We are pleased to announce that effective immediately, the new ARK public DevNet is live. In order to test the new V2 codebase, we have implemented a V2 only DevNet. Please help us test, debug and locate any remaining issues before we prepare migration to the MainNet.

With the recent announcement of the ARK Core V2 hard fork, we have decided to prepare a v2 only DevNet that will help us squash any final bugs in the codebase. We need help from you, the community, to join us in testing all transaction types, edge cases, stress test and to help us improve things we might have missed by reporting any unusual behaviour.

Along with the Core, we’ll be working on new items you will notice in the Desktop Wallet and our development team will be preparing a customized “Dynamic Fee” slider in the upcoming days. Dynamic fees are one of the newest additions in the new Core so we must test them thoroughly. This will also help us establish the foundation for the new Desktop Wallet v2 already in development.

While we test the open DevNet, our core dev team is preparing another internal (closed) network where the v1 MainNet DB will be converted to function as a v2 DB. This will allow us to test for any erroneous transactions or data in the database that might not be compatible with v2 and implement exclusions to avoid issues on MainNet deployment.

In order to facilitate that process, we’ll need help from currently running MainNet delegates to run this with us. More specifics will follow, but here is a short overview of the process we plan to take:

Convert v1 MainNet DB to v2 DB. Start the network with the converted database. Trace the logs for errors. Add all exceptions to the exclusion list. You will notice that Core v2 is much more “strict” in regards to how raw data is handled (as it should be). Any issues it notices automatically throws an error and verifies database integrity. Repeat until there are no errors/edge cases reported. Add the MainNet delegates to the isolated environment to forge and test all transaction types, stress test, quality assurance and overall stability. Announce the MainNet hard fork date when all of the above tests are passing.

How Do I Get Involved In Testing And Helping Out?

To setup an ARK DevNet node please follow this guide to setup a relay node: https://blog.ark.io/new-ark-core-commander-eb704b7e75fd

While your Relay node syncs, follow instructions for the Desktop Wallet next.

For this release we have prepared a special version of the Desktop Wallet that is designed to connect with the new Core nodes and interact with the Core blockchain (sending transactions, voting, registering a new delegate). At the moment, this is a testing version only so users can help us test DevNet v2.

You can download v2 Desktop Wallet at: https://github.com/ArkEcosystem/desktop-wallet/releases

*v2 compatible Wallets start with ArkClient-V2-[OS] so download the one for your OS.

SHA256 Hashes

V2-Linux: d3ea9e286fdf28759d302d91e21b42c23ccdc2d7bb6633b1f3c785421d04ec65

V2-MacOS: 28d34f87ca97f6bef57154f4327c8c2f5459b2c236c3b588dfae0f69ccbfee0a

V2-Ubuntu-amd64: 7170f8179dab7939917e2572e073def6b81868c75370f242df16ad5ee4a1e5bf

V2-Windows-x86: ffd357e73bc81442eb77ed0795933ddb11ea5d56ae4e60fd060c7d9b41b959f8

V2-Windows-x64: 3438eefae73ba2cb43ed7d4b6f073e939f6f0bd61442b71d273d67d39468a0e3

Once you install, in the upper right menu click on SETTINGS — MANAGE NETWORKS and go to tab that says DEVNET and change these 2 values:

New ‘Nethash’ is : 2a44f340d76ffc3df204c5f38cd355b7496c9065a1ade2ef92071436bd72e867

And in the ‘Seed Server’ field input any of these official seed IPs:

http://167.114.29.51:4003

http://167.114.29.52:4003

http://167.114.29.53:4003

http://167.114.29.54:4003

Note: as you can see public API is now on port 4003.

Once done click on ‘SAVE’ and click on the first icon in the upper menu ‘SWITCH NETWORK’ and press DEVNET.

OR

Go to SETTINGS — MANAGE NETWORKS — NEW under ‘Name’ write eg. DEVNETv2 or any distinguishable name you want and in the ‘Seed Server’ input any of the above IP. Click ‘NEXT’ and on next screen ‘SAVE’ and click on the first icon in the upper menu ‘SWITCH NETWORK’ and press on newly created network (eg. DEVNETv2).

Create a new DARK address and go to DevNet channel (#devnet) on Slack and contact/tag user BoldNinja so he’ll be able to send you DARK tokens for you to register a delegate and upvote you into a forging position.