The hardfork on testnet went well today. We successfully revived some bitassets after artificially created black swans.

The bad news is that, so far, witness participation leaves much to be desired:
* Of the 25 active witnesses on mainnet, only 12 are currently active on testnet.
* During and after the hardfork only rnglab, bhuz and lafona showed up on telegram. Later, wackou and thom (aka verbaltech) showed up. (Xeroc and myself were also present, but we're not witnesses.)
* I'm not aware of any witnesses preparing and/or executing significant tests.

Witnesses, please perform any acceptance tests you deem necessary on testnet. Report any bugs you find on github, or here in this thread if you don't have a github account. If no showstoppers turn up, I plan to prepare the main release in about a week, with the hardfork date at least one month in the future (this is open to discussion of course).

Any update in regards to the new software on testnet?  Is there any criteria in place to verify before scheduling a fork on the production network?

https://bitshares.org/technology/delegated-proof-of-stake-consensus/

very happy to hear the revive asset process had worked in the testnet. will be nice to paste some output so the users can get familiar with the process commands needed.

in regards to the addition of testnet to the explorer proposed by @Brekyrself , it is definitely possible but will need a new server to run the testnet and the explorer backend. i think it is good to have the explorer working in the production and testnet side by side. i am not sure however if this will help knowing what witnesses are diligent, please explain me more about that.

thanks.

As far as data metrics, I was thinking just mirroring the production explorer.  Witnesses should be testing the latest and greatest to make sure no block production issues arise before hitting production.

The basics such as seeing if the production witnesses are even running a node on testnet?
How many blocks they have missed? 
Perhaps even blocks missed/last 24 hours?
Statistics around publishing feeds and how often?

BTC tx backlog spiked, wonder how much of the price decline is people simply removing coins from exchanges?  Very mixed messages about what's actually going to happen in China.  Some say its a temporary halt on ICO's, others say the exchanges will stop trading?  Does that mean coins will be stuck on exchanges?

Thanks for the consistent updates.  Any opinion on this feature being discussed for a future core project? https://github.com/bitshares/bitshares-ui/issues/356

features that require a hard fork or general rule changes - yes.

bugfixes - no

Some bugfixes may require a hardfork however this is a good guideline.  The more visibility into any hardfork upgrades is good for the whole community and those who are building businesses around the chain.

Appears if you are a lifetime member, it's 121 bts for a 5 character or longer asset.

http://cryptofresh.com/fees

These can be changed if you have a real business case, you can justify to the committee members why they should be lowered.