This week has been one of significant decisions and forward momentum. As announced earlier this week, we’ve made the strategic choice to extend the Impossible Futures deployment phase by one month to ensure both our builders and the network are positioned for success. Rather than push builders to deploy into an environment that’s still being stabilised, we’re taking the time to get things right and create a fair, consistent platform for deployment… including some imminent updates to both the client and nodes.
For those who prefer to watch rather than read, we’ve released a video covering all this, giving the context and strategic decisions and what’s coming over the next three weeks.
Impossible Futures Timeline Extension
The big news this week was our announcement to shift the final phase of Impossible Futures back by one month. This wasn’t a decision we took lightly, but one that benefits everyone in the ecosystem - builders, backers, and the broader community.
Why we made this call: Recent network updates introduced some technical challenges that affected stability and consistency, particularly around node connectivity and client upload/download reliability. Rather than push our talented builders to deploy into an environment that’s still being stabilized, we’re taking the time to get things right.
Updated key dates:
- Deployment deadline: 21 August 2025
- Judging period: 22 August – 5 September 2025
- Voter Reward Airdrop: 13 August 2025 (unchanged)
- Awards announced: 16 September 2025
- Token unlock: 13 June 2026 (unchanged)
Our builders are already seeing MaidSafe devs dropping into their channels with scheduled support, and we’re introducing dedicated office hours to ensure every team gets the help they need to launch successfully.
Network Improvements: The Road Ahead
Today kicks off a three-week series of critical updates designed to restore the network reliability our builders experienced in the earlier Alpha phase.
Today’s Release (31st July):
We’re shipping a client update packed with Bootstrap cache fixes and a key solution for downloads - the ability for clients to avoid non-KAD peers. This should eliminate those frustrating, lumpy download experiences that have been plaguing some users.
It promises to be a significant boost… so look out for the new client release dropping later today.
Coming 13th August:
A major network-wide node update featuring two significant changes:
- Improved node reachability - Better handling of nodes that struggle to connect
- Relay removal - While this might seem like removing a feature, it’s actually a major step forward for stability and network health
The relay decision deserves explanation: currently, relays help a small proportion of nodes behind tricky router setups, but these nodes end up drawing disproportionate resources from the network. We believe UPnP, port-forwarding, and better UX handling will provide better solutions.
Token Ticker Transition: From $ANT to $AUTONOMI
We’ve announced an important brand evolution for the Autonomi Network Token. Effective immediately, our trading ticker is transitioning from $ANT to $AUTONOMI rolling out across all exchanges.
This strategic move was prompted by discussions with a centralized exchange regarding the $ANT ticker, with another entity pursuing its use. Rather than allow continued brand dilution between numerous entities (Autonomi, Aragon, the new player, and various meme-coin projects), we’ve made the strategic decision to move to the clear waters of the $AUTONOMI ticker.
As with all ticker-related matters, which are inherently unprotectable assets, we’ve been working under embargo conditions which necessitated short announcement timelines.
Key strategic benefits:
- Undiluted brand - No confusion or shared mindshare with other projects
- Direct brand connection - Unmistakable link between ticker and Autonomi Network
- Strategic control - Taking control of our brand destiny rather than ongoing disputes
What this means for token holders:
- Your tokens remain exactly the same - only the trading ticker changes
- All token functionality is unchanged
- Existing holdings will automatically reflect the new ticker as it rolls out
- The transition starts with CEX, then moves to DEX and listing sites like CMC
We turned an external challenge into a strategic advantage. The network is the same. The vision is the same. The opportunity is the same. Only the ticker is stronger.
[Read the important announcement here]( Important: Autonomi Network Token Moves to $AUTONOMI )
Internal Hackathon Showcase
We’re excited to share a brief screencast from @vphongph demonstrating what we accomplished during our recent three-day internal hackathon to create Indelible - a production-ready enterprise gateway for the Autonomi decentralized network.
What we’re building: Indelible provides REST APIs and a web interface for easy file storage and management, specifically designed for enterprise use cases and larger dataset holders. Our intensive hackathon kickstarted development with impressive results.
Key features we’ve implemented:
REST API Gateway - Simple HTTP interface for Autonomi network operations
JWT Authentication - Secure token-based access with database-backed validation
Non-blocking Uploads - Asynchronous file processing up to 4GB
PostgreSQL Database - Persistent storage for uploads and authentication
Web Interface - Modern Vue.js dashboard for drag-and-drop uploads
Real-time Status - Track upload progress and manage files
Cost Calculator - Estimate storage costs before uploading
The screencast shows the results of our focused development sprint, and this represents a significant step toward making Autonomi accessible to enterprise users seeking rapid integration and data management on top of the Network.
General Progress
All developers are now rotating into clinics and developer support in Discord, particularly helping Impossible Futures finalists with deployment and beyond. This hands-on support ensures every team gets the technical assistance they need to successfully launch their applications.
@mick.vandijke has been tackling some of our most pressing network reliability issues:
- Added a new feature to the Client that makes it quicker to retry failed downloads by using cached chunks
- Investigated the network issues surrounding downloads and sometimes uploads
- Added an outdated node filter to the Client to fix the
record not foundandinsufficient peersissues
@anselme has been working on critical stability improvements:
- Dug into scratchpad fork issues and developed countermeasures
- Fixed issues on the Hackathon project and set up reliable CI to automate testing
- Removed Relay code from nodes in a team attempt to fix unreliable node issues
@roland has been focusing on bootstrap and network protocol improvements:
- Fixed a bug where the local bootstrap cache was not read by nodes on restarts
- Implemented a feature on the clients for them to read and write to the bootstrap cache
- Nodes now block peers which do not support certain protocols from being part of the routing table
- Investigated the network failure that happened last week
Failed to connect to the network Error:
super that Maidsafe focus on enterprise
finally our Network is 
. Would be fun to see the LHC data uploaded to the Network 
