When is TGE? Extra soon.

Welcome back to Midweek with Max, where the ducks may look calm above water, but they’re paddling like hell underneath. This week’s update was a mix of hard deadlines, soft promises, and a lot of progress quietly locking into place.

Let’s start with the tech. Max and the engineering team are in the final testing phase of the daemon refactor. This is a major update that improves how the network syncs and how operators run specific pieces of the stack. Once it’s merged, we’ll push a full v2.0.0 release, complete with upgrade instructions and a new set of performance benchmarks. For people running nodes, this will be a meaningful shift.

On the reward side, the new PoP payouts algorithm is nearly finished and should be live by next week. The team is verifying corrected data from Absinthe to finalize testnet mining points. That includes checking edge cases where users might have missed verifications due to bugs. The goal is to make sure everyone who participated fairly is accounted for.

The hVM white paper is also almost out the door. A few last-minute additions around protocol security and capital efficiency are being slotted in. Once the engineering review is complete, we’ll publish and use it as a springboard for the next Engineering AMA. That’s now going to be a monthly thing, by the way. The last one ran 90 minutes and didn’t even cover all the questions. Turns out people are paying close attention.

Hemi Hatchlings are now deployed to mainnet. If you held any on testnet, they should be visible in your wallet. There were a couple test deployments, but we’ll post the final contract address so you can confirm you’re looking at the right collection. Pro tip: it’s the one where the images actually show up.

Phil gave a quick marketing update. The short version: Hemi’s credibility is getting noticed. Big conferences are inviting us to speak—without us paying to be there. That’s a shift. It means they’re hearing what we’re saying and want it on their stages. We’ve also got outside researchers preparing reports on Hemi, and we’re doubling down on making sure our ecosystem partners feel fully supported and visible. As Phil put it, we’re bear-hugging them.

The TGE and tokenomics update? You guessed it: very, very soon. Max said they’re in the final phase of collapsing a few pre-launch dependencies. That means we should have tokenomics info within two weeks. The actual TGE date will likely come with it. Again, not announced yet, but that’s the timeline we’re holding.

There were some questions around how we calculate points and rewards. Quick clarification: there’s no single “snapshot” moment. It’s all calculated in real time based on how long you’ve held economic positions. The backend tracks every position’s value, date of deployment, and changes over time. Points accrue per dollar per day, and the system adjusts dynamically if you move or add capital. There are still a few temporary frontend glitches, like zeroed-out points during recalculations, but those are being addressed before the next season.

We also talked about security. All major contract releases go through multiple external audits. Hemi’s codebase was reviewed by HackerOne and others, and we have a standing bug bounty program in place. Infrastructure hardening is ongoing. On the smart contract side, we don’t push anything important—like the Bitcoin tunnel or Hemi staking—without a full audit and test coverage.

We touched on cross-chain scaling too. Hemi plans to scale through Chain Builder, a framework that lets developers launch custom chains inside the Hemi ecosystem. These chains inherit Bitcoin finality and Ethereum programmability while choosing their own speed, cost, and decentralization levels. Add to that the emerging work around ZK proofs, and you’ve got a system that scales through composability rather than pushing everyone into one box.

On the community side, the Alliance is still going strong. Meme energy is high. Hermes and George are leading the charge. If you’re not in the guilds, now’s the time. Weekly tasks keep rolling, and the content coming out of the program is genuinely impressive.

Finally, for anyone who lost access to a testnet wallet: open a ticket. We can’t promise a fix, but if you were verified and participated in good faith, we’ll try to help. At the very least, you won’t be ignored.

That’s it for this week. We’re almost there. The tech is maturing, the momentum is building, and the TGE is moving from “soon” to “extra-very soon.” Thanks to everyone for sticking with us. We’ll see you next week.