Namada Mainnet is Live!
The shielded multichain era begins.
The wait is over! Today, the Namada community made history by successfully launching mainnet in a fully decentralized way. The network’s mainnet rollout began at 15:00 UTC, and shortly after Namada started successfully producing its very first blocks. The launch of Namada mainnet marks a new era for data protection in the blockchain space, a major win for the mission to give users the freedom to control their own personal data.
It’s also a major achievement for the Namada community, who came together and coordinated the network’s launch in a fully decentralized way. The Anoma Foundation, which stewarded the codebase for Namada’s mainnet software, does not operate any Namada validators. This means Namada’s launch is thanks to the dedicated work of community many teams like Knowable, Luminara, Informal Systems, Heliax, TuDudes, the hundreds of validator operators that worked tirelessly in recent weeks and months to battle-test the protocol ahead of genesis, and the thousands of community members who have supported each other along this journey.
The road to mainnet
Namada’s mainnet genesis block follows two and a half years of development, which began in early 2022. While taking significant inspiration from Zcash’s Sapling circuit, the Namada protocol is an innovation from the ground-up, with novel features like Namada’s multi-asset shielded pool (MASP), cross-chain shielded actions, and shielding rewards system, as well as novel cubic proof-of-stake (cPoS) and on-chain public goods funding (PGF) systems.
Of course, delivering and battle testing a novel protocol is no small feat — it would not have been possible without the aid of community support during the Shielded Expedition, Namada’s massively multiplayer incentivized testnet. Thanks to that work, we’ve been able to test Namada at scale, identify issues, and get the codebase ready for mainnet launch.
Likewise, participants of the recent mainnet dry run were a crucial part of getting Namada ready for launch.
Phase 1: Block Party
Namada’s genesis block marks the beginning of Phase 1 of a proposed 5-phase launch process. With this phase, Namada’s proof-of-stake and governance systems have been enabled. NAM holders can now see their genesis NAM balances, begin operating a validator and/or staking to current validators, and participate in Namada’s on-chain governance system.
Ready to get involved? Learn about participating in Namada staking and Namada governance now.
What’s next
With Namada now live, all future mainnet phases and protocol updates are determined by the community through Namada’s decentralized governance system.
That means exactly what the rollout of mainnet looks like is up to the community. According to the proposed 5-phase rollout, phase 2 will begin shortly with the activation of Namada’s staking rewards and public goods funding (PGF) systems. Phase 3 will enable Namada’s asset shielding features, and phase 4 will turn on Namada’s shielding rewards system. At phase 5, NAM tokens will be transferable.
Barring any unforeseen issues, and subject to governance approval, the community expects to run through all phases in a matter of several weeks. This will give the community enough time to make sure the network is functioning properly before moving onto the next phase.
Follow along with each phase of Namada’s mainnet launch on the Namada website and on X.
Realizing data protection as a public good
Namada was designed to address the pressing problem of legacy blockchain technology leaking all transaction data. Without the ability for users to control what data they share publicly, with whom and for what purposes, blockchain adoption is bottlenecked as discerning individuals and organizations will require this.
Namada enables data protection as a public good. As more and more users shield more and more assets in Namada’s MASP, Namada’s data protection guarantees increase. Users are rewarded for shielding their assets, which protects their data and increases data protection guarantees for everyone.
Crucially, Namada is designed to complement existing blockchain networks and applications, and can function as a data protection layer for the entire blockchain ecosystem. Through Namada’s on-chain governance system, the community can extend data protection to more and more assets and networks over time. Users will be able to keep using the chains and assets they love best while benefiting from Namada’s data protection.
Namada can serve as a backend for apps and services to integrate its state of the art data protection guarantees, with Namada’s shielded cross-chain actions representing a powerful new primitive for application developers.
Ultimately, the success of Namada and the success of the blockchain space as a whole are intertwined. Together we can work to expand the Shielded Ecosystem and make the freedom to reveal a reality for the future of Web3. Our freedoms should not end where the digital world begins. Shields up!
