The order of the work, and only one step that engraves

9Chain's roadmap publishes an order, and deliberately publishes no dates. The project states the reason plainly: the order is a commitment it can keep, and dates at this stage are not — so posting a calendar would only be posting something that has to be withdrawn.

Stage	The work	Does it engrave anything permanently
Now	Two technical branches running publicly side by side, each with its own explorer, endpoint and test faucet	No
Next	Publish the measurements on both branches — each result with its method, so outsiders can reproduce it and refute it with evidence	No
Then	A community vote chooses the branch the official network will follow	No — but this is when the window closes
After	The official network is born on the chosen engine	Yes — and only here
Finally	Full decentralisation	Nothing further engraved — this is when the scaffolding comes down

Three points in that order deserve more attention than the rest.

Measurement comes before the ballot. A vote choosing a technical direction with no measurements in front of it is a vote on sentiment, and the louder side wins. The constraint that comes with it is itself a gate: a published score with no reproducible measurement behind it is not a score — it is an opinion with a number attached. No branch scores itself.

The voting mechanism must exist before voting opens. How the ballot works, who is eligible, and the window — all three have to be published before the first vote is cast. Until they are, there is nothing to sign up for, and anyone inviting you to register to "hold your place in the vote" is offering something that does not exist.

Full decentralisation comes after launch day. This is where this roadmap differs from most: the day the official network runs is not the finish line. At the moment of engraving, control is still more concentrated than it ought to be — saying otherwise would be a lie. Full decentralisation is therefore a stage that comes afterwards, and it is the only stage that does not end with a launch event: it is done when no task requires a governance key any more, which is a countable number (see The commitment to remove the scaffolding in Governance).

Which stage the project stands at is live data, so it is not written here — how to read it for yourself is in Check the network yourself.

This is the most important thing to carry into the rest of the document: not one line of it is engraved before the official network is born. The testing stretch exists precisely so that what is written here gets tried, argued with, and corrected — by community vote, with almost no clause off limits. The single exception is the core reduced to its minimum: the three memorial blocks that open the ledger, and the rule that everything else is decided by the community together (see LOVE9 economics).

The official network starts from a blank page

An earlier version of this document said the official network was the sum of the test periods — their history preserved and attached to the shared ledger. That has been reversed, and this is where the reversal is recorded. The current position: the official network is born from a new genesis, not as the continuation of a test network, and balances on a test network do not carry across.

The reason is worth more than the conclusion. A ledger that admits the history of networks rebuilt several times has to answer the question which of those was the real one — and there is no answer to that question that does not require someone to choose on everyone's behalf. Starting from a blank page sounds more ungrateful, but it is the only option that needs no such person.

⚠️ What you do on a test network is not lost, but it does not become a balance either. What is settled: balances do not carry across. What is not settled: how contribution during the testing stretch will be recognised — that is marked LEFT BLANK, and the community votes on it. Anyone telling you that running a test network will certainly convert into tokens is putting words in the project's mouth — nobody has decided that.

There is one more boundary to state fully, because it is easily read as something it is not. A test network can be wiped and rebuilt from scratch — that is exactly what the testing stretch exists to do, and it has happened more than once. When it happens, balances, addresses, contracts and block history of the abandoned build do not flow into the next one; do not build anything that depends on a test network living forever. And that boundary has no exception standing behind it: no inheritance promise catches it.

Preservation only means something if outsiders can check it, so the rule that comes with it is a countable action: before a network is rebuilt, a complete copy of the old ledger and its hash are published. Anyone can download it, hash it again, and reconcile what happened — even long after that network has stopped running. What carries over is a published contribution record with its hash, not a balance.

Diagram

flowchart TB A["NOW two branches running publicly side by side"] --> B["NEXT publish the measurements with a reproducible method"] B --> C["THEN the vote that chooses the branch"] C --> D["AFTER the official network on the chosen engine — the ONLY place that engraves"] D --> E["FINALLY full decentralisation — the scaffolding comes down"] D -.->|"a new genesis, balances NOT inherited"| D

Figure 36 — The order of the work, deliberately without dates. Only one stage engraves, and the final stage comes AFTER the one that engraves.

In short: this roadmap publishes an order, not dates, and at this stage that is the only honest thing to publish — an order can be kept, a date cannot yet. The two points worth remembering: measurement comes before the ballot, and full decentralisation comes after launch day. Any roadmap placing "decentralisation" before launch day is selling something that does not exist.

In this part

Page	What it answers
Networks and endpoints	Where to look for yourself
Check the network yourself	The two questions to ask before trusting a figure

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