According to an official announcement, a public testnet for the much-anticipated Shelley mainnnet is now live. The news was announced by IOHK’s official Twitter on June 9.
According to the tweet, members of the Cardano family can familiarize themselves with features on the testnet, in anticipation of the mainnet.
“Today marks the start of our public Shelley testnet, a hugely important milestone on our shared journey to Shelley mainnet. From right now, any operator who wants to run a Cardano pool can start getting ready for mainnet staking & delegation later this summer #ShelleyTestnets.”
According to a forum post, any one interested can operate nodes on the Cardano testnet henceforth. This is an interesting development, considering the fact that it was only previously open for testing and debugging purposes before now. It also was restricted to 50 pool operators. However, the success achieved in the test period gave rise to the new developments.
According to IOHK marketing director Tim Harrison, the Shelley testnet is approaching its last phase. The mainnet is expected to go live sometime in July 2020.
Cardano has also suggested to the community to exercise some patience with the protocol. This is because as developments continue to increase, people might encounter “a few bumps.”
