Announcing the Internet Computer “Mainnet” and a 20-Year Roadmap

General Press & News
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“On December 18, 2020, we initialized the decentralization of the Internet Computer’s public network (aka mainnet) as per the Mercury milestone. This scientific achievement enables the Network Nervous System (NNS), an algorithmic governance system, to onboard thousands of independent data centers and millions of special node machines.

“The Internet Computer is the world’s first blockchain that runs at web speed and can increase its capacity without bound to host any volume of smart contract computations and store any quantity of data, and the NNS is an open, algorithmic governance system that controls the network.

“Reaching Mercury now puts us on a relatively short path to a last “Genesis” decentralization step, which includes, but is not limited to, the DFINITY Foundation releasing all related source code that is not yet in the public domain, the release of vast quantities of technical and design information pertaining to ICP (Internet Computer Protocol) including full descriptions of the Chain Key cryptography and protocol math that makes the Internet Computer network possible.”

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Wow, that’s a meaty essay! I’m going to need a cup of tea :slightly_smiling_face:. Congrats to the Dfinity team.

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“Mercury launched mainnet in alpha form, decentralizing the network by placing its nodes under the control of its Network Nervous System (NNS). The network will transition into beta when the NNS triggers the “Genesis” event.”

When is the BETA transition happening?

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There are some steps/gates outlined near the beginning of the article, the timing of genesis will largely be driven by those.

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