Good news (again). We are happy to announce the new Dfinance testnet version release, nicknamed Balthier (v0.6)

This new release contains a number of significant updates and is a very important step on our way towards launching incentivized staking, and from there - the mainnet. The testnet refers to Dfinance coins as DFI - please note this is merely a temporary solution which will be changed towards the launch of the mainnet).

Dfinance wallet - now, with staking support!

Staking, finally!

The biggest highlight of this update is.... you guessed it - Staking!  Brave testnet users can now launch validator nodes and stake their testnet coins, get or give voting power (through delegation - more on this below), start producing new blocks (and securing the blockchain) and of course, enjoy financial rewards. Running a node on Dfinance will allow users to actively secure the blockchain and participate in the validation of new blocks.

Read more here: https://dfinance.co/blog/dfinance-staking/

Delegation

Delegation allows users that are not interested in running a node to lend their Dfinance coins to trusted validators and start earning rewards without the need to run a node.

Please check out our Documentation for details about setting up a validator or delegating your Dfinance testnet coins to one.

Learn more here: https://dfinance.co/blog/dfinance-staking/

Mentionables

Two important things to note when it comes to validators and delegation: Delegating to a malicious or poorly performing validator may result in the slashing of a portion or all of the delegated amount. Since we're still in testnet stage, this doesn't have a real financial impact but it is important to understand how the system works towards the launch of the mainnet.

The second important thing to note is that validator nodes may charge a fee for their services, so pick wisely!

Lastly, when setting up, validators configure the fee and the liberty they have of making changes to that configuration. When selecting who you delegate to, make sure to take into account the above considerations.

Why is this so important?

Staking is a critical step on our path to launching our incentivized testnet which will feature a special Dfinance staking contest that will enable participants to compete as validators and delegators, and earn real rewards in Dfinance mainnet coins!

While the incentivized testnet will be announced in the coming weeks, the pre-registration for participating will begin soon, so stay tuned!

Balthier includes the following improvements and features:

Features

• Validator full staking support
• Support of up to 31 active validators
• Default Cosmos inflation is temporary in effect
• Slashing mechanics are enabled - malicious or non-performing validators will be penalized
• Additions to the Dfinance explorer and wallet: added validators list, the ability to delegate / un-delegate Dfinance coins and of course - a list of rewards
• Dnode now supports governance-based hard-forks and soft-forks - Dfinance coins holders are now able to vote on soft-forks (like expanding the Move Standard Library), and also vote on hard-forks (major dnode upgrades). At the moment the governance feature is only available through the CLI interface with the UI version to be added in one of the next testnet upgrades
• Alpha version of the Move Testing Framework, covering the entire Dfinance Move Standard Library. You can learn more about the Framework in our Github
• Updated the testnet-bootstrap docker-compose: it now allows launching a validator node easily and without extra complications

Improvements

• Dnode migrated to Cosmos SDK version 0.39.0 which includes significant bug fixes and improvements. See the changelog by Cosmos team
• Dnode CLI/REST refactored and added two features which simplify the developing process for DApps developers:
• DEX: Post/Revoke REST implemented - developers can generate new DEX related transactions using the REST API
• VM: Publish/Execute REST endpoints added - developers can use REST API to generate new publish module/execute script transactions
• Arguments parsing library - all CLI/REST arguments are now parsed by the same library (less code == fewer bugs)
• Updated CLI  help messages - making them clearer and more detailed
• Fixed a bug with address parsing in VM Compiler REST API
• Fixed a bug where an error happened when querying VM data using CLI/REST API
• Fixed a bug with the --fees flag (default value had to be provided as an option, e.g. "—fees=10", now it works again as a standard flag "--fees 10dfi)
• The default fee when sending a transaction was set to 0.0001 Dfinance coins
• DVM was updated to the new Facebook Libra Move VM version:
• Constant variables are introduced, more details in the Move Book
• VM now returns the locations of errors in the source code
• Massive other refactoring and optimizations by the Libra team
• New Oracles module released for the standard library, with a cleaned-up interface, see our documentation for more information
• New storage method of blocks and transactions for the blockchain explorer, increasing the speed and enabling future support of full transactions parsing, (including smart contracts)

As usual, all of our work is continuously published in our public Github repositories, so you are welcome to check out our Github page. (Starring our Github repos would be greatly appreciated! 😉)