Since the last dev-portal update the Steemworks team has pushed three new releases in addition to weekly updates to the TestNet. As you will see, we’ve been busy!

TestNet Details

For those who don’t know, the TestNet is what enables developers to simulate usage of the Steem blockchain for multiple purposes. It allows application developers to ensure that their Steem-powered application is functioning properly and blockchain developers to ensure that the blockchain itself is functioning properly. That’s why making the TestNet better is a great way of improving the entire ecosystem.

HF20

Our enhancements to the TestNet in August proved very helpful during the HF20 switch-over, and is proving a useful tool for the community.s As a result we’ve doubled down on enhancing TestNet infrastructure. Most of this work is being done in our tinman repository.

Thanks to these enhancements, Steemit TestNet now restarts faster than ever, and after restarting a subset of live activity is automatically piped in from MainNet (the real Steem blockchain) into the TestNet. This was quite a challenge, because the TestNet has a different currency distribution from MainNet.

If the TestNet has ‘your’ account name in it, there is a 99% likelihood that your MainNet account keys will work with it. Dive in!

Adding Backfill

We’re in the process of adding ‘Backfill’. Once completed, the TestNet will have up to 30 days of MainNet activity on it, making it useful for many purposes almost instantly, including content viewing from an application or condenser instance.

Bear in mind; dates, block numbers, and amounts on TestNet will be a little different from MainNet.

Miscellaneous Improvements

We have a few other useful features coming up including: additional initial state configuration, easy account creation, and a ‘sandbox’ TestNet for our active Ruby, Python, and Javascript tutorials.

In our @steemitdev post about the Hardfork 20 TestNet we said, “In the near future, we expect the chain id to update with every code change.” While that hasn’t been necessary yet, we’ve updated the TestNet instructions on DevPortal to include the node build instructions as well as a way to get the updated chain-id so that node operators and application developers can broadcast transactions on the TestNet.

Dev Portal Additions

Since our last update, we’ve replaced bandwidth documentation with documentation about resource credits. We’ve added eight Python tutorials, five Javascript tutorials, a Ruby tutorial and three recipes. One of the recipes is about account creation, and we highly recommend checking it out.

There are now additional jussi configuration details for adding multiple routes and retry rules.

And because clear communication is always good, we’ve added even more glossary terms.

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Learn More

If you’ve missed any of our previous DevPortal updates, you can get caught up here:

https://github.com/steemit/devportal/wiki

As always, the Steemworks team is working hard to make sure that Steem does too. We’d love to hear from you. Drop in on the SteemDevs discord chat or send an email to Steemit’s Developer Advocates at [email protected], with the subject line “devportal - ${subject}”.

Steem On!

Steemworks Team