Autonomys is pleased to announce our phased mainnet launch strategy. In two weeks, we will enter Phase-1: launching the consensus and storage layers of the Autonomys Network, having completed thorough testing on our final incentivized testnet Gemini 3. While your rewards (4.8% of total token supply) are being calculated and added to previous testnet earnings, and the network’s tokenomics finalized, this is the perfect time to optimize your farming setup.
Stake Wars 2, our domain stress-testing initiative, achieved its intended purpose of rigorously challenging our network. The insights gained from this exercise have been invaluable, revealing critical areas in domains and cross-domain messaging (XDM) that need further refinement and testing to ensure the stability and security of the network. Rather than delaying the launch entirely, we’ve opted for a novel staged launch approach.
Owing to Autonomys’ modular design, we are able to decouple the release of the consensus layer from that of the execution layer. Autonomys’ PoAS consensus has long been stable, while domains are still being rigorously tested. We are first launching the core consensus chain to allow farmers to begin bootstrapping storage for the network, earning mainnet rewards, producing blocks, and securing the network’s foundation.
In parallel, we will continue to implement the necessary fixes and enhancements for the subsequent launch of our domain layer of decoupled execution environments, targeted for early Q1 2025. Mainnet Phase-2 domains will include Nova, our first EVM domain, and Auto ID, our self-sovereign identity and proof-of-personhood framework. Phase-2 will also enable token transferability.
Phase-3 will focus on increasing the network’s bandwidth (how much data can be uploaded to the network) via data sharding, and the building of tailored domains for specific use-cases. Further details of our scalability roadmap will be released in the coming weeks.
Our community deserves nothing less than a network capable of supporting the ambitious vision we have set forth. While aspects of this change in approach may differ slightly from our original plan, we remain steadfast in our commitment to delivering a complete network that is nothing short of exceptional.
Mainnet Phase-1 — launching the consensus chain — will initiate storage pledging and block production in order to secure the network. In order to prepare for Phase-1, the team is conducting the final:
At the same time, we’ll be involving the community in various dress rehearsals for mainnet launch — more details on how to participate coming soon!
In anticipation of the launch of Mainnet Phase-1, Gemini 3 — our longest-running testnet — will end on September 18th. Its final iteration Gemini 3h peaked at 10,000+ concurrent nodes and 150PiB+ space pledged, and currently maintains 5,000+ nodes and 139PiB+. The end of Gemini 3 will allow us to begin final preparations on our tokenomic distribution chart and breakdown. Incentivized testnet rewards will be minted in the genesis block deployed at Phase-1 launch. Token transferability will be disabled during Phase-1.
Gemini will be replaced by a new, persistent testnet (internal codename Taurus) for domains following Mainnet Phase-1. This network will include all of our updates and serve as a testing ground for our Phase-2 launch of domains. We invite the community to suggest a name for this new testnet.
Next week, we launch the Genesis Data Contest where we’ll invite community members to submit any data they want to see preserved forever as part of the initial seeding process. Stay tuned for details on the rules, mechanics and how to participate. Our favorite submissions will be rewarded with some fantastic new Autonomys merch.
The Subspace Foundation Council — responsible for stewarding the growth and development of the protocol and its ecosystem — is now operational with three internal and two external representatives focusing on token distribution preparation and testing on-chain protocol governance. On a celebratory community call, the Subspace Foundation will begin the Mainnet Phase-1 launch by holding a Proof-of-Time ceremony to ensure we base our network’s entropy on a beacon of randomness.
Following the initial launch and deployment of community-contributed seed data, the Space Race — which activates farming rewards — will commence. Our Mini Space Race in February this year proved incredibly popular with the farmer network, so we’re expecting to see an even greater level of buzz and excitement when we launch the real Space Race — now with mainnet rewards!
We will of course still need to test all the changes to domains we’ve made, including multi-domain operations, cross-domain messaging, storage fee funds, and scalability improvements. To that end, Stake Wars 2 will restart on Taurus in late Q4 (if all goes to plan). A successful Stake Wars 2 will pave the way for the Mainnet Phase-2 launch, which will deliver execution through domains, as well as token transferability.
Autonomys Labs and the Subspace Foundation have authored a new whitepaper that will be released in the next few weeks. The whitepaper outlines the Autonomys Network AI3.0 stack and Auto Suite, as well as our philosophy of radical autonomy, describing tangible steps towards its culmination in the Age of Autonomy. It builds upon the legacy Subspace Protocol whitepaper and Dilithium consensus research paper, illustrating how our protocol has evolved to achieve our goals in a decentralized and permissionless way, and offering a comprehensive vision of its future utility.
We continue to make significant development progress across the Auto Suite, Autonomys Network, and Subspace Protocol. Highlights include:
Space Acres — our desktop farming application; Astral — our block explorer and staking interface; and Auto SDK have recently undergone significant technical and user experience improvements. Not only have the problematic processes we identified during Stake Wars 2 been fixed, but all products are now much more effective, feature-rich and intuitive to use. Space Acres is now macOS-compatible and supports Chinese, Russian and German; and very soon, Astral will allow you to view your consolidated rewards across all the incentivized testnets and Stake Wars. We’ll be providing updates on progress as we prepare this new tool so watch this space. Meanwhile, Supranational has delivered the code for our official GPU plotter with a reported 50x increase in performance over Threadripper CPUs. Nazar is diligently integrating this feature into our monorepo codebase, so we’re expecting a quick turnaround on implementation.
The Protocol team has extended snap sync — meaning domain operators in addition to farmers can now get up and running in less than an hour — and is also developing new features for efficient data retrieval from the distributed storage network. Pre-launch bug fixes and performance optimizations for fraud proofs and cross-domain messaging are ongoing. The Research team continues to refine our scalability roadmap, with a focus on supporting future AI use cases, and is conducting a comprehensive comparison between our scalability design and state-of-the-art designs in the industry to showcase our unique advantages.
Our ecosystem growth strategy focuses on two main segments:
As we move closer to mainnet launch, we welcome any connections and suggestions for partnerships, particularly bridging partners for cross-chain instant messaging.
Autonomys has finalized our event marketing strategy for 2024 and will be in attendance at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, Mainnet by Messari in New York City, Permissionless III in Salt Lake City, and Devcon 7 in Bangkok.
Over the last month, our CEO Labhesh participated in BraveNewCoin’s Crypto Conversation podcast and Alumni Ventures’ Unleashing Web3 & AI: The Next Digital Revolution webinar, and has upcoming appearances on Messari’s Unqualified Opinions and Tokensoft’s The Fren Zone. Community Lead Fradique has been interviewed by André Franco, Head of Research at Mercado Bitcoin, the largest crypto exchange in LATAM, and Brazil’s leading crypto influencer, on their Francamente Crypto podcast, while Head of Research Chen and Protocol Engineer Ning will be co-hosting a X Space in Chinese with AIWeb3 DAO on Saturday 8th September.
It’s been a long journey to get to this point, and we are incredibly excited to be launching so soon. We hope you will join us through the end of the testnet and onto the mainnet, where early farmers will benefit from both the highest block rewards available on our dynamic issuance rewards curve, and the most level playing field, as the network resets to give everyone a fair start.
Thank you for your continued support and patience during this critical phase. We remain committed to delivering the robust infrastructure needed to establish the Autonomys Network as a cornerstone of the decentralized AI ecosystem. We look forward to sharing more developments as we approach our phased launch.
