Happy Friday, everyone! We've just deployed another testnet, codenamed Ersa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ersa_(moon)
As you know, we've been working through some Tendermint P2P issues that have caused halts on our previous testnets: while the Penumbra app logic worked fine, the validators stopped talking to each other, and then stopped producing blocks as soon as one validator dipped below a supermajority of stake.
With some help from some other members of the ecosystem (particularly the Strangelove, Iqlusion, and Interchain teams, huge thanks to everyone!) we found and fixed some potentially contributing factors in our testnet configuration, and we're looking forward to confirming this with the current testnet.
We don't have any big changes to the chain in this release -- although we have some exciting changes in the pipeline -- so the main goal is to confirm that the new configuration avoids the previous issues. As a backup, we've allocated a clear supermajority of stake to the primary testnet validator, so it can continue producing blocks if the P2P issues recur.
You can interact with the testnet using the command-line client pcli, or join as a full node or validator using pd by following the guide: https://guide.penumbra.zone/ .
We've also added a public Grafana dashboard, which currently displays data from Tendermint: https://testnet.penumbra.zone/d/i_UiDu_7z/consensus
Going forward, we'll be expanding observability of the Penumbra side in pd, so we can get more insight into testnet activity.
Some reminders:
- Check out the new release, git checkout 015-ersa-v2 to be sure you're on the latest version;
- Reset your local client state: cargo run --release --bin pcli -- wallet reset;
- If you're running a full node or validator, wipe your configs and follow the new instructions!: https://guide.penumbra.zone/main/pd/join-testnet/fullnode.html
Thanks for helping us test Penumbra! 🌒