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:

*The runtime upgrade to update the chain ID is being pushed over the next week. If you want to use this before June 10, use 420420421 (the same as Westend Asset Hub - so you cannot connect both to a wallet simultaneously until after the update by June 10). This runtime upgrade will also update Chainlist after 10 June.
​​

​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