Road to Mainnet: October 2023

Welcome to October's edition of the Avail team's monthly series providing updates on all things Avail. Read on to find technical highlights from this past month and upcoming milestones and events.

By Avail Team 3 min read
Road to Mainnet: October 2023

Introduction

As we gear up to Mainnet, we’ll be focusing on the progress and projects along the way from the Avail team. We’ve been heads down in October, wrapping up the Kate Testnet and working towards the launch of our Incentivized Testnet, so let’s dive in!

Highlights

Technical Update

  • Most of our engineering team’s effort this past month has been getting ready for the incentivized testnet and the Clash of Nodes program. This is coming with a lot of improvements on the performance and stability side.
  • The light client has a lot of quality of life updates coming with the incentivized testnet to make it easier to deploy and maintain. For example, working configuration files has become much simpler than before.
  • We’ve made a lot of improvements on our testing and automation. This is critical as we’re nearing the incentivized testnet phase. 
  • The team has started audits with our auditing partners to get our tech stack ready for mainnet. 
  • We’ve been receiving a lot of great input from everyone deploying and testing our node and light client. This helps us make further improvements. 

Network Update

  • Our validator community is growing strong, we now have 1000 active nodes running, with nodes running across the world.
  • Our nodes have consistently seen ~20 seconds of block time, and we're only getting started!
  • This week, we are closing down Kate Testnet, ensuring current projects don’t get affected and asking current Kate testnet validators to unbond and shutdown their nodes subsequently.
  • Our team has been preparing a leaderboard, finalizing the challenges, and designing the incentive model for the new incentivized testnet. 
  • Our Forum launched this past month and is our new hub for all types of discussions and announcements. 

Blog Posts and Twitter Spaces

Blog Posts

Whiteboard Series

Twitter Spaces / Podcasts 

Our Favorite Tweets

Next Month

We're around the corner from unveiling the Avail’s Clash of Nodes incentivized testnet, a significant stride towards Mainnet.

We'll be inviting validators and light client operators to test, validate, and operate, helping us battle test our code base, refine our infrastructure, vet our operational readiness, and more.

Everyone that participates will battle for points and the top spot on our leaderboard - with the potential for rewards coming soon. 

The incentivized testnet is a glimpse into how Avail is set to become the base layer for the rollup-centric future, bolstered by the collective efforts of our community and the exciting opportunities awaiting L2 providers. Sign up here (obsolete).

Join us in Istanbul for Devconnect!

We’ll be hosting Hot Takes: Battle of the L2s on November 13. Don’t miss a jam-packed day where L2 players convince interested devs and rollup teams why their approach is the best when it comes to tackling blockchain scalability and why they are the superior L2 stack to build upon for their next killer application. RSVP here. 

Anurag and Prabal will be speaking at a number of other events, including L2BEAT and Scroll’s L2 Days, Lumoz’s RaaS Day, and Alt Layer’s Rollup Frontier Day. 

To stay updated on all things Avail, follow us on Twitter, stay tuned to the blog, engage on the forum, and subscribe to our newsletter.

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Avail Team