Relaunch: A Clean Genesis for Edgeware

The Edgeware mainnet soft-launched this past weekend, and since then, the network has produced over 20,000 blocks, finalized its first blocks, and proceeded through many rounds of validator rotations. We’ve also observed a number of issues with the network’s initial configuration.

The Edgeware community has acted quickly to identify these issues, and at this point, we think the long-term benefit of the network would be best served by relaunching with a clean genesis spec:

• Right now, it would be possible to use the soft-launch governance system to correct the genesis balances, reverse any slashings and balance transfers, and restore the treasury to its correct genesis balance.
• At that point, a script could be published to verify the state of the network against the (corrected) genesis spec. However, this would mean the network would continue to operate with an unclean original genesis. Over the long term, we think this would introduce more uncertainty than it benefits any participant in the network.

The steps we recommend include:

• Downgrading the current network (launched on Sept 15th 00:00 UTC) to a testnet
• Relaunching mainnet when we are confident in the stability of the software
• Resolving each of the issues identified before relaunching the network
• ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ Correct genesis balances. Calculate balances using multiplicative bonuses, as we communicated during the majority of pre-genesis period.
• ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ Slashing disabled. Ensure no validators can be slashed, until the network votes conducts a runtime upgrade to turn slashing on.
• ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ Transfers off. Prevent all transfers of EDG using a SignedExtension, which can also be removed in the same runtime upgrade.

In particular, with these steps, it will be possible to go from a transfers-disabled beta phase to active mainnet with a single runtime upgrade. Thus, any future network can launch without a sudo key, which allows us to bypass another source of uncertainty around the early state of the network.

Here is a full listing of the issues identified; we invite comments from the community: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KD9eGwN2101LQGMR-9ygAs6uvd6_Ma0ScAlt-vbeU1Y/edit

Next Steps

On the technical side, we will make another announcement about our progress on resolving the issues at the end of this week.

We’ve been extremely encouraged by the community engagement so far. We’re also thinking about ways how the technical leadership in the community could be recognized, and are considering opening a bounty program. Please send us a quick message if you are interested in participating in this program. We hope to continue participating in a thriving Edgeware community!