New FVM-focused developer testnets: Wallaby and Hyperspace

[raulk]

This is a small post to let the community know about two new developer-oriented Filecoin testnets.

New testnets

• Wallaby testnet => the bleeding edge testnet, gets reset every 1-2 weeks with new FVM alpha releases from incremental delivery. Wallaby has been running for a few months now, already has 5 block explorers, and in the HackFEVM and subsequent days it saw 2000+ contract deployments.
• Hyperspace testnet (formerly "Buildernet") => a new (yet unlaunched) developer testnet with a firmer stability guarantee. The aim is for this testnet to receive Beta-quality upgrades, and to minimise the amount of resets. This is important because devs don't appreciate having their progress wiped out from the network (which is what a reset does). We still expect some resets on irrecoverable events, but these should be minimised. Note that we are still figuring out the best way to conduct clean upgrades through Lotus, as the codebase doesn't support per-network diverging lineages very well at the moment.

When to use each?

• Deploy on Wallaby when you want to test against the bleeding edge quasi-weekly releases that the FVM core team is putting out. Especially useful if you want to use a feature that has been recently introduced.
• Deploy on the upcoming Hyperspace testnet for longer-term testing efforts.

Filecoin testnet positioning

	Butterflynet	Wallaby	Hyperspace	Calibrationnet	Mainnet
Description	Post devnet, private Lotus development testnet	Bleeding edge, resettable testnet for FVM development and future evolution	Stable, reliable, perpetual developer testnet	Pre-production network	Production network
Mission and purpose	First staging environment for Lotus releases with real mining (albeit with small sector sizes)	To serve as a playground to ship early FVM feature previews to the community	To serve as the main pre-production developer testnet	Cross-implementation testnet; functionally equivalent to mainnet	To be the Filecoin network
Scope	Private testnet	Shared testnet	Shared testnet	Shared testnet	Shared mainnet
Longevity (*)	On-demand	Likely perpetual	Perpetual	Perpetual	Perpetual
Deployment technique	Resets	Resets	Upgrades + reset as last resort on unrecoverable events, announced ahead of time if possible	Upgrades + reset as last resort on unrecoverable events, announced ahead of time if possible	Upgrades only
Sector sizes	512 MiB, 32GiB, 64GiB	512 MiB, 32 GiB, 64 GiB	512 MiB, 32 GiB, 64 GiB	32 GiB, 64 GiB	32 GiB, 64 GiB
Minimum power	2GiB	16GiB	16GiB	32GiB	1TiB
Software quality / maturity level	Alpha	Alpha	Beta	RC	Final
Team ownership	Lotus team	FVM team	FVM team	Core devs - implementers (heavily stewarded by Lotus)	N/A
Operated by	Lotus	Factor8 Solutions (contract)	Factor8 Solutions (contract WIP)	Fil-infra (via Lotus’ request)	N/A
Miner distribution	Lotus TSEs + Protocol Labs + daring community members	Factor8 Solutions + Jim Pick	Factor8 Solutions + TBD	Global	Global
Known full nodes	Protocol Labs + daring community members	Factor8 Solutions + Jim Pick + Glif + Zondax (Beryl) + Filmine + Filfox	Factor8 Solutions + Jim Pick + Glif + Zondax (Beryl) + Filmine + Filfox	Network participants	Everyone
Stability expectation	None	Medium	Very high	Extreme	Paranoid
SLA	None	Best-effort	TBD
Tolerance for catastrophic failures	High	High, expectation of constant reset	Minimal, resets wipe out developer progress	Minimal, resets wipe out valuable state and adds additional cost (engineering, devops, communication, testing, community operation) that will delay upgrades	Zero
Deal making activity	Manual	Requires manually finding an SP	Estuary, nft.storage, web3.storage, on manual request, potentially sample data (WIP)	User and application developer testing	Organic
Sector onboarding	Manual	Only initial sector onboarding on genesis, unless deals are requested	Continuous	Continuous	Continuous
Proving pattern	Manual	Continuous success	Miners with different faulting patterns (WIP)	Continuous	Continuous
FIL+ activity	Manual	None	Deals from aggregators are FIL+ endowed – need to ensure continuous datacap supply	Mainly within Lotus	Real
Explorers	None	https://explorer.glif.io/ https://beryx.zondax.ch/ https://wallaby.filfox.info/ https://explorer.filmine.io/ https://wallaby.filscan.io/	Expect same support as Wallaby	https://calibration.filscan.io/ https://calibration.filscout.com/	https://filfox.info/ https://filscout.com/ https://filscan.io/

(Thanks to the Lotus team for contributions to this table.)

[jennijuju]

Thanks for sharing @raulk!

The title suggests these two testnets are FVM-focused:

• Will these two network include all FIPs that are finalized/soon-to-be finalized in Mainnet, including the ones that do not require change to FVM or impact Filecoin smart contract/application developer?
• What level of testing do you think these two testnets can provide for built-in actors and client implementations?
• Can non-developers, i.e: storage providers, also join wallaby and hyperspace?

[trruckerfling]

@raulk another early builder Starboard has just launched their FEVM explorer for Wallaby, to add to the list! https://wallaby-fvm.starboard.ventures/contracts

[jimpick]

Small correction: Mainnet minimum power is 10TiB

[eshon]

@raulk - Wallaby and Hyperspace only support 512 MiB and 32 GiB miners

[jennijuju]

hyperspace is now live! for more details https://github.com/filecoin-project/testnet-hyperspace

[maciejwitowski]

Moving to Calibrationnet as developer-focused testnet

FYI There has been a post published about sunsetting Hyperspace and moving to Calibrationnet at the end of May 2023 filecoin-project/community#631