[ANN][ZCD] Zycord | A P2P network of self-certifying state | Launching today! ✅

[thesimstoshi]

Zycord devlog – Oct 1 → Oct 4

v0.6.1 is out – download it and test: https://zycord.com/download/
The testnet relaunches on 5 Oct, 00:00 UTC, to rehearse the mainnet launch two days early.

✅ Release version v0.6.1
✅ Stabilization of seed nodes 1 through 4 and increased capacity of seed servers.
✅ 30-day slow start: the block reward starts near zero and ramps up to full
✅ Subsidy split in consensus: 94% miner, 3% founder, 3% community fund
✅ Same binary for testnet and mainnet
✅ Block 1 reveals a message committed in the binary – nobody can start the chain early
✅ Black box, public: a local devnet that runs 105 network tests, happy path and edge cases. Reproduce ours or write your own: https://gitlab.com/zycord-group/zycord-blackbox
✅ Desktop wallet: countdown to genesis, automatic resync from the cancelled chain, pool mining from Settings
✅ Hash counter in /metrics (!65). Thanks gabrielesor
✅ Announcement post and site updated to match the code

⚠️ Review continues until genesis; any fix ships before the 7th.

Audit the code and the rules: https://gitlab.com/zycord-group/zycord-node
Pools: start integrating now – unmodified XMRig mines over Stratum, and the testnet runs mainnet's rules from the 5th. Issues on GitLab.

🔜 Testnet genesis: 5 Oct 2026, 00:00 UTC.
🔜 Mainnet genesis: 7 Oct 2026, 00:00 UTC.

[thesimstoshi]

I created a dashboard so we can monitor network health together in real time during the launch.

https://lab.zycord.com/tools/network/

[shadow_69]

Thanks for the dashboard, handy for comparing against our own node. We have a node and a rx/2 miner running on the testnet, ready for the 05 Oct genesis, and will report anything odd we see after block 1. Good luck with the launch!

[thesimstoshi]

Zycord testnet: the first two hours

The launch rehearsal opened on 5 October at 00:00 UTC, running the same binary (v0.6.1) and the same rules as mainnet.

Summary: the network started on time, the three seeds stayed up and in agreement, difficulty adjusted on its own, and block time settled at the 30-second target.

Launch. Block 1 arrived at 00:00:01 carrying the launch message. No node mined before it. Only the launch node can produce block 1; it also found block 2. Together they paid 0.0007 ZCD.

Pace. The testnet deliberately starts at a low difficulty (~34 H/s), so the first 5 minutes produced 73 blocks. The adjustment raised difficulty about 470x in roughly 10 minutes, and since 01:00 the average block time has been ~32 s.

Code:

Blocks in 2 h      371 (target 240)
Hashrate           peak ~52 kH/s, now ~36 kH/s
Seeds              3/3 up, zero restarts, same state
Connections        peak 19 per seed, 0 refused
Reorgs             3, max depth 2, all in the first 40 min

Reward ramp. The block reward is at 0.090 ZCD, 0.44% of the way up. The first two hours issued 16.8 ZCD in total, against 5,040 ZCD at full reward, and the 73 fast blocks at the start paid 0.66 ZCD between them. Being first is worth almost nothing, as designed. The ramp tops out at 20.41 ZCD rather than 21 because the daily emission step-down already runs during the ramp.

Ready for mainnet? Launch, seeds, consensus, difficulty adjustment and the reward ramp are validated. The testnet did not draw the crowd of 1 October, so heavy simultaneous load, pools and transaction volume remain untested. Expect a fast start on mainnet too: difficulty needs a few minutes to catch up with the real hashrate, so the first blocks will come quickly, and the ramp makes them worth almost nothing.

Until then: keep your nodes and miners on the testnet, test pools over Stratum/XMRig, and report anything unusual here or on GitLab.

Live: https://lab.zycord.com/tools/network/

🔜 Mainnet: 7 October, 00:00 UTC.

[andremangra]

The rehearsal results look encouraging from a small Windows miner's perspective.

I’ve now finished preparing my v0.6.1 Windows RandomX setup for the October 7 mainnet launch.

A few things I specifically wanted to see after October 1 now look much better: the testnet launched cleanly, bootstrap is significantly stronger, the chain remained stable, and the first real RandomX key transition at height 576 was crossed normally.

I also like what the 30-day reward ramp showed in practice. A fast start no longer gives the first miners a meaningful economic advantage while difficulty and connectivity settle.

For launch I’ll be going solo with the native RandomX miner. Pool/XMRig is still interesting for smaller miners like me in the longer term, but since the pool path wasn't exercised during the rehearsal, I prefer to keep the launch setup simple and use the path that has already been demonstrated.

My little Windows machine is ready for mission #2. 🙂

Good luck everyone — see you at genesis.

[thesimstoshi]

Yes andremangra, I'm very excited about the results. I think we hit every metric we set out to measure in this rehearsal.

The network is behaving very well. The early rush while difficulty caught up with the hashrate did not concentrate the coin the way it did on 1 October. The largest balances on the explorer make it clear: the reward ramp cut the coin exposed to that early concentration by 99.8%.

Code:

                          1 Oct          5 Oct
                          (no ramp)      (ramp)        Change
First 300 blocks          6,300 ZCD      11.0 ZCD      -99.83%
First 2 hours             ~9,450 ZCD     16.8 ZCD      -99.82%
Top 3 addresses           ~5,480 ZCD     ~10 ZCD       -99.8%
(first 300 blocks)

1 Oct is the cancelled mainnet; 5 Oct is the testnet rehearsal, same release plus the ramp.

On 1 October, the three addresses that dominated the start took ~5,500 ZCD in the first hours, while most people could not even connect. Today the same kind of head start is worth about 10 ZCD. Who finds the early blocks still depends on hashrate; what changed is how much those blocks are worth. Over the 30-day ramp, the coin goes to whoever keeps mining through the month, not to whoever showed up in the first minutes.

Explorer: https://testnet.zycord.com/charts


Now, about 14 hours later, the network is concentrating around those with the most hash power, yet without an initial advantage for anyone.

[shadow_69]

Follow-up from our testnet run (one node + one rx/2 miner, ~1.7 kH/s, solo over Stratum): 15 h 23 min from genesis, 124 blocks delivered, 120 in the canonical chain (4 orphans), 9 rejected shares.
The three RandomX key changes (heights 576, 1088, 1600) were crossed without trouble.
We also checked the published figures against our own node's copy of the chain: 73 blocks in the first 5 minutes, 371 in the first 2 hours and ~32 s average after the first hour all match, and every header target up to height 1617 equals what NextTarget computes.
Nothing odd to report.
One small note: with the ramp ending at 20.41 ZCD we get 10.67 ZCD for the first 300 blocks and 16.30 ZCD for the first 2 hours (11.0 and 16.8 would be a ramp toward 21); the -99.8% conclusion is unchanged.

See you at genesis.

[thesimstoshi]

Excited about today's launch. Best of luck to everyone with the launch.

If anyone wants to know more about the story behind the project, I gave an interview to Hashpower, here is the link https://hashpower.site/2026/09/23/zcd-developer-interview/

[darkko]

Less than 5 hours until the launch.
If you have any questions, the community is available to help:

https://t.me/+ufeCItfHJWU3ZjBl
https://discord.gg/8DXTADJ6Es


countdown: https://lab.zycord.com/tools/network/
twitch community live: https://www.twitch.tv/eliotbez