Four months ago, we began our work designing the first ever global investment protocol; last week, we released the first full draft of our whitepaper; today, I’m excited to announce the availability of our alpha testnet. While our whitepaper represents the first elucidation of the Topl protocol at the highest level, our alpha testnet is the first step in bringing this protocol to life.

We’re releasing the testnet today for two reasons. First, by continuously running our protocol in the “real” world, we can begin to test our system and work out any bugs (unforeseen features) all while continuing to issue upgrades and improvements. Second, we are publicly releasing our testnet — along with all of our code — as an invitation to all of you.

Our mission is to build a more open global financial system, focused on bringing capital to the regions of the world with the greatest need and potential for growth. In order to best accomplish this, we must take an open and global approach to the development of this system. We believe that this mission is one that is both exciting and worthwhile and hope that you may too. If you have any interest or experience in finance, global development, or the blockchain — or if you’re passionate about the power of innovation to solve some of the world’s great problems — we sincerely hope you join us on this journey.

In its simplest form, the Topl protocol is about connecting investors to enterprises in developing countries. Although this first release of our testnet lacks many important features, we believe it does well to illustrate the framework of the connections and contracts we hope to facilitate. So if you are, or would like to be, an investor in emerging economies or a business or project located in a developing country, we invite you to start playing around on the testnet. There will be no real money or value of any kind and no contracts will be considered real or enforceable, but your observations and feedback will be crucial to ensuring that when the product is finally ready, it is one that meets your needs and concerns.

On the other hand, if you are a developer, we encourage you to begin checking out our code base over on Github. We develop almost exclusively in Scala and Javascript, so those familiar with Java and the JVM or writing web applications should quickly feel at home. We’re a small but very open team, and we more than welcome your contributions!