Testnets: Paseo “officially” becomes the Polkadot testnet; temporary Passet Hub chain for smart contracts testing

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Hello, Parity PM here with some important updates for BD and Dev Rel teams regarding testnets on behalf of Paseo core group (R0GUE, Portico and Zondax) and Parity’s SRE team.

1. TL;DR:

  • Polkadot Testnet = maintained by the Paseo core group, a stable testnet with the current Polkadot relay chain runtime for testing smart contracts and parachains before deploying to the Polkadot mainnet.

    • Passet Hub = a temporary second instance of the Asset Hub system chain on the Polkadot testnet (Paseo), with pallet-revive for testing smart contracts before they are live on Polkadot Hub.

  • Polkadot Mainnet = Polkadot Relay & chains.

  • Parity testnet (Westend) = an unstable environment for core protocol developers to preview upgrades and changes to the main protocol. May still be needed for some integrations testing, validators, and as a testnet for Kusama, however not promoted widely.

2. What’s happening?

  1. We are simplifying the Polkadot developer journey to testnet → mainnet.

    • This is because of BD and developer feedback that our current set up with various test- and live-nets is confusing, and hurting our onboarding efforts.

  2. The Paseo testnet is being cemented as “the” Polkadot testnet.

    • The vast majority of developers on Polkadot (e.g. dApp, parachain, and end-user focussed developers) will only need to use this testnet and then deploy on Polkadot.
    • Therefore, we can now simply refer to it in user (developer)-facing material as “the testnet”.
    • Note that the testnet (Paseo) relay chain runtime is updated as soon as a Polkadot runtime referendum passes, usually approximately a week before being enacted on Polkadot.

  3. “Passet Hub”, a temporary second instance of Asset Hub system chain on the Polkadot testnet Paseo with a preview of pallet-revive (PolkaVM smart contracts). Preview Asset Hub = Passet Hub. Passet Hub has been spun up on the testnet (Paseo) by the Paseo core and Parity infra teams.

    • This provides an environment for testing smart contracts in anticipation of pallet-revive landing on Polkadot.
      • Passet Hub will be regularly updated from Westend Asset Hub, as and when features are ready for wider user testing.
    • Passet Hub will be decommissioned once the Polkadot testnet (Paseo) Asset Hub system chain is updated with pallet-revive, along with the Polkadot mainnet (probably Q4 2025).
      • Please note that any contract deployed on Passet Hub will not be migrated when Passet Hub is decommissioned.

  4. Documentation, faucets, Wikis, hackathon guides, etc. have been (or are being) updated to reflect the above.

  5. Westend still exists, but note it is aimed at core protocol developers (i.e. Parity) and partners as a place to test and preview updates to the protocol.

    • As the vast majority of external/user developers won’t need to use, or know about, Westend, we can refer to Paseo as simply “the testnet” in external documentation.
      • Westend is less stable and akin to a “previewnet”, or perhaps “alphanet”, on some other protocols. You can think of it as Parity’s protocol testnet.
      • We aim to confirm a more descriptive name to clearly delineate Westend from the Polkadot testnet (Paseo), watch this space!
    • Westend may still be important for some integrations testing, validators, and as a testnet for Kusama.
      • Please let us know below if you need to use Westend and not the Polkadot testnet (Paseo) longer-term, to make sure we’ve captured the relevant use cases.
    • Some potential new partners are already testing smart contracts on Westend, and will continue to do so until all Ethereum compatibility issues are resolved over the next few months
      • Other teams currently testing on Westend are able to continue, though with the reminder that it is unstable.

3. Testing smart contracts: using Passet Hub

To connect to Passet Hub:

​Other information for testing smart contracts before they land on Polkadot:

  • To get PAS tokens for Passet Hub from the faucet, select “Passet Hub: smart contracts” in the “Chain” drop down.
  • Please provide feedback on your experience with Polkadot’s smart contracts using this form here.
    • This is crucial to help us refine the developer experience before launching on Polkadot.
  • To report specific bugs or problems, please raise an issue in the Contracts Bug tracker on Github.
  • More detail on tooling, integrations, features and functionality is coming with the imminent Kusama release of smart contracts.

Passet Hub is a temporary chain. Please note that any contract deployed on Passet Hub will not be migrated to the main Paseo testnet Asset Hub when Passet Hub is decommissioned.

