mimblewimble team mailing list archive

[Ignotus Peverell <igno.peverell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

I don't think the coming Grin mainnet release has been announced officially on this mailing list, so I thought I'd send a quick email. Grin is set to release on what should be January 15th 2019 in most populated timezones. A few things to know:

 * We just released Floonet (our long-running testnet) today. It was also a good and successful practice of our mainnet release process.
 * The grin mainnet genesis block will include a recent (as in last hour or two) bitcoin block hash, to prove the absence of pre-mine and a fair launch.
 * The grin mainnet genesis block will also set a very high starting difficulty, for similar reasons. Don't be surprised if the first few blocks take an hour or two. That being said, accurately estimating starting hashrate is nearly impossible so we may have surprises.
 * Once created, the genesis block will be immediately pushed to our github repository and a normal Grin build will get you a mainnet node.
 * No block will be valid for about 30 min after the genesis is published to leave everyone time to rebuild and restart. This is done by setting the timestamp of the genesis block in the future (grin enforces block time progression).

Our security review and audit(s) will keep happening in parallel and all issues fixed according to severity. We will have a planned hard fork after 6 months to address anything consensus critical (assuming it can wait). On that topic, I'd like to thank everyone who donated, with a special note to Aurel who closed the campaign with a very large donation, reaching the status of Grin Hero (it's a thing).

After the release, celebration will be in order. The word on the street is that @hashmap is organizing a celebration party in Berlin on Jan 15th or 16th. There may be a few more parties in other parts of the world (feel free to organize one!), and of course on our Gitter channel where you'll be able to find yours truly.

Finally, please join us at GrinconUS (https://grincon.us) January 28th. It should be extremely interesting and a lot of fun. Proceeds will also go back to the grin project fund, so get those sponsors and investor tickets.

- Igno