Project Status
Shekyl has not launched. This page says where it actually is, and what stands between here and a stable network.
Where things stand
Current pre-release
v3.1.0-alpha.7
Tagged August 7, 2026. This is an alpha: it is for developers and testers, and it is not money. Do not put value you would mind losing on any pre-release network.
Released versus landed
Most current work is ahead of the latest tag
Development happens on the dev branch; main advances only on a tagged promotion. A great deal of the work described elsewhere on this site — the deletion of the legacy wallet core, the Rust daemon RPC, the consensus-rule census — has landed on dev and is not in v3.1.0-alpha.7. Where this site describes work, it says which.
Active development on dev
Work lands on the dev branch first — recently the deletion of the legacy C++ wallet core, the Rust daemon RPC, and the consensus-rule census — and reaches main only on a tagged release. Downloads here track the latest tag; the documentation browser tracks dev, so the documents describe the current code rather than the last release.
The path to launch
Each of these is a gate, not a date. Shekyl ships on readiness, so the project does not publish an estimated launch date — an estimate here would be a guess wearing a calendar.
AlphaHere now
Pre-release builds for developers and testers. Consensus rules, wallet internals and network behaviour are still changing between tags.
Beta
Feature-complete, with a public stressnet deployed. Reaching beta means nothing further is planned to land before launch, not that nothing further will be fixed.
Stressnet stable for four consecutive weeks
A sustained-run gate rather than a build. Four unbroken weeks is the bar; a reset restarts the clock.
External audit
Independent review of the cryptography and consensus surface, against a scope the project publishes in advance.
Release candidate
Fixes only. A candidate that needs a feature is not a candidate.
Stable
Mainnet launch from a clean genesis block.
How work is targeted
There is no V3.1 / V3.2 / V3.x release train. Every open item carries one of three targets, and the shape of that list is itself the roadmap.
Pre-genesis
The default, and where nearly all open work sits. If something should exist at launch, it lands before genesis rather than being scheduled after it.
Post-genesis
A deliberate deferral, and only with a named blocker recorded against it. This list is kept deliberately tiny — roughly twenty lines against a thousand of pre-genesis work.
V4
The lattice-only transition, two to five years out, gated on standards bodies approving the primitives it needs. Not a feature release and not on a calendar.
Known gaps
Stated plainly, because a pre-launch project that lists none is not being read carefully enough.
- No onion or I2P seed nodes yet. Anonymity-network seed lists are deliberately empty rather than inherited. The upstream lists were removed after a Shekyl node configured for Tor was found dialling another network's hidden services, failing the handshake at each and announcing its own presence to that network's operators. Real onion seeds are generated before launch.
- Stagenet has no seeds. Mainnet and testnet have theirs; stagenet is not yet populated.
- Cover traffic is off by default. It is built and available behind a development opt-in, and an armed node carries a substantial and deliberate amount of traffic. It is not enabled for you unless you enable it.
- The audit has not happened. Nothing on this network has been reviewed by an independent third party yet.