Filecoin Testnet

The Filecoin testnet is a live community test network.

Testnet is not a stable network. All Filecoin software implementations, including lotus and go-filecoin, will be modified before we launch the Filecoin mainnet.

Filecoin is under active development and open source. Follow our progress on Github.
Mainnet has not yet launched and the FIL token does not yet exist.

Testnet Tools
Join
Testnet Overview
More Resources

Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash

Testnet Tools

Join the Public Testnet

Seal workers unite!

Recommendations
Hardware. If you want to participate in the network as a full node or storage client (e.g. read from the chain, submit transactions, and participate in storage deals), any hardware should work. To be a storage miner and mine blocks, see our docs about a starter configuration we use.

Steps
1. Download, install and configure lotus or go-filecoin.
2. Run your node and follow the docs to connect to the testnet.
3. Get fake Filecoin tokens from the testnet faucet.
4. Start storage mining, storing and retrieving data.*

* As a miner, you may need to set a static port to successfully connect to peers and complete storage deals. Read instructions for how to do this in lotus and go-filecoin.

Community waddle

Issues, help requests, general questions and mining benchmarks can be shared in the Filecoin Community Slack:

#fil-help for general questions
#fil-lotus for lotus topics
#fil-go-filecoin for go-filecoin topics

For async discussions use the Filecoin discussion forum.

Break the Network!

Testnet is a playground for experimentation, finding issues, breaking and fixing things!
We welcome all disclosures of security vulnerabilities and protocol issues.
Please follow our security vulnerability reporting instructions to report them.

Interested in participating in other ways?

Reach out to our team at [email protected]

What is the Filecoin testnet?

Filecoin node software is open source. Anyone can download and run Filecoin nodes and the testnet is open to the public.

The Filecoin testnet is a live test network for interoperable implementations of the Filecoin protocol. It is also a period of significant testing, benchmarking, and optimizations. The purpose of the testnet is to evaluate Filecoin at meaningful scale before we launch mainnet and to fix any issues that may arise.

The network is and always will be open for anyone to access and join without restriction, and the Filecoin Project codebase is free and open-source. Anyone can install the software, connect to the network, and explore Filecoin.

The testnet is the most realistic simulation of the Filecoin mainnet to date.

Prospective storage miners can experience more realistic sealing performance and hardware requirements due to the use of near-final proofs constructions and parameters.
Prospective storage clients can store and retrieve real data on the testnet. Clients can participate in deal-making workflows and storage + retrieval functionality.
Developers can begin building applications on top of testnet-compatible implementation APIs.

Currently, the Filecoin testnet operates with two Filecoin implementations: lotus and go-filecoin. The network itself is implementation-agnostic. Additional implementations will soon interoperate on the Filecoin testnet. We’ll announce on this blog when more implementations join the network!

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Filecoin protocol is not yet 100% complete or stable. Testnet will not be a stable network; the entire purpose of testnet is for us to find and fix bugs, so this is expected! The network will be restarted at least once, and possibly several times, between now and mainnet launch. Additionally, all Filecoin software implementations, including lotus and go-filecoin, will evolve significantly between now and mainnet as we incorporate user feedback, discover new optimizations, and continue to improve the protocol.

We welcome your contributions and questions.

Join the conversation via our Community Channels.