Big thank you to the Paseo core group (R0GUE, Portico and Zondax), Parity’s SRE team, Papermoon and other Dev Rel teams for setting up the Passet Hub chain and updating all related infrastructure and documentation so quickly, to ensure a great hackathon and testing experience, and ultimately, contribute to better adoption of Polkadot’s smart contracts.

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Hi, I keep being rate limited by the ethereum RPC, decide to run my own, is there any other rpc providers that are providing public rpc and wss endpoints? like ibp, dwellir etc?

Thanks!
~flipchan

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Hiya Flipchan - still tracking down an answer, will get back to you asap!

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Hiya everyone, to keep up to date and get testnet updates please join these rooms:

Announcements: https://matrix.to/#/#paseo-announcements:matrix.org
Technical support: https://matrix.to/#/#paseo-testnet-support:parity.io

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Passet Hub transactions - Passet Hub explorer | Blockscout is not listing my txs. Are there working block explorers for passet hub?

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We’ve added support in the Contracts UI to test your ink! v6 smart contracts in Passet Hub:

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Heya Niklas, thanks for the heads up - the endpoints were initially not set to archive so older txs may not show. If you try redeploying and still have issues please let the team know on the support channel and they can help. :slight_smile:

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Thank you, adding passet hub to subscan would greatly improve DX for tasks like checking smart contracts balance e.g.

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Heya @Flimflamfin I’m not sure about your specific question but heads up the rate limit issue has been added to our issues tracker to resolve, thank you for raising!

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Notice Regarding IBP Westend RPC Services

Upon member approval of RFC #11 the IBP will discontinue all RPC and BOOT services for Westend effective immediately.

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Is it currently possible to deploy smart contracts that interact with precompiles for the assets pallet and/or for cross-chain functionalities? I’ve searched around but haven’t seen any mention of these capabilities being available yet.

Are these precompiles deployed on Passet Hub, or is there an ETA for their availability? These are pretty crucial building blocks for many potential use cases, and a bit of clarity here would go a long way :folded_hands:

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Heya Josep, thanks for the question! While you may see some early previews of functionality if you “poke around” on the Passet Hub, we are not considering anything “live” and ready to communicate until the documentation etc. is in place and we’ve had some testers play with it from outside Parity as an extra “check”.

This particular ask is something that is being actively worked on at the moment and will likely be in the next update to Passet Hub. Once it’s all there we will communicate it out for developers to play with (in addition to the larger announcement when part 2 of the preview release of PolkaVM Solidity smart contracts drops on Kusama). Sorry I can’t give you any more specific dates.

FYI if you want to stay up to date with the specifics around “Passet Hub” testnet releases and documentation, we are making these detailed announcements when new pages / functionality is added to the documentation on the Polkadot Devs X account, and also in the #solidity-smart-contracts support channel on the Discord.

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The reason why I’m asking this is, precisely, b/c my team would be interested in being one of these “testers from outside Parity”.

Didn’t you say that if I “poke around” I would find it in in there, already? :thinking: That was released last week.

No worries, I get that. I’m not asking for a super comprehensive set of docs or anything like that, just the very basic so that we can give a shot to these precompiles and provide feedback, so that when they become stable they have been tested by enough “outside Parity testers”.

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Adding here from another convo to keep the discussion together: Westend <> Paseo bridge for testing XCM highlighted as a use case for dapp devs to have Westend access

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heya, there were a couple of fixes required that are now done and will be in the next release (hence the language around “actively worked on” - the fixes and the documentation) :slight_smile:

Re: timelines for documentation, I don’t want to commit us to anything but it should be imminent (days/week/s vs weeks/months) :slight_smile:

This is referring to the documentation team who is the “first line”. However as soon as they are done and it’s on Passet Hub (the early preview of smart contracts - things get pushed here as soon as we can, before it goes on Kusama etc.), we very much want to have people playing around with it and letting us know what their experience is and anything that is or isn’t working well. We set up a feedback form and there’s a github repo for issues, both linked above, also we now have an email if you prefer that format too to get things in front of the team.

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I provided some feedback in the Discord server, very basic and proper coms, got booted. What’s the best channel to provide feedback that will be taken seriously?