🧪 Testnet Phase #2 — Wrap-Up Recap (Rewards Complete)

Testnet Phase #2 is now officially wrapped - and reward/prize distribution is complete.

Phase #2 delivered what we wanted: a stable baseline, meaningful self-managed L3 progress, and a stronger trust + routing foundation to support the more agentic direction of Phase #3.

✅ What We Completed in Phase #2

🔹 Stable baseline achieved
- Network/background tasks held steady enough that Phase #2 stats became real signal (usable for routing, not noise)

🔹 Self-managed COR L3 is live as a real track (Testnet-1a / Arbitrum Orbit)
- Completed apple-to-apple L3 comparison and stood up Testnet-1a as the self-managed COR L3 environment
- Shifted migration + load-testing weight toward self-managed L3 so results are actionable

🔹 Routing filters upgraded using real metrics
- Moved toward “earned routing priority” using reliability/behavior/consistency signals
- Added QuantitativeStats + QualitativeStats as secondary filters to improve routing quality beyond simple uptime

🔹 Validator engine experiments rolling out (#Ollama + embeddings)
- Started deploying Ollama judge models + multiple embedding variants
- Reduced environment-specific validator issues while improving scoring consistency + throughput across mixed CPU/GPU setups

🔹 Agent-facing router surfaces expanded
- Live + exercised: /delegate v1/v2, /validate v1/v2, and /factcheck
- Bardiel dashboard now has mock/example datasets for agent-side iteration (more real data + refinement coming)

🔹 ERC-8004 mainnet agents registered (Corgent + Bardiel)
• Corgent + Bardiel are now registered as ERC-8004 mainnet agents backed by the Router Node MCP/prototype stack

🔹 Self-managed L3 ops playbooks completed
- Produced ops playbooks for self-managed L3: backups, snapshots, recovery flow, disk space estimates

🔹 Pre-mainnet environments progressed
- Pre-mainnet setup/env work is in place - deeper mainnet-identical experiments land in Phase #3

📌 Where Phase #3 Goes From Here

Phase #3 is more agentic + router-node iteration: we’ll keep tightening /delegate + /validate surfaces (and likely add more agent-focused endpoints), and we’ll run pre-mainnet experiments on the self-managed L3 setup designed to be identical to mainnet.

Thanks to all node operators and testers who made Phase #2 productive end-to-end.

https://x.com/cortensor/status/2028040657877815459