Charles Hoskinson Admitted Testnet Voting Process Was A Mess

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson admitted the testnet voting process was not ideal, with the Shelley mainnet launching, the incentivized testnet has served its purpose. Following our latest Cardano ADA news, we find out more about what happened.

IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson admitted that the ITN infrastructure could become a speedy testing environment for Cardano but then this will create more problems such as how to incentivize ITN stake pool operators to continue working, as well as other concerns over the competition with the main chain. The community will decide in a community ballot as IOHK laid out the process in the forum post saying “one vote to create the possibility, a second to decide.”

The vote has ended at 7:13pm UTC.

Thanks to all the participants, even if it seems that we didn’t reach the necessary participation threshold of 30% of the ITN active stake (short by 2%)

We all learned a lot from this first community consultation🖖#Cardano https://t.co/HucY1dyx49

— Romain Pellerin (@rom1_pellerin) June 28, 2020

At first, ITN stake pool operators and testnet participants will be asked to confirm if they wish to extend the incentivized testnet rewards with a second vote in July for all ADA holders:

 “we are inviting our existing ITN stake pool operators to vote to confirm that they wish to see the continuation of an incentivized network.”

Yoroi and Daedalus Wallets should have voting capability built in to wallet. JorVote was not properly communicated and many felt uneasy putting in wallet keys. Been invested since 2017 and for the 1st time this was a downer 👎🏾 for me @IOHK_Charles

— J₳son Bluezy Sw₳rtz (@Bluezy01) June 29, 2020

The poor execution of the process meant that the weekend vote failed to start a new participation threshold of 30%. The fallout left many in the community confused about the process participation. As things now stand, those who voted YES to retain the ITN, are the majority of the votes but without the needed minimum 30% participation rate, it seems that the second vote is canceled and ITN will stop existing:

 “So, if this first vote delivers a ‘Yes’ then – and only then – a second stage will kick in. A second, separate validation vote we plan to hold in early July.”

Following the first vote, users in the Cardano community came forward to voice their concerns about the voting process and there were plenty of complaints related to poor performance and communication and lack of explanation as well as short-time frames involved. One user even said that he though stake pool operators would only vote in the first instance but it wasn’t until the deadline that he became aware that the vote included ADA holders:

 “I thought the CLI voting was meant for stake pool operators only. I did not see any communication to indicate that the app “jorvote” was available for ITN delegators to use. I was able to vote merely 4 minutes before epoch 197 ended.”