• The Cardano community will be able to vote in the next few days whether the Shelley Incentivized Testnet (ITN) will be kept alive as an experimental platform or even as a cryptocurrency.
  
• As Hoskinson described, a Bitcoin/Litecoin strategy could be pursued in which the ITN serves as a testnet for Cardano and has its own economic value.

As Hoskinson explained, the distribution of Cardano ITN rewards ends today, June 19th. With the launch of the public Haskell Shelley testnet, the Shelley Incentivized Testnet (ITN) has lost its purpose. Consequently, it is no longer necessary to reward the testers, both stake pool operators and ADA holders, with ADA. As a result, the ITN rewards will be discontinued. As with the Incentivized testnet, this has not yet been conclusively clarified.

A few weeks ago Hoskinson had already indicated that there are considerations about how the code base can be further used. One option that the CEO of IOHK considered at the time was the possibility of using it at Scorex. The project is a framework for research and development of blockchain solutions. On the other hand, as Hoskinson noted, the original plan was to simply phase out the ITN. Some community members had even considered deliberately “destroying” the network by spamming.

A vote will decide about the Cardano ITN

In order to reach a final decision on the continuation or termination of the ITN, IOHK will hold a vote. If two-thirds of the stake pool operators vote that the ITN should continue including rewards until July 30th, IOHK will reactivate the rewards within two to three days and present itself with a roadmap by the aforementioned date. Concretely, the ITN could become an experimental platform where new or already discarded concepts are examined, as Hoskinson explained:

[…] that we can use as a experimental platform, that we can use to explore a lot of concepts, like potentially reintroduce yella into the roadmap or maybe drew up a new version of Polar Cast or do something really cool with oracles or perhaps use it as a governance-as-a-service platform to provide governance for wrapped assets that enter into the ecosystem.

If the proposal is supported, Cardano-ITN could also have a value of its own, whereby Hoskinson used an analogy to Bitcoin and Litecoin for this:

Now, when it quietly becomes adopted and used, then we can actually go for a Bitcoin / Litecoin strategy, where Litecoin tends to be the testnet for Bitcoin and it has its own economic value.

If this happens, the “ITN asset” could also be listed on exchanges. Then Hoskinson would make sure that there is a hard fork of the ITN and that a roadmap is worked out until the end of July, which plans the development of the new Cardano ITN. However, the final decision will be up to the community.

Hoskinson went on to say that the vote will be a two-stage process. On the one hand, the number of stake pools that will continue to operate in the ITN will decide. On the other hand, a direct vote will start in four to five days.