The Road to Altair edition 🛣⭐️
tl; dr
Pyrmont forks, tests in progress
After a series of small but very valuable Altair devnets, Pyrmont – a large public test network – was updated last week. The transition to Altair went smoothly and set the stage for the next wave of tests and upgrades.
This week, Pyrmont will be put by the wrestler as we run a series of test scenarios on the soon-to-be-retired testnet. No panic! At the time of writing, Pyrmont is already 482 eras without finality with a large portion of the validators taken offline for a few days. Such tests help to eliminate corner cases in the consensus code and show customer problems in handling the load in unusual scenarios.
Prater next
With the upgrade from Pyrmont, Prater – a larger and longer-term test network – is next up. Customer teams have agreed on an upgrade date on September 2nd (12:00 UTC). View the full configuration for the Altair Prater network here.
Keep an eye out for customer versions that include the Prater fork configuration. These should drop over the course of the next week and allow you to update your testnet nodes in preparation for next Thursday’s tap.
After the Prater upgrade, it’s a good time to start various operations on the network – exit a validator, get cut – have fun!
When does Mainnet Altair?
Although there is still a lot to do between here and there, the Altair mainnet fork is fast approaching. Assuming a relatively uneventful test by Pyrmont and a successful Prater upgrade, customer teams are aiming for the Altair mainnet to be launched by the end of September 🚀
