We’re excited to announce that Dock’s mainnet will transition to a Proof of Stake (PoS) network on July 7th, 2021 at 1pm GMT.
As discussed in our earlier blog post, this transition will further decentralize the Dock blockchain by basing validator selection on the amount of tokens staked by validators and token holders, and introducing a new governance structure that allows anyone with Dock tokens to vote on proposed changes to the network.
This transition also comes with a change in the network’s consensus algorithm, from Aura to BABE (you can read more about these algorithms here), and this will require starting a new chain that runs the BABE algorithm. However, we’re taking the following steps to minimize the impact of creating a new chain on our network users:
- The new chain’s genesis block will preserve the state (accounts with balances, DIDs, schemas, etc.) of the existing Proof of Authority (PoA) mainnet.
- We will retain the history of the PoA mainnet blocks and have it publicly available on a separate explorer, whose link will be shared soon after the new chain is launched.
The upgrade to PoS will involve stopping the block production on the existing PoA mainnet, exporting the state of the PoA network, and starting the new PoS chain that preserves the PoA network’s state. This process will begin at 10am GMT on July 7th, and will take around 3 hours, during which transactions will not be possible. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused by this, but we're sure you’ll agree that the benefits outweigh the disruption.
In the coming days we’ll publish more detailed information on how token holders can participate in the new network, and keep the community updated on our progress in taking this important step!
