Stride Launch Rehearsal (July 5, 2023)
This Wednesday, Hypha hosted Stride’s second launch rehearsal on the Replicated Security Persistent Testnet immediately after a very smooth Neutron mainnet upgrade 
The testnet program is stewarded by Hypha Worker Co-op and provides a testing environment for pre-launch consumer chains on the Replicated Security Persistent Testnet. This work supports the success of the Cosmos Hub mainnet by catching issues before they go live and letting dev teams and infrastructure providers alike practice with the new technology introduced by RS. Stride will be the second Hub consumer chain to go through launch rehearsals on the RS testnet and the first sovereign-to-consumer transition.
With Stride going live on the Cosmos Hub in two weeks, the stakes were high for this rehearsal. In the last month, Hypha and the Stride team have worked closely to iterate on feedback from our last rehearsal on June 7.
Naming convention clarity
For chains that start off as consumer chains (such as Neutron), a genesis file is provided ahead of time and then modified after spawn time to include the CCV state. This modification can only happen after spawn time, as the CCV state is generated by the provider chain at spawn time, which is set in the consumer-addition proposal.
Chains that transition from sovereign to consumer (such as Stride) already have a genesis file in-use and need to have the CCV state added to the binary in a new file. After some confusion in our first rehearsal, Stride and Hypha have decided to adopt the terminology:
- genesis file is the file used to originally start the sovereign chain. It does not contain the CCV state.
- ccv file is the file that is generated after spawn time and which contains only the CCV state. It is added to the binary and does not replace the existing genesis file.
Spawn and upgrade time buffer
In the time between spawn on the Hub and upgrade on the sovereign Stride chain, validators need to generate the CCV state and append it to the pre-existing genesis file associated with Stride, then restart their nodes with the post-transition binary. In our first rehearsal, we only had 2 minutes to do this!
This time, we had about 20 minutes between spawn time and upgrade time, which made it much easier for validators to bring their infrastructure online without scrambling or feeling rushed. Feedback
Having this buffer time (or more) is strongly recommended for Stride’s mainnet launch.
Outreach and communication
In the weeks leading up to this rehearsal, we publicized many announcements via email, Discord, Twitter, and Telegram to bring new validators into the rehearsal.
We currently have 48 active validators on the Replicated Security testnet, 16 of whom are also validators on Cosmos Hub and Stride mainnet. Having these double mainnet validators participate in rehearsal will make sure that some of the most invested stakeholders will be prepared and experienced when it comes time to do it on mainnet!
Because this is the first time a chain will transition from sovereign to consumer, the process is still new to everyone and lots of effort went into documenting the steps to improve validator awareness and smooth out the transition.
- Detailed post outlining steps in the transition
- Diagram of the changeover process created by Stride
- Step-by-step sequence table shared in Discord announcements
Consumer key assignment
We also continued to provide clarity on how the consumer key assignment feature works!
Consumer key assignment transactions must happen before spawn time. For Stride on mainnet, that means the transaction has to occur before July 19, 2023.
If the consumer key is not assigned, validators must reuse the provider key until a relayer is established and a new consumer key assignment transaction can be sent via the relayer.
Get involved with the Cosmos Hub testnet program!
If you have questions, comments, or feedback, we want to hear from you! Connect with us on Discord in the #replicated-security-testnet channel or DM me on Telegram (@lexaMichaelides) or Discord (lexamichaelides).
