The Road to Altair edition 🛣⭐️
tl;dr
Pyrmont forks, testing in progress
After a series of small but very valuable Altair devnets, Pyrmont — a large public testnet — upgraded last week. The transition to Altair went off without a hitch, setting the stage for the next wave of testing and upgrades.
This week, Pyrmont is being put through the ringer as we run a number of test scenarios on the soon-to-be-deprecated testnet. Don't panic! At the time of writing, Pyrmont is already 482 epochs without finality with a large share of validators taken offline for a few days. Such tests help shake out corner cases in the consensus code as well highlight client issues in handling load under exceptional scenarios.
Prater up next
With Pyrmont upgraded, Prater — a larger and longer-term testnet — is up next. Client teams have agreed on a September 2nd (12pm UTC) upgrade date. See full configuration for Altair Prater network here.
Keep your eyes peeled for client releases that include the Prater fork configuration. These should drop over the next week and allow you to upgrade your testnet nodes in preparation for the fork next Thursday.
After the Prater upgrade, it's a great time to induce various operations on the network — exit a validator, get yourself slashed — have fun!
When mainnet Altair?
Although there is still plenty to do between here and there, the Altair mainnet fork is fast approaching. Assuming a relatively uneventful testing of Pyrmont and a successful Prater upgrade, client teams are targeting an end-of-September Altair mainnet launch 🚀
