Shardeum Launches Stage 3 Testnet to Enhance Security Ahead of Mainnet

[PRESS RELEASE – New York, New York, October 1st, 2024]

Shardeum makes strides toward its Mainnet Launch.

Shardeum, an autoscaling layer-1 blockchain platform, has announced the commencement of Stage 3 of its Incentivized Testnet (ITN), Atomium, starting from October 1st, 2024. This stage aims to enhance community involvement, encouraging users to identify bugs, vulnerabilities, and performance challenges to further secure the network before the Mainnet launch.

The launch of this stage comes after the successful completion of the initial two stages of ITN, which engaged over 540,000 users, including more than 11,000 validators, and processed over 5 million transactions. ITN Stage 3 will additionally coincide with Shardeum’s second bug bounty program, designed to rigorously assess the network for any lingering bugs and vulnerabilities prior to the Mainnet.

This new stage is anticipated to last between 3 and 4 weeks, a duration longer than previous stages, highlighting the Testnet’s enhanced maturity. The active involvement of the community has contributed significantly to Shardeum’s ability to refine and stabilize the network.

The Stage 3 quest campaign will offer users the opportunity to thoroughly test a wider array of on-chain activities and validator capabilities. Participants may receive various rewards, including SHM airdrops, XP, NFTs, and more.

Chris Chabot, Head of Developer Relations at Shardeum, comments: “This is a significant milestone, and we’re thrilled to see the Mainnet approaching. Our developers and the entire Shardeum team have devoted numerous hours to making each part of our roadmap a reality, and we are incredibly appreciative of their efforts. As we move closer to Mainnet, we anticipate sharing an exciting update once ITN Stage 3 concludes.”

ITN Stage 3 will feature referral programs, social tasks, reward challenges, and interactive voting and quiz games to maximize community participation. Please be aware that rewards can only be obtained through the specific quest tasks outlined on the official testnet campaign page.

For additional details on ITN Stage 3, including information on how to get involved and specific operational guidelines, users can explore Shardeum’s blog.

About Shardeum

Shardeum is an autoscaling EVM-compatible layer-1 blockchain. Its dynamic state sharding ensures low gas fees and high transactions per second as user participation increases. Shardeum utilizes transaction-level consensus, reducing the computational demands on validator nodes, allowing anyone to operate a node, thereby enhancing decentralization.