Dear Friends,
At 7:19 PM yesterday, May 21, the first version of Nockchain's mainnet went live.
The initial network traffic was far greater than expected. Internally, we estimated 2,000 peers to be the high end of possible interest at launch. We saw more than 10,000.
The genesis block attests to Bitcoin block 897767, and contains the following inscription: QUIDQUID CORRUMPI POTEST, CORRUMPETUR.
This should be sufficient for anyone to verify the launch's fairness and the absence of a pre-mine.
Today, we’re excited and proud to share with you how it went, what we’re learning, and what’s next.
Nockchain Launch Breakdown
High traffic caused some networking problems in the first several hours. The genesis block did not propagate until we solved them about six hours after launch.
At the time of this writing, we've seen a total of four blocks. Discounting the six hours before the genesis block propagated, we’re seeing a new block roughly every three hours on average.
The initial block difficulty is higher than we'd like, relative to the proving that's come online. Proving capacity started lower than we expected, and we’re working on performance enhancement to the mining reference client.
Overall, launch was bumpier than ideal, but consensus has been achieved. For a fair launch of a novel ZK-PoW blockchain network, with unknowable total proofrate at launch, we’re quite pleased—as well as humbled—by the magnitude and difficulty of the adventure now before us.
What’s Next?
- Our focus right now is to scale the backbone nodes.
- We’re also working to speed up the open-source client and improve prover capacity, to enhance the stability and security of the network.
- We're sharing and replying in the Telegram as close to real-time as we can.
- The difficulty will adjust after 2,016 blocks are mined (approximately 2 weeks).
To Our Friends
Since our first blog post on 12/9/2023, we've earned the attention of more than 19,000 followers on Twitter, more than 2,000 people who read our weekly email, and more than 3,500 in our Telegram participating in this adventure. We've noticed multiple unofficial Nockchain communities arise in recent months, based in multiple countries around the world.
When we call Nockchain an adventure, we mean this technically: The future will now come at us, from beyond. A fair launch with no pre-mine is unpredictable and risky, but now that the ship has set sail, there is nothing to do but sail. God willing, we hope to find a new shore, tame the wilderness, and settle a new community.
On the way, there is no telling what fresh challenges and problems will arise. We expect many. In some sense, our work has only just begun. We'll continue to develop the chain and the NockApp ecosystem.
But from this day forward, Nockchain no longer belongs to us.
Nockchain now belongs to the world.
We'd like to thank you all—our readers, interlocutors, investors, and all fellow travelers—for your interest in our work.
And if you really hear the call, well, now is your chance to prove it.
Sincerely,
The Zorp Team
