We are happy to announce that the Blockpool blockchain will be updated to the Ark v2 codebase. This will improve throughput, introduce a plugins system, and much more, as well as resolve ongoing issues that currently impact chain stability.

The upgrade is in process and will be ready for community testing on Monday, July 1. This post is an introduction to the upgrade, the tradeoffs we faced, and what you can expect to happen as we move forward with the upgrade process.

v2 Hardfork

There are two options for upgrading the chain. The option that Ark chose is superior in that it maintains all history in the new chain. Unfortunately we will instead opt to start with a new chain. This is mainly do to limited resources and the urgency of fixing the stability issues that we are seeing today.

This means that at some point in July, Blockpool will designate a block height for a hardfork. This hardfork will have a new set of seed delegates that will be running when the network starts. For users of the network, this should be a mostly seamless experience. All wallets on the old v1 chain will have their balances transferred to the new v2 chain. However, due to the nature of the hardfork, existing votes, second passphrases, and delegate registrations will not be brought forward. Instead, there will be additional transactions sent with refunds for any of those three that apply to the wallet.

Action may be required by users such as

Anyone voting for a delegate or pool will have to recast that vote

Anyone currently running a delegate that wishes to continue running one will have to register their delegate again.

Anyone that currently has a second passphrase will need to add a new one, and be sure to safely store it because it will not be the same as the second passphrase you currently have.

An unintended (but pleasant) consequence of the above, is that any of the currently "dead" delegates will end up being removed from the active forging list. It will be nice to see a full list of delegates forging!

Blockpool will also keep an explorer around so people can view the v1 chain, it will also make a final snapshot available for download.

Updated Forging Reward Schedule

In addition to the stability changes and the chain upgrade, we will be modifying the forging rewards. [Because they lack the proper incentives](<REDDIT LINK>) for a healthy delegate structure, the original percentage-based rewards will be discontinued. Moving forward, only fixed rewards will be awarded for forging. In addition, we have defined a max supply of BPL -- 50 million. We believe we have reached a balance between making forging worthwhile now, while there is no sidechain income, and having a long enough time period to ensure delegates stay active long-term. To this end, once forging starts on the v2 chain, we will be reducing the fixed reward to 4 BPL per block.





The rewards milestones will be as follows:

4 BPL - 1,051,230 blocks (~6 months)



3 BPL - 1,576,845 blocks (~9 months)



2 BPL - 3,153,690 blocks (~18 months)



1 BPL - 4,730,535 blocks (~27 months)



(0.xxx BPL) - 201 blocks (there will be one round at the end to get us to exactly 50 million BPL)

Note: The final block height for the 1 BPL reward period and the BPL reward for the final reward period cannot be determined until the final snapshot has been taken.

Community Feedback and Testing

With this blog post, we have started the Community Feedback phase of the Blockpool v2 upgrade. Please join us on Discord for any questions or concerns you may have. Testing will begin next week with this schedule:

Monday, July 1: The Blockpool team will take a snapshot of the current chain, and start an alphanet running with seed node delegates. The process used will be the same process that will be used to initiate the upcoming hardfork. There will also be a blog post with a walkthrough on how to use the v2 desktop wallet, which we will ask people to download to verify that their balances have transferred properly and that other functionality is working.

The Blockpool team will take a snapshot of the current chain, and start an alphanet running with seed node delegates. The process used will be the same process that will be used to initiate the upcoming hardfork. There will also be a blog post with a walkthrough on how to use the v2 desktop wallet, which we will ask people to download to verify that their balances have transferred properly and that other functionality is working. Tuesday, July 2: The team will publish a blog post with instructions on how to install the Blockpool node software so that people can setup alphanet delegates. We ask anyone interested in running a delegate after the hardfork test it out and report back with any questions or issues so that we can get documentation ready for the release.

The team will publish a blog post with instructions on how to install the Blockpool node software so that people can setup alphanet delegates. We ask anyone interested in running a delegate after the hardfork test it out and report back with any questions or issues so that we can get documentation ready for the release. Tuesday, July 2 - Tuesday, July 16: Network stability will be monitored and any issues that appear during testing will be fixed.

Network stability will be monitored and any issues that appear during testing will be fixed. Wednesday, July 17: The final block of the v1 chain will be determined. When that block height is reached, the final snapshot will be taken, and the v2 chain will be live.

The final block of the v1 chain will be determined. When that block height is reached, the final snapshot will be taken, and the v2 chain will be live. One week after v2 chain goes live: Delegate rewards will start.

Thank You

Finally, we'd like to thank everyone that has stuck with us through the tough times. We know that it hasn't been easy, but this upgrade is the first step in a new beginning.

