A huge round of applause once again for the incredible Shapella fork, everyone! 🎉
As we still revel in this fantastic milestone for the wider Ethereum community, it’s time to share more details about the final steps to StakeWise V3, the most groundbreaking update to our protocol since its inception in 2021.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the next steps on our road to mainnet!
Estimating the Release Date: A Tale of Milestones 🗓️
StakeWise V3, a monumental upgrade to the current StakeWise stack, brings a fresh approach to liquid staking on Ethereum. Given the intricate nature of the system, the time required for completion, auditing, and thorough testing isn’t easy to predict, making it challenging to set an exact release date.
To tackle this uncertainty, we focus on development milestones, rather than dates. Each milestone marks another stride towards the mainnet release, and tracking the remaining milestones helps us gauge our progress.
Today, we’re happy to share our team’s vision of these milestones with the StakeWise community. Our hope is that understanding the remaining milestones will enable the DAO to align on shared objectives and attract an influx of interest in StakeWise V3 from the broader staking public ahead of its release.
Product Milestones: The Building Blocks 🧱
The first set of milestones, known as Product milestones, are linked to completing specific components of the StakeWise V3 system.
Currently, there are three Product milestones awaiting completion:
- Addition of Peg Stability Module for osETH (smart contracts)
- Completion of the user interface for minting, burning, redeeming and liquidating osETH (front-end)
- Completion of the Scoring Model development (back-end)
Reaching these Product milestones is crucial for launching the public testnet, completing the second round of audits, and finally deploying the mainnet. Consequently, our development team is working diligently and in parallel on these tasks.
Testnet Milestones: Putting It All to the Test 🧪
Another set of milestones revolves around comprehensive testing of various StakeWise V3 components, including smart contracts, front-end, devops, and more.
Our dev team has been operating a closed testnet of V3, called the Atlantic Testnet, since March, with experienced node operators. However, broader testing with a larger participant pool is essential.
We anticipate achieving the following Testnet milestones in the coming days/weeks:
- Redeployment of the Atlantic Testnet with the inclusion of patched / updated functionality
- Completion of the Atlantic Testnet after the performance evaluation against KPIs
- Deployment of the StakeWise V3 mainnet candidate on the public testnet
- Assessment of the StakeWise V3 mainnet candidate performance on public testnet (with potential testnet redeployment)
- Completion of the public testnet following a performance evaluation against KPIs
Bear in mind that the timeline for milestones 3–5 relies on our readiness to invest more/less time in public testing, a decision influenced by audit duration and the V3 mainnet candidate’s performance. Our team prefers a cautious approach, extensively testing the platform before the mainnet release. We encourage community feedback on this stance!
Audit Milestones: Security is Paramount 🔒
The final group of milestones pertains to auditing StakeWise V3 smart contracts. The first audit round, conducted by industry-leading security firm Halborn, is already underway, with more to follow.
We still have the following Audit milestones to tackle:
- Completion of the 1st round of audits & patching based on the findings
- Commencement of the 2nd round of audits with another security firm
- Completion of the 2nd round of audits & patching based on the findings
Successfully passing at least two rounds of audits with esteemed security firms is crucial for the mainnet deployment of StakeWise V3, given its significance for Ethereum. While we eagerly anticipate completing these engagements, our team is dedicated to providing the auditors with the time and attention they need for due diligence. We count on the StakeWise community to embrace this approach as well.
Next Steps: The Exciting Path Ahead 🚀
As the development of StakeWise V3 approaches its final stages and testing and audits take center stage, we want all StakeWise DAO members to have a clear view of the steps remaining before V3 deployment and the timeline for key events.
Tracking our progress against Product, Testnet, and Audit milestones collectively will enable us to coordinate DAO actions related to tokenomics changes, incentives provisioning, and token integrations proactively. This is inherently valuable and propels us towards mainnet deployment at a faster pace.
For added transparency, our team will publish bi-weekly summaries of development work and its view on progress against the milestones, alongside hosting regular office hours on Discord to discuss anything V3-related in an informal setting. The office hours will occur every other Wednesday at 5 pm CET, starting tomorrow.
We are thrilled to embark on the final stretch of our road to mainnet, hand in hand with the StakeWise community.
Stay tuned for updates on V3 progress and join the conversation on Discord!
Join thousands of other stakers in the StakeWise Pool to embark on your ETH & GNO staking journey 🚀
