After our successful Testnet Wave 1 run in December, we are excited to unveil Testnet Wave 2 where YOU, our community members, can participate and get hands-on with Sui!
Testnet Wave 2 is live as of January 25 and, similar to Wave 1, will run for several weeks.
This expanded wave features participation across validators, full node operators, delegators, app builders, and end users. On this decentralized and globally-diverse Testnet, we will collaboratively test Sui’s tokenomics, including:
- Epoch management: Tokenomics operations such as staking/unstaking, validator addition/removal, and distribution of staking rewards all happen at epoch boundaries. During Wave 2, we will exercise all of these changes except for validator addition/removal.
- Gas mechanism: Validators will participate in setting the network’s reference gas price through the gas price survey, and in monitoring validator performance through the tallying rule.
- Storage fund: Each Sui transaction that allocates new storage is charged a per-byte fee that is deposited into the storage fund. Validators earn stake rewards on both delegated stake and the SUI in the storage fund, ensuring that both current and future validators are compensated for the data they store.
- Stake delegation and Proof-of-Stake mechanism: Any Sui community member can participate in the network's Proof-of-Stake governance and receive stake rewards. See more details in the Stake Delegation FAQ.
Stress-Testing via Games
Testnet Wave 2 will feature a pair of novel games designed to stress-test our tokenomics design and implementation.
The first game, Frenemies, is open to everyone and designed to generate chaotic movements in the validator stake distributions. During each epoch, a Frenemies player is assigned a validator and a goal (Friend, Neutral, or Enemy) corresponding to a position in the stake distribution rankings. The player scores points if they succeed in moving their validator to the goal position, but this is no easy task because other players have their own goals to pursue! Top scoring players will receive prizes (and no, this is not an airdrop). Frenemies will launch soon after Wave 2 Genesis, so keep an eye on Sui Discord and @SuiNetwork for more details.
The second game, called Validator Game and only open to validators, exercises Sui's reference gas price mechanism. This game lets validators adjust the minimum gas price in response to simulated external factors such as SUI price fluctuations.
These games are intentionally designed to cause the validator stake distribution and the reference gas price to fluctuate substantially from epoch to epoch during Wave 2. These artificial fluctuations are much more dramatic than what would be expected in Sui Mainnet, but are important for testing edge cases of the tokenomics mechanism.
Caveat
- Please note that the Testnet SUI tokens and staking rewards are for testing purposes only and do not have any associated monetary value.
- Wave 2 is testing an initial v1 of the Sui tokenomics implementation. The precise accounting algorithm will continue to be fine-tuned during and beyond Wave 2. We encourage the community to report any discrepancies or questions to our Tokenomics Discord channel.
- Similar to Wave 1, the Testnet faucet will be rate-limited to both provide fair access to gas tokens and to ensure a smooth experience for our community.
- The API-based faucet will be DISABLED for Wave 2 Testnet to discourage bot-based abuse. Only a Discord-based faucet will be available for Wave 2.
Validators
Validators process and ensure the validity of transactions on the Sui network, and they are incentivized to do so reliably and fairly through Sui’s tokenomics. For Testnet Wave 2 we doubled the number of validators, from ~20 to ~40, compared to Wave 1. This increases the decentralization and geo-distribution of the Sui network while maintaining a cohesive core group of validators with experience operating together.
During Wave 1 our validator community jointly participated in exercises across genesis, global monitoring, communication and coordination, incident mitigation, and software updates. With this collective experience under our belt, we will progress to conducting hands-on, interactive simulation rounds of Sui’s tokenomics (“Validator Game”) across the Proof-of-Stake mechanism, the gas mechanism, the tallying rule, and the storage fund.
Full Node Operators
Full nodes replicates Sui transaction history and serves reads for Sui application builders. During Wave 1, a number of full node operators qualified for incentives, and those that met performance criteria were invited to return as incentivized operators for Wave 2.
Anyone can run a full node on Testnet Wave 2. See instructions for running a full node here (replace ‘devnet’ with ‘testnet’ where appropriate). Follow the node-announcement Discord and node-operators Discord for updates.
App Builders
Our developer community has built a variety of apps including games, social, NFTs, and utility libraries on Sui Devnet. Testnet Wave 2 is open for all builders to publish, test, and share their apps.
There are, however, a number of differences that may affect both developer experience and user experience that are worth calling out:
- As previously mentioned, the API-based faucet is unavailable in Wave 2 Testnet.
- Testnet Wave 2 epochs happen approximately every 24 hours, whereas Devnet epochs happen every 2.5 hours.
- As previously mentioned, although the reference gas price is 1 MIST for Devnet, it will fluctuate from epoch to epoch for Testnet.
- The Devnet Discord faucet dispenses 5 gas coins (0.01 SUI each) per request, while the Testnet Discord faucet dispenses 5 gas coins (0.02 SUI each) per request.
Sui Devnet versus Testnet
AttributeDevnetWave 2 TestnetValidator setFour Mysten Labs-operated validators39 validators + 2 Mysten operated validatorFull NodeMysten Labs-operated plus community operated nodesMysten Labs-operated plus community operated nodesValidator locationUS-EastGeo-distributedDurationPermanent~2 to 3 weeksAccessPublicPublicJSON API URLhttps://fullnode.devnet.sui.io:443https://fullnode.testnet.sui.io:443Discord FaucetDiscord channelDiscord channelFaucet Unit5 gas coins (0.01 SUI each) per request5 gas coins (0.02 SUI each) per requestAPI-basedFaucetEnabledDisabledEpoch Duration~2.5 hours based on 3000checkpoints~24 hours based on 28800checkpointsReference Gas Price1MISTFluctuates from epoch to epochSW Version as of January 25, 2023v0.23.0v0.22.0Release CadenceWeekly release plus more frequent hot-fixes as necessaryOnly updated as necessaryData DurabilityData wiped as part of regularly scheduled software updatesData would be wiped in required recovery scenarios onlyIncident SupportMysten Lab oncalls and Mysten Lab incident management protocolMysten Lab oncalls plus necessary coordination with selected validators
Ride the Wave
Testnet Wave 1 led to very useful learnings and meaningful improvements to the Sui software, and we expect nothing less from Wave 2. Between epoch changes, Frenemies, the Validator Game, and a variety of ways to test our v1 tokenomics implementation, we are looking forward to a dynamic, action-packed, and informative Wave 2!
Thank you again to our community for participating in Wave 2 and being part of the journey towards Sui Mainnet!
