Earlier today, the team at Zilliqa (ZIL) announced the launch of the third version of the project’s Testnet that includes new features. Testnet v3 has been code-named Mao Shan Wang keeping the tradition of naming the project’s testnets after the Durian family of fruits. Version 1 was code-named Red Prawn and Version 2 was code-named D24.

Xinshu Dong, CEO at Zilliqa, went on to explain the significance of this testnet launch as follows:



This is a major technical milestone — as far as we know, this is the first fully-fledged testnet in the world to implement network, transaction, and smart contract sharding.

This specific testnet has addressed some of the security issues discovered by our security auditors, and added required safety checks and extra enforcement mechanisms to improve the stability of the system.



Testnet v3 Similar to the Upcoming Mainnet

The launch of the Mainnet has been scheduled for the 31st of January and this new Testnet has features similar to the upcoming Mainnet. These features include:



The full-scale implementation of Scilla programming language across the network. New nodes can now execute contracts



Implementation of smart contract sharding, transaction sharding and network sharding



Public mining of testnet ZILs in an eco-friendly manner as GPUs only run at full load for a small fraction of time



New incentive mechanism that reward nodes by considering their contributions to the consensus protocol



New easier and efficient upgrading protocol



How to Mine on Testnet v3 – Mao Shan Wang

Full details and documentation on how to carry out mining will be made available by the team this Monday, December 3rd, 2018. This will provide timely technical support and bug-fixing for the network’s miners.

The team at Zilliqa has however provided the following technical specifications to run a node on the public testnet.



Ubuntu 16.04.5 64-bit OS

Intel i5 processor or later

8GB DRR3 RAM or higher



Optional: GPU cards (e.g 1 x GTX 1060 with 3GB vRAM)

NAT environment with UPnP feature supported on your router or a public IP address



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