Last week we successfully completed the first season of the SubQuery Frontier testnet. A testnet, short for test network, is a network used by developers to test code before it is deployed to the main network (or "Mainnet"). In SubQuery's case, the launch of the testnet marks a critical milestone in our development as we progress towards the full deployment of mainnet which coincides with our token listing on centralised exchanges.

Season 1 of the SubQuery Frontier testnet had the following goal: find and fix critical bugs and documentation issues relating to the main day-to-day indexer actions. To help us with this, we enlisted 23 node operators with experience in running high performance and scalable productions with monitoring and wallet/infrastructure security.

We focused on what we called the "main Indexer actions" in this season, which includes the basic onboarding flow for Indexers to register, start processing a SubQuery project, and sell data to the Network. This includes installing all services, following our documentation to index and announce their SubQuery project support, and then carrying out staking and delegation operations. Indexers were also expected to maintain and expose their GraphQL endpoints while the uptime of each was measured.

"Overall experience is good, everything neat, intuitive and clear. A lot changed along the way, and we are looking forward to report more bugs we will find in Season 2, in order to make a smooth start of the genesis SubQuery Network!"  - Season 1 participant

We collected a huge amount of data and feedback from this season, including some critical UX bugs and feedback on the indexer services. All participating indexers were able to get started without issues, a testament to the quality of the documentation and the indexer applications that our team has built. We also learned a lot about how the indexer services work on different cloud platforms and hardware, which will help us identify and share strategies for running scalable indexer nodes.

In summary, our team was pleasantly surprised by the lack of any major issues and we are happy to be quickly moving on to season 2, a closed beta with an extended number of participants. Season 2 will be rolling out with new features including a leaderboard, where challenges will have points assigned and only high performing indexers will rise to the top and receive rewards for their efforts. The leaderboard system will further incentivise our participants and ensure we are getting a true stress-test from season 2 as the indexers battle to surpass one another in the rankings.

This next phase will be particularly important for us on many fronts. Chiefly, by inviting a higher volume of participants, we hope to simulate load; upwards of 200 million requests/day to ensure the network is equipped and capable of managing this all-the-while maintaining uptime and quality experience. This will prepare us for Season 3, open to any type of participant including hobbyists and less-technically minded people in our community --- we expect to be challenged around our documentation and communication!

The Frontier Testnet is being rolled out in stages that we call seasons, starting from April 11th with each season lasting for 2--3 weeks. After putting out the call for indexers to participate we were overwhelmed by the response from our community and after careful deliberation, we chose 23 indexers to participate in the first season. Now that the first season is complete, we are already looking forward to Season 2 that has just started today with over 100 carefully selected indexers and expanded functionality.

Whilst there are several factors at play, we expect to be able to announce our TGE timeline shortly after the end of Season 2, whilst also starting preparations to deploy Season 3. For more information on the testnet, please visit the SubQuery documentation website: https://university.subquery.network/

For further information, please contact our team in Discord.

About SubQuery Network

SubQuery is a blockchain developer toolkit enabling others to build Web3 applications of the future. A SubQuery project is a complete API to organise and query data from layer-1 chains. Currently servicing Polkadot, Substrate and Avalanche projects, this data-as-a-service allows developers to focus on their core use case and front-end, without needing to waste time on building a custom backend for data processing. The SubQuery Network proposes to enable this same scalable and reliable solution, but in a completely decentralised way.

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