By far the most common question we get is, "wen mainnet?"

The answer now is the same as it always has been - "when it's ready."

We're a small team - there's only three of us, working part time, with no VC backing - so things take time if they're to be done right.

However, those of you that have taken part in the public betas will know that we're pretty close now, so we can reveal what's left to get Howl live.

Pre-launch (September/October)​

Before we go live, we have to finish dealing with the bugs discovered on the previous Beta. Then we will run another Beta test as a dry-run for mainnet.

Juno's Uni testnet will be restarted on Friday 2022-09-23, so we will start preparing for a second Beta test after that. We hope to have it live in the next 10 days or so.

The testing goals of this will be:

• Checking system integrity
• Checking bugs are fixed
• Checking mainnet allocations (including beta drop) are correct
• New functionality for Howl Pay

Assuming that this works as planned, we will then start putting together the configuration for a mainnet release in the following weeks.

Post-launch (October/November)​

As soon as we go live, our focus will be on:

• Bringing up the Twitter bridge, to allow your Howl posts to be posted on Twitter automatically
• Finishing the long-form blogging module for Howl

These features will form the v1.1.x version of Howl.

We have some other things that might make it into v1.1, for example ergonomic improvements that mean those of you using a ledger don't need to sign every transaction with the hardware device in order to pay gas.

If you took part in our Beta test, then thank you!

Without all our testers, getting to mainnet would be taking us a lot longer.

We were blown away by the scale of response - thanks to everybody that had feedback, feature suggestions or helped out in some way.

Again, like last time, we have some numbers.

• 9.42k unique users took part in the testnet
• 1,538,091 HOWLx (testnet HOWL) was claimed
• All our documentation challenges were completed

However, this time there were also some snags - which makes sense, as we get closer to mainnet.

• 2 severity 1 bugs
• 8 minor bugs

What's next - the road to mainnet​

So what does this mean?

Well, we have some windows to mend, and then we will run either a closed Beta2 net, or a final open test before we go to mainnet.

This has pushed our timings back by a couple of weeks, but not by a massive amount.

Thanks to everybody for their interest in the project and we'll have more updates soon!

Here are the $HOWL public beta challenges!

All challenges start after claim begins. This is targeted for Wednesday 7th September (2022-09-08) at 0900UTC.

All challenges end on Wednesday 14th September (2022-09-12) at 1300UTC.

For challenge 1.1. YOU NEED TO ALREADY BE IN THE AIRDROP TO BE ELIGIBLE. To check this, go to the airdrop claim site. You should be able to see <your-address> can claim X HOWL after connecting your wallet. If you are not eligible, you will see <your-address> was not eligible for the Howl airdrop.

Some challenges will require the team to calculate who won, so winners may not be announced for several days afterward.

Check eligibility and claim​

Use the Airdrop claim tool to check your eligibility and claim.

Challenges​

The challenges are:

1. Posting Challenge for Howl Genesis users:
   1. For every HOWL post you make, you will be awarded 1:1 additional HOWL tokens up to 50 extra tokens.
      1. i.e. if you already are eligible for 50 HOWL, you can earn 50 more, for a total of 100.
      2. NOTE: only addresses already in the airdrop are eligible for the additional HOWL[0]
2. Documentation. Submit a pull-request with your guide to https://github.com/howlsocial/howldocs in order to claim these bounties[1]:
   1. Getting started with HOWL guides (only 1 guide needs writing for each):
      1. Claiming: How to claim your airdrop - Accepted PR = 500 HOWL CLAIMED
      2. Create user: Create a DENS name, set a primary alias. Include how to update and burn if necessary - Accepted PR = 1k HOWL CLAIMED
      3. Connecting: Connect wallet to HOWL, connect DENS alias, add HOWL contract to Keplr - Accepted PR = 1k HOWL CLAIMED
      4. Posting and staking: how to create a post, how to stake to others’ posts - Accepted PR = 1k HOWL CLAIMED
      5. Find users to follow: how to find users, navigate hashtags and reply to posts - Accepted PR = 1k HOWL CLAIMED
      6. DAOs: How to post as a DAO, how to reference DAO props etc within HOWL - Accepted PR = 1k HOWL CLAIMED
      7. Howl Pay: How to send one-off payments. How to subscribe, how to see your subscribers and those you are paying - Accepted PR = 1k HOWL CLAIMED

Notes on challenges:

• [0] once again - this is only open to users already eligible for the airdrop. If you’re not eligible, you will earn nothing by posting, though you’re welcome to try the app and help us test :)
• [1] note that a bounty will only be paid on an accepted pull-request. For now we’re looking for guides in English, and there may be future bounties for translations of those, once we have high-quality guides. ONLY ONE BOUNTY WILL BE PAID FOR EACH GUIDE.

Bug Bounties​

As in the Public Alpha, the Howl team reserve the right to offer discretionary bounties for:

• Bugs (~2k HOWL available for serious bugs)
• Exploits (~4k HOWL available for an exploit)
• Social engineering of the DAO

To report a bug or an exploit you’ve found, use the public-beta-bugs channel on Discord.

Thanks to everybody that took part in the Public Alpha.

We got lots of actionable feedback, and have been busy working on new features ready for mainnet - we'll have some news on that soon.

Some high-level numbers, for the curious:

• 1,061 users took part in the challenges
• 6/11 ended up being claimed or completed
• 20,500 $HOWL in rewards were claimed

Since then, we've been getting ready for some final testing and kicking the tyres on the final application.

We're super stoked to share what we've been working on with you all!