IOTA Announces Chrysalis Phase 2 Public Testnet is Now Live

IOTA’s network upgrade, Chrysalis has recently launched its public testnet. Chrysalis, also known as IOTA 1.5, is IOTA’s intermediate stage between IOTA 1.0 and IOTA 2.0, Coordicide. 

Phase 1 of Chrysalis was launched earlier this year, in August, reaching one of the many important milestones in the network’s development.

The release of phase 2 of Chrysalis on the IOTA mainnet will be one of the biggest upgrades the IOTA network has ever witnessed, and the released testnet would allow developers to transition their integration towards the final implementation. Earlier this month, developers were testing Chrysalis’ functionality on a private testnet, and were working on taking the necessary steps for pushing out the testnet. 

This upgrade sets the stage for adoption, and takes the network one step closer to IOTA 2.0. IOTA’s official announcement said:

“Today we are opening the Chrysalis testnet to the public. This period is key to a successful protocol upgrade early in the new year. We welcome everyone to test the functionality and provide feedback.”

IOTA further added that changes are still ongoing, where there would still be bugs, and audits performed, as well as breaking changes introduced. IOTA explained that this is all part of the process. IOTA warned:

“Bear in mind that changes are still ongoing, and there will be bugs, audits will be performed, and breaking changes introduced. That’s all part of the process.”

The components the IOTA team is publishing with the testnet are a new wallet.rs library with JS bindings via Neon, a new CLI wallet, a new faucet for requesting testnet tokens, experimental JS library with Chrysalis APIs implemented, and Hornet v0.6.0-alpha node version.

All of these components are currently in an early alpha stage, which remains to be audited. 

IOTA 1.5 Phase 1 Milestones

With the completion of the deployment of Chrysalis phase 1, the network is not witnessing 1,000 transactions per second, with an average transaction confirmation time of 10 seconds. Performance and reliability improvements for node software will also be a feature for IOTA 1.5, and the majority of transactions would reach their destination on the first try.

Before the network upgrade, IOTA was only able to handle 5 to 20 transactions per second, struggling to even reach 40. The network has now upgraded to Hornet nodes, allowing the improvements of tip selection and milestone selection algorithms, supporting over 1,000 transactions per second.