The road to Mainnet.

In the October 29th Midweek With Max, Hemi’s team shared significant updates on the progress toward Mainnet, enhancements to the infrastructure, and refinements in community incentives. From a new Bitcoin tunneling feature to Mainnet preparations, Hemi continues to work toward a stable and scalable decentralized network.

1. Mainnet Preparation & Testnet Infrastructure:

Hemi’s team has been focused on enhancing the stability of its Testnet infrastructure. Recent migration efforts aim to reduce connectivity issues and improve overall performance. Max provided insights on how Hemi is scaling for Mainnet with a new hosting provider, ensuring reliability for both Testnet and Mainnet activities.

The team is also deepening the smart contract infrastructure, supporting a migration from an over-collateralized vault custodianship model to the BitVM custodianship mechanism. This transition ensures seamless Bitcoin asset management across the Hemi network.

2. Popmining Mechanics & Rewards System:

Hemi’s PoP mining program rewards users based on keystones mined. The team plans to distribute rewards fairly by tracking user activity in relation to average network performance. Users who stay within network norms will receive rewards in line with the community, while additional incentives are offered to those who contribute above-average resources.

Additionally, Hemi is implementing an anti-sybil mechanism to ensure rewards go to unique, genuine participants. This system will verify unique users, allowing them to link multiple addresses while ensuring points are earned based on single-user activity limits.

3. Bitcoin Tunneling System & TBC Upgrades:

A new Bitcoin tunneling feature is set to launch soon on Testnet, allowing users to transfer Bitcoin to the Hemi network. This feature uses the TBC (Tiny Bitcoin Daemon), enabling interactions between Bitcoin and Hemi smart contracts, making Hemi a robust tool for Bitcoin-centric DeFi applications.

Alongside tunneling, improvements in TBC allow for efficient operation within Hemi’s Virtual Machine (hVM), integrating Bitcoin’s consensus mechanisms for cross-chain interactions.

4. Community Events & Anti-Sybil Mechanisms:

Hemi’s co-founder, Jeff Garzik, will be speaking at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai. Additionally, the team plans to attend other events, including DevCon in Bangkok and the BlockWorks Digital Asset Summit in New York.

Internally, Hemi has also ramped up community engagement, running contests and brainstorming ideas for Discord events. The team encourages community feedback, making Discord a collaborative space for discussing project development and activity ideas.

5. Future Outlook:

As Hemi continues toward Mainnet, the team is prioritizing critical developments to ensure stability, scalability, and security. Future plans include scaling through Layer 3 (L3) chains for optimized fees and decentralizing the sequencer for added security.