Supernova v1.0.0-RC4 Released — Production Ready

The Road from RC3 to RC4

When we tagged RC3 in June 2025, Supernova had a working protocol with quantum-resistant cryptography and a Lightning Network implementation. But “working” and “production-ready” are different standards entirely. RC4 represents the culmination of a focused effort to close that gap.

Over the past four months, the team committed over 100 changes spanning security hardening, panic elimination, test coverage, atomic swap implementation, and testnet infrastructure. Every component was reviewed for production readiness — from the consensus engine to the P2P networking layer.

Security Hardening at Every Layer

The single largest effort in RC4 was a multi-phase security hardening campaign. We systematically eliminated unsafe patterns across the entire codebase:

• Panic-free code — Replaced all unwrap() calls with proper error handling across core, node, wallet, and btclib. Every code path now returns structured errors instead of panicking.
• Key zeroization — Cryptographic keys are now securely zeroed in memory after use, preventing residual key material from persisting in process memory.
• KEM encryption — ML-KEM (Kyber) key encapsulation is now fully integrated for P2P key exchange, completing our post-quantum cryptography stack.
• Time warp prevention — Added protections against block timestamp manipulation attacks, hardening the consensus layer against time-based exploits.
• Eclipse attack metrics — New monitoring infrastructure detects and reports eclipse attack attempts, giving node operators visibility into peer manipulation.

This work was spread across 8 dedicated security hardening pull requests (PRs #11–#21), each reviewed and tested independently before merging to main.

98%+ Test Coverage

RC4 achieves over 98% test coverage across the core protocol. In October, we ran a dedicated test coverage campaign that added comprehensive tests for:

All security tests pass at 100%. The test suite includes fuzzing infrastructure powered by AFL++ to catch edge cases that unit tests miss.

Full Atomic Swap Implementation

RC4 ships with a complete atomic swap implementation spanning six phases — from basic hash time-locked contracts to privacy-preserving cross-chain swaps. This enables trustless exchange between Supernova and other blockchains without intermediaries.

Key additions include atomic swap rollback protection, field validation, and hardening against timing-based attacks. The implementation uses quantum-resistant signatures throughout, ensuring swaps remain secure even against future quantum adversaries.

Testnet Infrastructure

RC4 includes everything needed to launch and operate a public testnet:

• —JSON-RPC API for node interaction and block explorer support
• —Parallel block validation for improved sync performance
• —UTXO cache snapshots for faster node startup
• —Storage corruption recovery for production resilience
• —Comprehensive error metrics infrastructure for monitoring
• —GossipSub protocol updates for efficient message propagation

What's Next

With RC4 tagged, we're entering the final phase before public testnet launch. The immediate roadmap includes:

• Final integration testing of all production-ready components
• Pre-audit security validation and documentation
• Validator set configuration and genesis coordination
• Community onboarding resources and testnet documentation

We're targeting a public testnet launch in Q1 2026, followed by third-party security audits and a mainnet launch later in the year.