Rebaselining of launch date and Project Plan
NEM Group published a live document launch plan almost four months ago to the day and steady progress has occurred in development, testing and release management as we get closer to the launch of V1 MainNet of Symbol.
Today is our first full re-baseline of the plan and we have attempted to communicate regularly about any risks or issues we have faced. The finality solution, which is explained here and is at the bleeding edge of this technology, has taken us a lot longer to get to a solution that satisfies the NEM philosophy and gives us a scalable, secure solution that can be launched as soon as possible. Last week we gave an update of progression and we continue to be cautiously optimistic that the solution found will satisfy all NEM requirements.
We have also taken this opportunity to appoint a Programme Manager, improve our release management, reconcile our github repositories, revisit the UI/UX of outward facing elements such as wallets, and perform additional security testing and review of the code to ensure that we have the best possible product.
The latest live plan output shows the following key milestones that I know you will be interested in:
- 24th Aug - Confirm optin date (this will coincide with a launch marketing plan)
- 15th Sep - Code freeze, V1 launch
- 7th Sep - Optin Opens
- 3rd - 16th Dec - Snapshot range
- 17th Dec - MainNet Launch
The Symbol Launch Single Source of Information post has been updated, the Symbol Launch Plan post will be updated within a few days as will the roadmap on the forum and website.
I would like to also highlight some of the risk still in this plan below -
- Finality coding and testing: the plan depends on the finality solution remaining achievable as it is being coded. We are mitigating this from a time perspective by working closely with the core developers and looking at bringing on a specific security specialist C++ dev to help if that is practical and helps with the timeline.
- As always with testing and testnet, if we find something part way through and need to restart the testnet this would reset the clock on a 3 month soak period. To date this has been mitigated by multiple version releases with various test cycles but will remain a risk.
- The Opt In process and modules that have been developed are being put through testing and security reviews to complete by early Sept. Owing to the advice to have a 3 month opt in window pre-launch if that is delayed by more than 2 weeks it could impact launch.
We continue to press hard for a 2020 launch date and thanks all for your patience as we enter the final stages before Symbol launch.
High Level Summary of Changes
- New launch date is 17th December 2020. This predominantly relates to the planning estimate for a finality solution to be approved being incorrect. We are monitoring progress closely
- Optin will begin in mid September
- The snapshot will occur during a window in the first 2 weeks of December
- Multiple date changes to lines in exchanges
- Added new versions 9.6.1 and 9.6.4
- Added work completed by two external security firms on code and finality solution
- Significant increase in the timings for finality solution to be approved and coded
- Added in additional security and pen testing wallets for optin
- Added in additional security and pen testing to wallets and external facing elements
- Added section for KeepKey addition of XYM
