van Rossem upgrade FAQ

The Hard Fork Working Group's role in Cardano Upgrades

The hard fork working group is spun up to help coordinate Cardano's upgrades, with oversight from Intersect's Technical Steering Committee.

The working group aims to be a transparent place to

• discuss upgrades

• track ecosystem readiness

• make decisions on the submission on hard fork initation governance actions

Intersect staff help this effort by organising the meetings, writing up meeting minutes, publishing communications and reaching out to stakeholders.

Cardano Testnet Definitions

Cardano Test Network Definitions

SanchoNet Testnet

• Community run network originally for governance testing but now used for testing interesting scenarios not possible on other networks

• Potential to see untested and unreleased node versions

• Specifications

  • Very small number of community stake pools ~10

  • Varied configurations

  • Varied Protocol Parameters

• Expectations

  • No guarantees of uptime

  • No guarantees of support -- community run

  • No guarantees of upgrade readiness

Preview Testnet

• Aimed to be a move fast break things environment

• Tends to be long living, but significant rollbacks and truncations are to be expected

• Upgrade readiness: ~one week adoption window given ahead of hard forking

• Specifications

  • Protocol Parameters close to mainnet -- epoch lengths (1 day)

  • Small set of stake pools, primarily operated by founding entities

• Configurations close to mainnet

• Expectations

  • No guarantees of uptime -- move fast break things

PreProd Testnet

• Aimed to be on close parity with Cardano Mainnet, long living testnet

• Upgrade readiness: ~six week adoption window given ahead of hard forking

• Specifications

  • Protocol Parameters matching Cardano mainnet

  • Large set of stake pool operators

  • Configurations matching mainnet

• Expectations

  • Uptime aimed to be close to mainnet

What is a GA?

A governance action (GA) is a proposed on-chain change to Cardano. The various voting groups vote on it, as described within CIP-1694 Governance Actions.

How do I know which governance actions are real?

It is encouraged to review and read all governance actions carefully, anyone within the community can raise a governance action for consideration.

All governance actions raised by Intersect, on behalf of the community, will be clearly sign posted and the metadata hosted on the Intersect GitHub repository.

Who can vote on these GAs?

Cardano mainnet is currency within governance bootstrapping, this means the governance model is not fully activated.

In this bootstrapping phase only the CC and the SPOs can vote on governance actions accordingly. This is detailed in CIP-1694 bootstrap phase and interim consitution.

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