Check the network yourself
This page stands in place of a table of figures captured at one moment. Such a table decays within weeks; a guide to reading for yourself does not.
The panel below reads directly from public endpoints, at the moment you open the page, through no number the project declares.
Warning: a rehearsal carries the real network's name
Because the path to birth is rehearsed on real infrastructure, rehearsals carry exactly the official network's identity. Looking at the chain's name is not enough to tell them apart.
The only reliable way to distinguish them is to read the time of the first block and compare it with the announced birth moment. If they match, this is the official network. If they differ, this is another build, and its figures are not the real network's figures. The panel above performs exactly that comparison and states the result plainly.
Until the mainnet birth moment is announced, the panel above says plainly that every network running under this name is a build for testing — including one carrying exactly the right chain identity. That is a deliberately safe state: it never confers official standing on a network the project has not declared.
There is a second signal, and it is cheaper than the comparison above: the name of the address you are querying. The project sets a rule that a test period's public address carries the word testnet in its name, and the official network will have a name of its own — an address that has meant one thing never comes to mean another. That rule is worth more than it looks: it keeps a link you save meaning what it meant, instead of one day quietly returning another network's data. When reading any number about this network, ask both questions — which network does this address say it is, and when was its first block born. The two answers must point to the same place.
Which period you are looking at, and which level it is at
Two scales, not to be confused. Step (the nine steps, see Before you read) says where the project stands on its release roadmap — and the four periods Testnet 1 → 2 → 3 → Mainnet sit at steps 4, 5, 6 and 8 of it. Level (the four below) says what the system has proven.
| Period | Level | |
|---|---|---|
| Answers which question | how far along the roadmap is the project? | what has the system proven? |
| Who decides | the project's roadmap | evidence, and you can check it |
| Can it go backwards | no — periods only advance | yes — a security finding pushes the level back |
A new period does not automatically raise the level. Moving to Testnet 2 without publishing participation artefacts leaves the level exactly where it was — and that is precisely the kind of claim you should examine.
Three questions to ask any network
| Question | Where to read it | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Is this the official network? | The time of the first block | See the warning above; this is the most important question |
| How many failures does it survive? | The validator list, and who runs them where | Counting validators is not enough; count independent failure domains |
| Is it alive? | Block height rising steadily, block rhythm stable | A halted network still answers queries |
The maturity ladder
This section stands in place of a "not done yet" list. It is written in criteria, so it does not decay: what changes over time is only which level the network stands at.
| Level | Meaning | Gates to pass |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — It runs | The chain lives, and can be rebuilt | The standard acceptance test green; genesis through the full set of gates; disaster recovery actually rehearsed |
| 2 — Open to outsiders | Outsiders can use it and run nodes | Participation artefacts published publicly; a node image in a public registry; a community channel and a security reporting address; anti-abuse at every public write path |
| 3 — Real self-service | Outsiders raise their own chains | User accounts; every chain must have an owner; isolation and quotas that survive strangers |
| 4 — Real assets | Running with other people's real value | Independent third-party audit, all serious findings fixed and re-audited; jurisdiction and legal entity settled with appropriate licences; consensus keys signed from dedicated hardware; at least seven independent failure domains; load and deliberate fault injection over weeks; monitoring and on-call rehearsed |
Figure 31 — No skipping, and moving back a level is a real possibility.
No skipping. Each level is a condition of the next. A network at level one presenting itself as level four is lying, even when every individual sentence is true.
A claimed level must be verifiable from outside. If you cannot check it yourself, it is not a claim, it is an advertisement.
Moving back a level is normal. Rebuilding the network, changing infrastructure, or a security finding can all push it back. Saying so costs credibility once; hiding it costs credibility permanently.
In short: a roadmap measured in conditions never goes out of date. A roadmap measured in dates is out of date the next day.