Today we are officially announcing the launch of our live Smoke blockchain testnet, aptly named ‘Half-Baked’ as well the MVP testnet version of the first Smoke Network DApp, Smoke.io.

This marks a major milestone in our networks development before our main ICO and is an accomplishment that we are extremely proud of. 

The ‘Half-Baked’ Testnet  is a stable fork of the Steem blockchain codebase with a few fundamental differences: 

1. Dollar Mechanism Disabled | By removing the dollar mechanism we prevent bad actors with a large stake in the network from being able to manipulate the dollar peg to their benefit.
2. All Posts 100% Power Up | By only allowing users to receive payouts in vested SMOKE Power we believe the interests of the network are much more aligned with the interests of the user, as bad actors will affect their own account value if acting in a negative way. 

While most projects are smoking bongs, and fiddling with ERC20 smart contracts for simple tokens.. We have completed our testnet, ‘Half-Baked’, ahead of schedule… 

HalfBaked Movie 1998

Unlike most cryptocurrency projects, we are firm believers in the importance of bringing a solid product to market before moving ahead with any form of fundraising as large as an ICO. Our first testnet, ‘Half-Baked’, is a culmination of over a years worth of careful planning from our team and we are incredibly proud to reveal it to the community.

The cryptocurrency and token landscape has exploded in the past year, and while writing this post, we tried to find other projects that have launched stable testnets before their main ICO during the past 12 months… 

While there are dozens of ETH projects such as ZRX, Cryptokitties and others, we unfortunately could not find any projects that had launched a testnet blockchain platform before an ICO in the past 12 months. Even Google returned empty results, only including our own page:

If you know of any, feel free to comment and I will add them in here. 

We also have a ton of important updates relating to other areas of the network. 

We hope everyone is excited as we are about our upcoming mainnet launch, ‘Full-Baked’, and can see how amazing our community and project is turning out to be!

Smoke.io Testnet MVP

The Smoke Network testnet, ‘Half-Baked’, is a live version of our own native blockchain.

 The testnet MVP version of Smoke.io, the first Smoke Network DApp, is a demo version of the final working Smoke.io DApp which will be launched after our development is completed.

It features all of the primary features of our MVP product as outlined in our Whitepaper including:

• The ability to post images and article content
• The ability to upvote posts
• An online wallet for sending and receiving SMOKE
• The ability to earn rewards from upvotes in SMOKE POWER
• The ability to earn rewards for curating new content in SMOKE POWER
• The ability to power down SMOKE POWER into liquid SMOKE

The testnet version of Smoke.io allows users to sign-up, receive testnet SMOKE and use the network just like it was the real thing.

We hope you enjoy using it and welcome any feedback and bug reports from the community!* 

Please Note: Any testnet SMOKE gained on the ‘Half-Baked’ testnet and any content posts will NOT be transferable to the main network. This Smoke.io testnet site is for testing purposes only. Your Testnet username will not be valid on the mainnet chain. 

Airdrop Update

Our Airdrop event has been going strong and now has over 250 000 social actions translating to over 250 000 SMOKE reserved for Airdrop participants so far. We look forward to seeing this number grow even more by the time mainnet is ready and launched.

We regularly update entry options so that the community can help us spread the news about Smoke Network in as many ways as possible. We aim to give fans of Smoke Network as many chances as possible to reserve more Smoke which they will be able to use on the Smoke.io DApp after our mainnet, ‘Full-Baked’,  is launched. If you have not checked in, in a little while, make sure you hit the airdrop page right after reading this update!

Marketing Partnership

Along with a number of other successful campaigns on the go we have secured a marketing partnership with ADVFN.com, one of the world’s oldest and most established online investment resources.

The ADVFN team are big fans of Smoke Network and we look forward to working with them to help get the word out about Smoke! Some of the ADVFN executives plan to fly down and meet up with the Smoke Network team at their home office in Cape Town, in the coming month or two to plan strategy for after the ICO such as exchange listings and conference opportunities. 

The Smoke Radio Show

We recently launched an official weekly Smoke Radio Show on YouTube which has already received over 25 000 listens across the first 3 episodes. The shows cover Smoke Networks development and also showcases the latest and greatest in electronic music, licensed through monstercat.

Most recently we introduced Kief Preston, a best selling online cannabis cookbook author to our team to be our dedicated Smoke Network radio host.We hope you enjoy his quirky nature and years of cannabis experience that he brings with him each and every day to the Smoke community.

Smoke Help Center

To help our fans get familiar with our project we have launched the Smoke Help Center which covers a lot of popular questions and gives the basics of what Smoke Network is all about.

We hope it will provide useful information for everyone. Anyone can also drop us a line via the Online Help desk shown on the bottom right of the Smoke Network website.We will be updating the help center with information relating to the chain in the coming weeks, as well as developer materials to get a node up and running, as well as interact with the blockchain via an API. 

What’s Next?

We will be continuing development on our ‘Half-Baked’ testnet including streamlining and improving our product and ironing out any bugs until we feel our product is as polished and stable as possible for ‘Full-Baked’ mainnet release.

Our ICO event starts in less than two weeks on 4/20 (April 20th) and is an opportunity for fans to reserve SMOKE for use on our mainnet after launch, soon after the completion of our ICO.

With the help of the community we are doing everything we can to get the word out about Smoke Network as an alternative to current social media sites. If you know a friend who might be interested in joining, please let them know!

We look forward to bringing your more exciting features and updates on the road ahead. 

Important Links: 

• Smoke Network Hompage: https://smoke.network
• Smoke ICO: https://smoke.network/ico
• Smoke News: https://smoke.network/news
• Smoke Network Helpdesk: https://help.smoke.network
• Smoke Testnet: https://testnet.smoke.io 
• Smoke Community Telegram Channel: https://t.me/smokenetwork/