What happened
Runtime 208 was applied to the live public testnet — genesis 0xe973931e…eae7aa, launched 31 August — through a runtime upgrade, replacing the Wasm at :code. Every node applied the new rules from the next block. No restart, no new genesis, no lost history. The first time in the network's life.
What shipped in 208
- The two custom signed extensions,
CheckPqcPolicyandCheckDormantAccount, wired intoSignedExtra— the envelope every client must now encode. .empdomain registration (pallet-emp-domains) with per-year pricing by length (2,000 / 500 / 20 DMS), revenue to the treasury.- The
eth_*RPC surface answering for the first time (eth_chainId→0x7ea), though the EVM would not accept transactions until 211. - Spec 203 → 208 in one step;
transaction_versionbumped.
Why it mattered more than its contents
Because the upgrade policy — classes, timelocks, manifests, try-runtime, rollback plans — had been written for a network that had never upgraded. On 4 September it governed a real change for the first time, and by 14 September it had governed eight. The mainnet gate requires rehearsing four upgrade classes on the testnet; this was the first rehearsal.
What it made possible
Everything after it: 211 (EVM accepts transactions), 213 (storage migration — the second gate rehearsal), 215 (bounded state), 217 (wire or retire; treasury window), 218 (public-sale delivery), 219, 220 (first swap, first DID). A chain that relaunches cannot accumulate; one that upgrades can.
What it also introduced
The envelope change that no client knew about, and therefore 102,912 blocks without a signed transaction. The upgrade was correct; the communication was not. The lesson — publish the metadata diff and the format change with the manifest, before the timelock expires — is now in the policy's checklist.
The season this page announced
Was another ecosystem's hackathon season and its winners. EmpoorioChain's season began on 4 September with a single transaction that changed the rules of the chain without stopping it. That is the first the network will remember.
Based on RED.json, RUNTIME_UPGRADE_POLICY.md and the runtime 208 record.