see the location and IP address of each node by hovering on the blue dots in the map. The orange line shows the trajectory of packet when it’s being relayed in NKN. Orange dots are connected clients. Usually a packet originates from a client, relayed by a few nodes, and finally delivered to another client.

[Signature Chain section] When a packet is being transmitted, a signature chain is generated as the proof of relay for all the relayer nodes along the route, as shown in the Signature Chain section. Relayer nodes may get token rewards from the client that sends the packet. The price is determined by sender and relayers, similar to how gas price is determined in Ethereum. The signature chain with lowest last signature will be selected to produce ledger node, similar to Bitcoin mining, but in a useful way. When a signature chain is selected, [cursor move to the selected (orange) node in the sigchain] the ledger node is chosen from the relayer nodes in the signature chain using the modulus of the last signature. The ledger node will propose the next block and get mining rewards if successful. A complete list of signature chains and more details can be found in the signature chain tab [click View All]. Here we can see more information including the transaction hash of each signature chain, and which block it is packed into.

[click Home, go to DHT Mapping Topology section] Each node and client in NKN network has a NKN address, which is represented by a point in the virtual ring in the DHT Mapping Topology section. NKN is an overlay network, so all the topology and routing is done in the virtual space. The orange line shows the path of the signature chain above in the virtual space.

[Blocks section] The Blocks section shows the latest blocks produced in our testnet. Information here includes block height, when it’s created, and how many transactions are packed in the block. A complete list of blocks and more details can be found in the Blocks tab [click View All]. Here we can see more information like who produced, or mined, each block, and block size.

[click blockchain -> transactions tab] A list of transactions contained in each block can be found in Transactions tab. Here we can see two types of transactions: signature chain and mining rewards. Signature chain transactions are generated when data is transmitted in NKN network. Mining rewards transactions are generated once per block to the node that successfully produced the block. There are more transaction types available, e.g. transfer, that you will see in the future when there are more activities in the testnet.

[Use Case] On top of the navigation bar there is a Use Case section, [click Use Case] which leads us to a simple messenger web app built upon the testnet preview demo. There are 2 clients on the page, each is a NKN client connected to our testnet. When we type something in Client A and click Send button, [type message in Client A and click the send button] the message is actually sent to our testnet and being relayed by nodes in the testnet demo to Client B. Client B will receive the message immediately and display it. Let’s type something in Client B as reply [type message in Client B and click the send button] and it will send the message to Client A through the testnet demo. Let’s send a couple more messages altogether and we will be able to see these signature chains packed into the block. [send around 10 messages in Client A in a very short amount time, like within 5 seconds]

[Internet Topology section] On top of the messengers there is an Internet Topology section showing the actual relay path of the packet when we send a message. Because clients are initialized with random address every time we open the page, the relay path will be different if we refresh the page and send a message again [refresh the page using mouse and send a message, wait until the path shows in the Internet Topology section].

[Home] Now if we go back to homepage [click Home], we can actually see block that contains the message we just sent. [Wait until Blocks section shows blocks data, and move cursor to the block that has a lot more transactions than others] As we can see, this block contains a lot more transactions, which are the signature chains for the messages we just sent.