Live on the test network: Smart Contracts on Unstablenet's website
Shardeum, a promising new player in the blockchain industry, has launched Unstablenet, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible smart contract testnet. This testnet serves as a crucial sandbox environment for developers to build, test, and refine decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts on Shardeum's scalable, autoscaling Layer 1 sharded blockchain.
A Playground for Developers
Unstablenet offers early access to Shardeum's scalable smart contract infrastructure before the mainnet rollout. Developers can deploy Solidity-based contracts using familiar Ethereum tools, making the transition smoother and more efficient. The testnet supports high-performance use cases like gaming and trading protocols within a decentralized and autoscaling environment.
Stress-Testing the Future
The primary purpose of Unstablenet is to stress-test and validate the autoscaling, sharded infrastructure under real-world conditions ahead of mainnet deployment. This will help improve Shardeum's infrastructure readiness and ecosystem by gathering feedback from real-world testing before the mainnet smart contract launch.
Streamlining Developer Onboarding
Unstablenet is designed to facilitate ecosystem growth by streamlining developer onboarding. With an RPC endpoint ("https://api-unstable.ourwebsite.org"), chain ID (8080), and extensive support resources such as an explorer, faucet, and dApp playground, developers can focus on creating great user experiences without network congestion and unpredictable gas fees.
Incentivizing Contributions
To further incentivize contributions, Unstablenet plans for a bug bounty program to incentivize uncovering issues and improving the network. This will help ensure the network's robustness and reliability as it approaches mainnet deployment.
Long-Term Commitment
Unstablenet does not have a fixed end date and is expected to run long-term. Fixes and feature updates will be rolled out progressively by the tech team as they are ready. Support for community-run nodes is also on the roadmap for Unstablenet.
Getting Started
To claim test SHM on Unstablenet, use the faucet channel on Discord. The explorer URL for Unstablenet is "https://explorer-unstable.ourwebsite.org/". When adding Unstablenet endpoints to MetaMask, you may see the suggested network name as "our website Liberty 1.x". You can rename it locally as "our website Unstablenet" in your wallet settings if desired.
Please note that there is a known limitation in the current gas estimation mechanism for Unstablenet, which defaults to a fixed value of 3 million. If you encounter issues with transactions not going through, try setting a higher custom gas limit manually.
For reporting bugs and providing feedback on Unstablenet, use the bug reporting channel on Discord. Unstablenet is a sandbox for building on the world's first autoscaling Layer 1 blockchain, and we're excited to see what developers will create within this environment. The testnet is launching on July 24, 2025. Let's build the future together!
Technology is essential for developers as they can deploy Solidity-based contracts using familiar Ethereum tools on Unstablenet, the new testnet by Shardeum. This technology-driven platform supports high-performance use cases and serves as a crucial sandbox for building, testing, and refining decentralized applications and smart contracts.
