The Danforth testnet is another major milestone in Dock’s development roadmap and we’re delighted to let you know it is now released and operational. For those who missed our post on what this release represented, the key takeaway is; decentralization. Specifically, working with other external individuals, groups and/or companies who will provide the infrastructure for the Dock Network by running validator nodes.
These nodes will produce blocks, which contain data and provide security to the Network, while also confirming transactions for Dock’s issuers. This symbiotic relationship between the Network and the validators is a key feature, for not only is it not owned or controlled by any single entity, it also has no single point of weakness which makes for a more robust Network for issuers.
The Dock engineers started onboarding the first of the validators on the 14th of August after our call for validators led to a volume of requests that exceeded our expectations. At the time of writing, we have 6 validators (excluding Dock) running on the network and we expect to have on-boarded the full complement of validators that will take us through mainnet and beyond by the end of August. You can see the validators, their geographic locations and the blocks being produced on Telemetry.
So far, decisions for which validators to on-board have been based on a number of factors that include; geographic location, size (individuals and companies), on premise vs own hardware and their experience working with our networks. Ultimately, we are seeking diversity on the network as we believe it is this that will make for the greatest resiliency.
Developers
For developers using Dock’s SDK, it will soon utilize Danforth once we have run the network for a few weeks and can confirm its stability. In the meantime, the ability to create decentralized identities, issue, revoke and present credentials is possible using the existing Northill test Network. We’ll also take this opportunity to remind those looking to dip their toes in the water with Dock our developer docs and tutorials will help get you started.
Of course, an SDK and documentation can be continually improved through use and we are now working with a partner who is building a demo app using the Dock Network. The app will showcase how Dock can be used within an educational setting for the issuance of academic certificates. As the app will be open-sourced it will also serve as a further aid to developers who can use the app as reference when building their own solutions on Dock and we believe it will also be useful with ongoing and future business development opportunities. We look forward to bringing you this demo app during September.
Moving forward
Over the next few weeks the team will continue to monitor the stability of the network and all things going well this will become the Dock mainnet, provided we encounter no issues which we deem to be a threat to the network. In tandem, we are currently at the final stages of selecting a security vendor to perform a security audit in advance of our token swap, currently planned for the end of October.
