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After seeing the success and failures of the 20th HardFork I have logged in to the witness channel of steem.chat with one question. I and wanted to find out what can be done so that HardForks are tested better so that the changes are implemented smoothly. Five minutes later I found other witnesses who are willing to do the same.

This is how I met @bobinson

@gtg, the wizard of Steemit proposed to making own TESTNET and stated that it is needed not only for hard forks. This is where I met @bobinson. He is also a witness and was interested in the exact same thing as I. Both of us want to build a Testnet and to motivate ever stakeholder (every account on Steemit) to stress test it and report any bugs, so that the new hard/soft forks are bulletproof before actual implementation.

To make it simple: Copy Steemit.com website and steem blockchain to another domain and test all the new versions there, on a separate blockchain.

What happened during 20th Hard Fork?

The new Hard Fork 20 was scheduled to happen on 25th of September 2018. As soon as it was implemented most users were not able to do anything on Steemit because the new Resource Credits (RC) which allow people to make transactions (upvotes, comments, transfers) were broken. RC were given out in minus numbers for most of the users. For my account it was somewhere in the - 2,000,000 or even less and I could not upvote, comment or do anything. And these RC were not recovering. It took 5 patches of the Hard Fork 20 to fix things up.

It was just terrible experience, but we are all happy that Steemit eventualy recoverd. So learn from this and lets prepare for next hard forks so that this does not happen again.

What can be done?

@bobinson and I had a discussion about this and we are actually building the exact copy of Steemit on another domain right now. https://steemtest.com will be used, right now we are in the process of setting things up. Everyone will be able to log in with their regular posting key just like on Steemit.com, to make all kinds of transactions (upvotes, comments, transfers, posts, trades, powerdowns, etc, everything possible) but these changes will be only visible on the TESTNET, not on actual Steemit.com.

Something like, "What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas".

Gamify it

Why not Gamify the testing process? Lets make it fun!

Image Source

People will be rewarded for doing these kinds of transactions and for reporting bugs and proposing pull requests to steem github. Right now I am discussing this rewards system for reporting steem bugs with @elear, the founder of @utopian-io and other community managers. @elear stated that it will be possible to reward people for finding bugs in the steem code through utopian-io. Steemit Inc. should also help reward bug contributors.

@reggaemuffin already forked the steem code on github to make it even easier for developers to propose pull requests and to make patches and submit bugs. You can read more about it here.

We are also planning to reward people for the TOP Commenter, TOP Upvoter, TOP Transactions on the TESTNET.

Why do we need it?

Of course, it is the responsibilities of all witnesses to test those changes in the steem code, I agree that this is our fault that HF 20 happened as it did. But it is really hard to make a real-life test without a lot of people participating in the process. There have been many tests from a lot of top witnesses. I have read that @gtg, @timcliff, @followbtcnews, @pfunk and tested the HF 20, but still, it was not enough. Steem is an open source project, so let's all unite our efforts as steem shareholders (all steem users).

Only real life testing for one full month of a copy of Steemit, would have allowed us to spot the RC problem and many others.

There are a lot stakeholders and dApps on Steemit who have suffered from the 20th Hard Fork. All of us suffer from the fact that people are leaving Steemit and when people actually see the problems we have experienced as a blockchain. Lets not let this happen.

What has been done so far?

@bobinson has posted an open document on Hackmd.io about What? Why? How? Who https://hackmd.io/s/ByT1BuG5m
@yuriks2000 deployed a copy of Steemit using Steem Condenser at https://steemtest.com with the help of @yehey and his detailed instructions on how to set up the condenser.
@bobinson started to set up the full rpc server with version 0.20.6 (with Tinman) of steem so that we can point it to condenser, with the help of @gtg, @inertia, @reggaemuffin
@yuriks2000 set up the Discord channel https://discord.gg/zCjTqT to get help from the witness to help set everything up. Everyone is invited to join! Lets use our open source community!
@reggaemuffin has forked Steem so that it will be easier to post patches, pull request, bugs and to be rewarded through utopian-io. Link to the post here
@bobinson posted TESTNET RCA Document:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/497378619342192640/4980449628946432

I am not a professional at running the condenser, but as a Steem witness I am willing to learn and to help our community grow. I cheer everyone who is willing to do the same. Witnesses have got to be eager to learn more about the code and to find out how everything actually works.

What needs to be done

Finish setting up condenser
Finish setting up steem rpc server
Tune the gamification process
Implement gamification
Set up the rewards system

Sorry if I have missed any of the contributors. If so, let me know.

Please join us for the sake of Steemit

If you feel that you can help and contribute in any way, we will be more than glad to have you join us.

Join our discord here: https://discord.gg/QTUbtm

Brought to you by @yuriks2000, your loyal Steemit Witness team and a CEO of BoomApps developing SteemApp, a completely free app for Steemians

Please consider voting for witnesses involved

@yuriks2000, @bobinson, @yehey, @reggaemuffin, @gtg, @inertia

Gamify Steemit's future Soft/Hard Forks testing - The SteemCommunity Organization