Vega’s Alpha Mainnet is on the horizon! Vega’s mainnet is estimated to be upgraded in H2 2023, permissionless market creation and live trading.
As Vega continues to scale, we invite the entire ecosystem to help us pioneer a better, more collectively governed model for markets. This Notion page is your home to learn everything about Vega’s mainnet leading up to and through the launch.
This page will be regularly updated with announcements and milestones about alpha mainnet, updates will also be shared on Twitter
Enabling trading on the Vega network can be divided into four parts:
The network is currently towards the end of the mainnet simulations, which test out how the network will operate under real market conditions through a series of incentivized “competitions.” Read on for the progress on each phase, which will be updated directly in this blog.
Where the owner is outside of the Vega project team, all expected dates are estimates / hopes only and ultimately come down to the actions of community members or validators outside of the team’s control.
Mainnet Simulations were an open call to test, experiment and lay the groundwork for a new era of finance. In these simulations, market makers integrated their existing strategies with Vega. This allowed them to replicate real-life market conditions and trading scenarios that are expected on Vega’s mainnet. Prior to mainnet launch, there were a total of four mainnet simulations carried out. Two were conducted on the internal Fairground testnet, and the latter two used the validator run testnet, with the final sim using only validator-run datanodes too.
Deployment is when Vega’s front-end suite is prepared by the development team for live governance and trading — in other words, the Alpha Mainnet launch. Below, you can see the phases involved in deployment.
| Task | Date | Status | Owner | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Release Final Code Version | 25th April | DONE | Vega Core Team | Vega Core Team will tag the version of the code they believe is ready to support trading. |
| 2. | Upgrade Fairground | 26th April | DONE | Vega DevOps Team | Vega DevOps team will upgrade Fairground to the latest code. |
| 3. | Upgrade Validator Testnet | 27th April | DONE | Validators | The validators will upgrade their testnet to the latest code. |
| 4. | Final Pre-Launch Incentive | 28th April - 4th May | DONE | Vega Project Team | A final pre-launch incentive will be run to ensure the release is fully tested. |
| 5. | Validator Launch Date Governance Vote | 2nd - 4th May | DONE | Validators | Validators will hold an internal governance to finalise the target deployment date. After this is confirmed the dates below will be adjusted to reflect this. |
| 6. | Upgrade Mainnet | 9th May | DONE | Validators | The network will be stopped, upgraded to the new version, and restarted. |
| 7. | Deploy Governance App | 9th May | DONE | Vega Front End Team | The Governance App (previously known as Token App) will be upgraded. |
| 8. | Deploy Block Explorer | 9th May | DONE | Vega Front End Team | The Block Explorer will be upgraded. |
| 9. | Console Available on IPFS | 23rd May | DONE | The Console App will be available via IPFS, a peer to peer protocol which will serve the application via distributed servers, cryptographically hashed with a unique identifier. It will ensure that Console is fully decentralised and resilient to tampering and censorship. #FreeTheMarkets | |
| 10. | Release Website Changes | 23rd May | DONE | Vega Front End Team | Vega.xyz will be upgraded with all the changes to help users navigate the new trading enabled network. |
Prior to alpha mainnet launch, the Vega network must undergo a governance process to propose, vote, and accept the first markets to go live. This governance process will not happen until mainnet simulations conclude, which is currently predicted for early April. The process will consist of on-chain governance decisions required for mainnet to go live, all of which are listed below. Learn more about Vega’s governance process here.