Cardano on Friday announced that it has completed the balance snapshot for its upcoming incentivized Shelley testnet.
The incentivized testnet allows those holding the platform’s native currency, ada, to earn real staking rewards—essentially, rewards for holding it in wallets. The snapshot will be used as the foundation for the upcoming network upgrade, called Shelley.
Those holding ada in a mainnet Daedalus or Yoroi wallet at the time of the snapshot will shortly be able to delegate stakes to earn real ada rewards. Cardano allows holders of ada to operate stake pools, where they can stake other users’ coins, or delegate their own ada for someone else to stake. The more you stake, the higher the chance that Ouroboros—Cardano’s proof-of-stake protocol—chooses you as the next block producer. If you’re the chosen one, you’ll receive rewards.
At the end of the program, those who staked can transfer those rewards back to their mainnet wallet.
“The Incentivized Testnet is the beginning of Shelley’s rollout, which will culminate in the release of the codebase to the mainnet early next year and, with that, the realization of a secure, decentralized proof-of-stake (PoS) network,” reads a community newsletter by Cardano.
The previous network snapshot, on November 12, was successful, though it did raise some issues.”The company received “1600 support tickets in under 24 hours,” tweeted Cardano’s founder, Charlie Hoskinson.
Hoskinson announced earlier this week that a big data dump about staking rewards will be released on December 5, ahead of the testnet’s launch, which is set for December 9.