Introducing the Spacemesh Roadmap

We’ve always been fascinated by the Ethereum roadmap and its cleverly named milestones: Frontier. Homestead. Metropolis. Serenity. The names changed over time and the roadmap matured into something much more specific, but we always loved how the names evoked accurate and appropriate images of a band of pioneers boldly setting out west together.

There have been many previous attempts to define a Spacemesh roadmap. We never quite arrived at a roadmap that we liked and could commit to or stick with. It just never clicked. Partly this is because Spacemesh has many moving parts (the protocol, PoST, PoET, the API, and Smapp, just to name a few) and putting them all into a single roadmap is really hard. Partly it’s because the tech and design are evolving quite rapidly. Partly it’s because our governance is more decentralized than most projects so achieving consensus on the roadmap is nontrivial. Partly it’s because, while we knew that Spacemesh would be great, it wasn’t entirely clear exactly how it would be great, like watching your infant mature and knowing she has a bright future ahead of her without knowing exactly what that future would be.

We’re still not totally sure but now that the network is live the outlines are visible. The network is stable and growing in a healthy, organic fashion and we’re spending less time fighting fires, so we can finally take a step back, survey the landscape, and figure out how far we’ve come and where we’re going together. It’s clear that we are also on a journey together and that journey is now well underway. It’s not exactly the same as the Ethereum journey and we’re not going exactly the same place, of course, but it’s a journey that’s at least as ambitious and will take us at least as far.

One of the most common requests we hear in the community is for a roadmap pointing the way. We’re very, very excited to unveil the Spacemesh technical roadmap. The names of the stages of the Spacemesh roadmap (Pioneer, Voyager, Titan, Odyssey, Galactica) are inspired by past, present, and future missions to visit the moon, the rest of the solar system, and successively more distant and ambitious galactic destinations. (In case you were wondering, we’re right in the middle of the Pioneer stage at the moment!)

For the more concrete, technically-minded, we’ve also released a Github project board that’s much more focused and less expansive. It shows the tasks the team is currently working on with links to related Github issues and pull requests.

We deeply value the community’s feedback and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas. To be clear, this roadmap is not set in stone. It’s a living document and it will evolve over time (that’s why it’s a wiki doc!). As the roadmap itself makes clear, governance of the project will also transition into the hands of the community over time. This roadmap is a great place to start that process. What do you think about the task ordering and priorities? Is anything missing? Let us know. Ad astra!