The Matic team is proud to announce the launch of its final version of the Matic Network Testnet to complete the final round of internal testing before the much-awaited launch of Matic’s alpha-Mainnet this month. The team has been building and testing the code diligently and now would like to present it to the developer community to test and incorporate their feedback. This launch will be a major milestone for the Matic team & community as we jointly take another stride towards making our goal of mass adoption of blockchains a reality.

The latest testnet launch will allow the teams to test their migration scripts and will allow Matic team to test the latest updates in the validator node and latest smart contracts. Once everything is successfully tested, we will move towards launching the α-Mainnet.

To ensure that we iron out the kinks before the Mainnet release, we have planned the road to mainnet in 3 release phases:

Final Testnet — (Deployed on 3rd June) Developer documentation here

— α-Mainnet — Nicknamed तपस (Tapas) (Q2 2019)

— Nicknamed Beta Mainnet v0.1 — Nicknamed आरंभ (Aarambh) (Q3 2019)

PS: In the Hindi Tapas stands for ‘penance’ and Aarambh stands for ‘the beginning’. It’s quoted in its native Devanagari script above.

This testnet release required a lot of hard work from the team wherein we had to incorporate feedback from the teams who have been already building on Matic. We also added more developer tooling with the testnet to make the development experience even better. This testnet will allow the projects being built on Matic to test out their mainnet migration scripts, tooling, User experience, and overall robustness.

The functionalities achieved by this testnet launch are the ones mentioned with The goals for α-Mainnet (तपस). The name Tapas signifies penance like dedication shown by the dev team in achieving the milestones ahead of time.

The section below details what to expect and what features will be added in the subsequent releases. This is planned to ensure we ship a robust, well tested and iterated upon network with the α-Mainnet feedback incorporated to make interacting with the network a breezy experience.

What’s Next

This is extremely important to us, as Matic aims to not only scale blockchains, but also to provide an impeccable developer and user experience.

Our Goals for the α-Mainnet :

To provide early access to a variety of applications, which need fast and low-cost ERC20 and ERC721 transfers, to test their migration and DApp experience on Matic Network

To release the technical documentation in the wild and ensure its reliability via developer testing

Subject the Matic Network contracts and components to a third-party security audit

To launch a bug-bounty program to battle-harden the network before moving it towards beta

Additionally, acid test the security of the smart contracts via a compelling bug bounty program

Detect and resolve any bugs found in the third-party security audits

Inviting testers to try out the Matic mobile and web wallets and incorporate their feedback

To provide validator nodes to external validators to simplify node setup and processes

To summarize, we expect to detect and remove any bottlenecks that the developers might experience while interacting with Matic Network at the time of α-net go-live.

What to expect from the α-Mainnet:

Transfer assets to & from the Ethereum network to the Matic side-chains with Plasma Guarantees

Low cost and near-instant transfers on the Matic side-chains

A fully-functional mobile and web wallet to interact with the side-chain and ETH chain

Experience smooth asset exits from the sidechains

Smart contract transactions on Matic sidechains (only with Proof-of-Stake guarantees and NOT Plasma guarantees)

Testing the Matic validator node setup experience for validators

What not to expect from the α-Mainnet:

Unlimited assets transferred from Ethereum; the α-Mainnet will have restrictions in terms of the amount of mainnet assets you could bring to it

will have restrictions in terms of the amount of mainnet assets you could bring to it Open sourcing of code — The complete code-base will be released to the public, post completion of the security audit and bug bounty program just prior to the final mainnet launch

Staking will not be possible with real tokens as yet, it will come up in the upcoming releases

Staking pools and Rewards

Watchtowers to watch the sidechains

We will also release a number of articles to provide insights into the technical details of the network prior to the mainnet launch. These will be aimed to provide the community with a deeper understanding of Matic Network’s economics and technical architecture. We will also share learnings obtained while developing the protocol and products to help other teams in the ecosystem.