IOHK, the developers of Cardano, have announced that they will be taking the ADA balance snapshot for their incentivized Shelley testnet program on November 29 at 12:00 AM UTC.

The incentivized testnet is special because it will allow ADA holders to earn rewards in the form of real ADA in exchange for operating a staking pool or delegating their vote. The IOHK team explains:

“The Incentivized Testnet will allow us to test something our earlier testnets couldn't: real behavior -- and real behavior requires real rewards. On the Incentivized Testnet, ada holders will be able to participate in the network and earn real ada through stake delegation or operating a stake pool.”

Those who wish to participate in incentivized network staking will need to hold their ADA in either a Yoroi or Daedalus wallet at the time of the snapshot – ADA held on cryptocurrency exchanges or other wallets will not count towards the snapshot. Most users will likely opt for the Yoroi wallet, which is a light wallet that operates as a web browser extension. Daedalus, on the other hand, comes with a full Cardano node and substantial storage and bandwidth requirements.

Despite a disappointing -14% performance in 2019 so far, Cardano remains just outside the crypto top 10 and still retains an impressive market cap of $936 million. At the time of writing, ADA is changing hands at $0.036.