Oasis Network’s core team is excited to announce a major upgrade of the Oasis Testnet with the release of Oasis Core 23.0. After extensive development, Oasis is taking next steps to bring a multitude of changes and improvements to the Oasis ecosystem with a public Testnet client release.

The Oasis Testnet upgrade to Core 23.0 was initiated on October 12, 2023 at 10:00 AM UTC.

The Oasis community should be aware that the process of completing network upgrade will happen in two key phases:

• Oasis Network Testnet Upgrade (on October 12, 2023)
• Oasis Network Mainnet Upgrade (the process starts after the testing period)

This post reviews major features of the Oasis Core 23.0 Testnet release where to learn more!

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Major Features of Oasis Core 23.0

The changes in the newest consensus-breaking software release bring significant improvements and new functionality for the Oasis ecosystem.

Improvements for the user experience of node operators are a main component of the new release, which were made to bolster security and optimize the efficiency of specific queries. Following the peer-to-peer stack enhancement in the previous upgrade, this release integrates support for state sync via the peer-to-peer network, which simplifies the process of initiating a new node by enabling immediate synchronization without the need for manual RPC node configuration.

On-chain governance also received notable improvements with the addition of support for delegators to participate in governance. Until this release, only validators have been able to vote on governance proposals. Starting with the Testnet upgrade, the full implementation of Oasis 23.0 will empower anyone who is staking to be able to override the votes of the validator, which significantly expands the democratic voting process for the network. Also, this upgrade adds support for voting on parameter changes instead of being limited to only voting on one specific type of upgrade proposal.

Major updates to key rotations for ephemeral and state keys are also introduced with this network upgrade. Ephemeral key derivation is modified so the master key will rotate every epoch, and old entropy is discarded after a few epochs, which makes past transaction keys irretrievable unless a user decides to keep additional data to enable future disclosures of past transactions. State key rotation is also supported via generational keys. ParaTimes can now rotate state keys daily and use new keys for newer state.

Oasis ParaTimes also received significant upgrades across query latency, future upgrade performance, and overall performance enhancements. Oasis Core 23.0 introduces same-block execution for confidential state queries that eliminates the one-block delay that was previously needed for a runtime to independently verify consensus layer finalization. All future upgrades to Oasis runtimes will also be instantaneous as of Oasis 23.0, which ensures no delays or downtimes. The 23.0 release also implements a series of modifications to enhance runtime robustness, and it improves runtime performance, especially in reducing the impact that node failure has on performance.

Read more details on Oasis Core 23.0 features in the Oasis documentation.

‍Learn More About Oasis 23.0

During the first phase (Testnet) of the network upgrade, anyone who finds themself facing technical challenges or has unanswered questions is encouraged to join the Oasis Discord server as mentioned above.

Post comments and questions in the #node-operators channel. Core contributors at Oasis will be available to answer questions, and fellow node operators are encouraged to also support individuals seeking help and guidance.

Every member of the Oasis community plays a crucial role in the stability, security and continued rapid growth of Oasis. The entire core engineering team at Oasis deeply appreciates the commitment and ongoing support from the global community of creators, developers, ambassadors, and researchers while the core developers continue building better privacy for Web3.

To keep up with the latest Oasis developments, check out our blog.

Together, Oasis will bring better privacy to Web3 and the world!

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