Today, we are launching the Chia Beta Program, a new way for one of the largest and most decentralized communities in blockchain to help us test and refine the products we’re building at an unprecedented scale. The Beta Program represents an opportunity for the community to be involved in the development process and offer direct feedback on the products we’re building with and for you.
The first product we’re running through the new beta program is BladeBit 2.0. Learn more about BladeBit 2.0.
Why should I participate?
Many of you are farming, building on the blockchain, or engaged as a user in the development ecosystem. To provide the best tools and products for you, we want to foster and maintain empathy for the community and ecosystem experience – your experience.
Some guiding questions we’re asking ourselves:
- What challenge is our product seeking to solve?
- How does the product feel in use?
- What would make the Farming/Developer/User experience more secure/efficient/sustainable?
Blockchain technology is complex, and iterative design and development is necessary for our process. Members of the Chia team run their own farms and regularly engage in the community; we consider these table stakes for understanding your needs. We QA and dogfood our work internally, but we have the unique benefit of internal context, knowledge, and access. That can leave blind spots in our thinking about process, challenges, and developing a product. So to ensure we’re keeping the community experience front of mind, we’ve created a dedicated external beta program that allows us more access to the large variance of user experiences.
I’m interested. How do I get started?
We’re still building the program out, but wanted to get the information out to the community and begin the registration process for those interested.
We’re looking for PiB-size farms, single k32 plot farmers, solo farmers, pool farmers, and everything in between. We’re looking for developers, both highly experienced in Chialisp and those still looking to learn. The broader the engagement with the program, the better data we can glean, so we encourage you to sign up if you’re interested in shaping the future of Chia products and how they interact with the ecosystem.
You may notice that we’re asking you to provide some additional data that will come from the logs – The Beta program is entirely opt-in, so we’re only collecting data from folks who’ve intentionally self-selected to be a part of the program and who turn on the beta logging mode. Any information shared by or collected from you as a part of the Beta Testing program will be processed in accordance with Chia’s Privacy Policy.
We understand the importance of security and privacy, and we know the weight of the ask, so in general the additional logging will cover the following categories of information (not limited to):
- System information – operating system, OS version, hardware information, etc.
- Chia application information – app version number, farming mode vs wallet mode, which system services you are running, mainnet vs. testnet, etc.
- Farm and node setup information – # of plots, types of plots, full node sync times, etc.
- Wallet information – volume of transactions, # of coins, wallet sync times, etc.
Because the data is added to the logs, you will be able to fully inspect the data before sending the logs to us to ensure you are comfortable with the data being sent over.
As a Beta program participant, you will be asked to provide additional information as feedback that will help us measure the outcomes of the changes that we are planning. This could take the form of surveys or questionnaires, user testing and feedback sessions, and providing logs with additional data. Any additional qualitative or quantitative data provided by any of the participants will be properly secured.
Now What?
Once you’ve registered, we’ll begin the review process and reach out to the folks selected to participate. We’re keeping the program relatively small to start as we evolve and iterate on the Beta process. We will open further registration windows as the program can support and the need arises.
If selected, we’ll reach out shortly with an email distribution list and a Keybase channel to ensure you’re working with the most updated information, development documentation, and have access to the teams building these products.
We look forward to building a better blockchain ecosystem with you!
