Adding Governance and Staking Features for Users
Singapore โ February 18, 2021 โ Moonbeam, the Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on Polkadot, announced today the latest version of its TestNet, Moonbase Alpha. Now, Moonbeam users will be able to actively participate in governance and staking on the TestNet. This update is a significant step forward to the launch of Moonriver, which is expected to be among the first parachains to launch on Kusama.
The addition of the staking feature in Moonbase Alpha opens the door for external collators to participate in the network. Users can nominate the collators they trust the most and earn rewards. Governance features that are part of this release allow users to use on-chain mechanisms to control chain upgrades, key parameters, and other changes to the network.ย Both of these features are significant steps towards becoming a fully decentralized network. The Moonbeam partners will be encouraged to be the first collators for testing purposes. But collation will ultimately be a permissionless process on Moonbeam, where the highest staked collators will be the ones producing parachain blocks.
The Moonbeam team is currently developing technology that simplifies the experience of Ethereum projects and developers who want to expand to Polkadot. Moonbase Alphaโs latest release also includes the newest version of Frontier, which increases EVM execution efficiency by a factor of 5. In simple terms, Moonbeam is able to process five times more transactions in the same execution time compared with previous versions.
The complete list of updates included in Moonbase Alpha v6 can be found here.
Moonbeam Alpha was created for development purposes; our team is continually developing and building the technology that will bring more features as we move forward.ย More information on Moonbase Alpha, including the features currently available, can be found on the project documentation site.
Check out this step-by-step guide that will walk you through spinning up your collator node (an extension of a full node).
Learn how to get started by joining our Discord channel or visiting the project website: moonbeam.network.
Click here to start building on the Moonbeam TestNet, Moonbase Alpha, or join us on our Discord channel.
About the Moonbeam Network
Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on the Polkadot network that makes it easy to build natively interoperable applications. This Ethereum compatibility allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and DApp frontends to Moonbeam with minimal changes. As a parachain on the Polkadot network, Moonbeam will benefit from the shared security of the Polkadot relay chain and integrations with other chains that are connected to Polkadot. Currently, in active development by PureStake, Moonbeam is expected to reach MainNet by mid-2021. Learn more: https://moonbeam.network/.
About PureStake
PureStake’s team has extensive experience building technology companies and complex software platforms. Led by Derek Yoo, former Fuze Founder, and CTO, PureStake provides protocol implementation services and creates developer tools for next-generation blockchain networks. Learn more: https://www.purestake.com/.
