Compound Gateway Testnet

Protocol Development
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Today we announced the Compound Gateway Testnet. This is just a small step on a momentous journey that is already changing the face of modern finance as we know it.

The goal of testnet is to break things and fix things, and not necessarily in that order. We encourage feedback at all levels, as the ultimate goal is to build an amazing product that will delight users. Over the next few weeks, you’ll see lots of upgrades to the user interface, documentation fleshed out, and upgrades to the gateway chain and contracts themselves. We’ll continue testing system functionalities (such as adding authorities, changing parameters, performing chain upgrades), attempting to make the system unavailable (DoS), and otherwise wreaking havoc.

All this means that testnet will take time to stabilize. If you’re reading this, we assume you’re here because you want to use, build with, or learn about the system anyway, and don’t mind being in the middle of an active construction zone.

For developers, a good place to get an overview of functionality is the Gateway documentation. To understand precisely what the system is doing, there’s no place better to look than the source code, this is where all active development happens.

For those interested in being validators, we’ve created a Validator Guide. This will be a living document that will evolve with testnet over the course of the next several weeks. It’s important to keep in mind that how Proof of Staking will work is still TBD, and for now our team’s focus is on iterating and proving the core product.

For anyone looking to build a starport on another chain, we’ll have more information on this topic in the near future. In the meantime, what chain do you want to build on? Have you looked at the Ethereum contracts yet?

As always, the best way to to be a Gateway pioneer is to come hang out in Compound Discord and right here on the forum. These are places for Compound community members to ask questions, meet other like-minded individuals, and come together to build massively ‘interesting’ markets of the future.

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Would it be possible to get some more information on how a growing Compound Gateway / Chain will affect the existing Compound Protocol and environment? In the white paper it says that it overcomes several limitations of the latter and was basically more “future ready”.
Does this mean that we should get prepared to move our assets or how is the co-existing future envisioned?

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I’m just a regular guy testing your thing. A few newbie questions:

  • Is anything other than Ethereum supported at the moment?
  • If you download, but only do the Compound Chain part, where is your money? I can’t see it in the GUI, and I appear to not be able to send it either (e.g. I downloaded 1UNI, but never accepted the Ethereum transaction, my “send” balance is -1UNI).
  • In the same vain, will the “download” default to Ethereum? Or to the way in which you connected to the dApp maybe? I’m an ETH-guy so I’m using ETH-goggles.
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That’s going to be determined by the community and governance, but we currently envision these protocols as being able to run side by side and even complementary. For instance, CASH could be added as an asset to Compound on Ethereum. It’s possible that at some point Gateway could obviate the need for a separate Ethereum protocol, but I think that possible future is pretty far away and wouldn’t worry about preparing to move assets any time soon or probably even ever. It would also be possible for governance to vote on subsuming the Ethereum protocol into Gateway, though I have not much idea what that would look like, and would also rate that as being a very remote possibility at this point.

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  • Is anything other than Ethereum supported at the moment?

Not yet, check out the announcement and read the above paragraph.

  • If you download, but only do the Compound Chain part, where is your money? I can’t see it in the GUI, and I appear to not be able to send it either (e.g. I downloaded 1UNI, but never accepted the Ethereum transaction, my “send” balance is -1UNI).

Your money is still ‘on Gateway’ - the signed notice is still valid and you can bring it over to Ethereum any time to extract the funds from the Starport. This should all start to become a lot clearer and more user-friendly over the coming weeks.

  • In the same vain, will the “download” default to Ethereum? Or to the way in which you connected to the dApp maybe? I’m an ETH-guy so I’m using ETH-goggles.

You can download to any address, on any chain connected by a Starport. If you download to an Eth address, your funds are extracted from the Eth Starport. I think the default will probably generally be to download to the address you are connected to the UI with.