After five years of development, we are extremely proud to share today’s announcement with you and unveil the final evolution of ARK Core. For such a monumental occasion, we wanted to pull out all the stops. That is why not only will this new version of ARK Core deliver on our ultimate vision, but it will also be re-branded to stand on its own as a leader in the industry.
Say hello to Bearmint .
When we set out to make ARK, our ultimate goal was to create a lightweight, JavaScript blockchain platform that would allow for the flexibility and rapid development necessary to experiment and create new and exciting products that would help bring the power of blockchain to the masses. With Bearmint, that dream is finally a reality.
By combining the modularity and customizable nature of ARK Core 3.0 with the power of Tendermint, Bearmint brings you the finality and security that has set the standard in the industry, with a whole new set of bells and whistles that take things to a whole new level.
A Fresh New Start
After completing work on ARK Core 3.0, the ARK Team faced our toughest challenge yet. For a long time, we have not been satisfied with the performance and finality of the ARK DPoS system and felt that it could be improved to compete more on the level of the leaders in the industry. The ARK Team, along with ARK Ecosystem CTO, Brian Faust, went back to the drawing board. After several months of research, conceptualization, and experimental development, Brian brought forward a vision for a new ARK Core that we could not help but be excited about.
With the full support of the ARK Ecosystem board and management team, Brian stepped down as CTO of ARK and we signed a long-term contract with his company, BaseCode , to both develop and maintain what is now known as Bearmint. We believe that Bearmint is not only an exciting development for the industry, but is the future of the ARK Ecosystem.
Development is Underway
While Bearmint has been conceptually forming for over a year, active development has been ongoing for several months and has already exceeded all expectations. The team at BaseCode has been hard at work and not only is Bearmint running with full Tendermint support, but they have also completed the initial development of more than a dozen transaction types to include full specifications, documentation, and working implementations for NFTs, Native Tokens, and other highly requested features.
Bearmint will also come with support for PoS, NPoS, and DPoS consensus as well as a handful of signature algorithms at launch. We can’t wait to tell you more about everything that Bearmint has to offer, but we don’t want to steal too much thunder from Brian and his team. They will be releasing additional technical details and information on their own blog in the coming weeks and months so make sure to head over to their Twitter account and follow them to stay up to date.
An Updated License
ARK has always been about fostering the educational aspects of the industry, building an environment conducive to rapid prototyping, and providing a place for developers to continue contributing to the ARK Network and Ecosystem of products. With Bearmint, we want to bring the focus back to where we started. Our goal is to incentivize the development of the ARK Network and a wide range of products and services around the existing infrastructure.
As such, Bearmint will be launching with a brand new and updated license. All code and development will be public and it will be freely available to use for educational & testing purposes. Bearmint will NOT be available for implementation in commercial and production blockchains outside of the ARK Network. While we know this is a large shift in philosophy, we believe it is the right path forward and will help consolidate the development effort into a more unified community.
The current version of ARK Core will stay fully open-source under the MIT license and essential maintenance will still be done (fixing reported bugs & security vulnerabilities, resolving issues, and updating dependencies), but all future development efforts will go towards Bearmint moving forward.
Migrating the Network
Bearmint is a major evolution of ARK Core. We believe that it is the future of the ARK Network and our team will be on standby and 100% ready to help the delegates and users of the ARK Network upgrade to the new codebase if they see fit. The process of updating will be slightly more involved than usual and will require re-launching the network. Both the ARK Ecosystem, SCIC and the team at BaseCode are ready and willing to help facilitate the process when the time comes.
We hope that everyone will take the time to research Bearmint and see the wide range of advancements being made and will support the upgrade of the ARK Network. The team at BaseCode will work with the Strake Foundation to set up a public testnet to ensure everyone has a chance to see Bearmint in action and get a feel for what it brings to the table. We are confident that you are going to love it!
Stay Up to Date
The team at BaseCode will have their own Bearmint Website , Bearmint Blog & Twitter Account and will be documenting their journey to the launch of Bearmint. You’ll be able to follow their progress and monitor the development as it happens. We will also make sure to keep you updated on our own blog with any major Bearmint updates and will provide a lot more technical details as we get closer to public release. Stay tuned as always and don’t forget to follow us on socials, we can’t wait to share more about Bearmint!
