Cardano Opens Dijkstra Testnet While The Upgrade Itself Awaits Its Next Step

Cardano developers now have a public environment for preparing the Dijkstra upgrade, but its name needs careful reading. The test network is available; the transition to Dijkstra’s new protocol rules is still a separate step. TL;DR Intersect’s October 24 update says the refreshed Dijkstra testnet became public on October 21. It currently runs Conway protocol version 11 with node 11.1.3. A later node prerelease and testnet governance action are needed for protocol version 12. A live rehearsal environment comes before new rules The sequence is set out in Intersect’s weekly report and the Cardano Operations Book. Pool operators can obtain configuration files, connect to the test network and use a faucet for test assets. The planned Dijkstra transition follows availability of the 11.2 prerelease and a hard-fork initiation action. For developers, that staging creates a useful baseline. A wallet or indexer can establish that it handles the present environment correctly before it is asked to interpret changed transaction formats and protocol behavior. If everything changes at once, distinguishing an application bug from a network-upgrade problem becomes much harder. The published node rel...