Hi everyone!
The first phase of the Stacks 2.0 public testnet — codename Neon — is online and available for developers today! To get started right away, visit testnet.blockstack.org
Stacks 2.0 is the manifestation of our original vision, bringing several new capabilities — native STX mining, proof-of-transfer consensus anchored in Bitcoin, Clarity smart contracts, to name a few — that we will help developers and our community create more value and more ownership!
As I noted in my last post, Neon is focused on the basics: native STX mining (currently implements Proof-of-Burn. A Proof-of-Transfer implementation will come in later phases), the peer network, and the ability to send/receive STX. You can also publish and execute smart-contracts, though we plan to focus on Clarity and integrations in Phase 2. To reiterate, we’ll be adding more functionality to the testnet in phases and we won’t “exit” a phase until all critical bugs and issues have been resolved.
We fully expect to hit bugs and uncover technical issues: after all, finding and fixing these issues is one of the primary goals of testnets. To that end, we’ll be rolling out a “bounty” program, for bug reports as well as for building useful tools and resources.
Head over to the testnet homepage to get started! https://testnet.blockstack.org/
If you have any questions, please reply to this post or find us on Discord!
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