Mainnet & Testnet

Mainnet – short for main network – is the original and functional blockchain where actual transactions take place in the distributed ledger and the native cryptocurrency possesses real economic value. In other words, the mainnet refers to the actual open-sourced blockchain itself that is publicly verifiable.

The mainnet carries out the functionality of executing real transactions within the network which is stored on the blockchain and is referred to as the ‘end product’ that is open for the public to use. Each transaction executed on the blockchain requires participants to pay a transaction fee (payable in the native coin) so as to incentivize miners to validate the transactions and prevent network spamming. For their hard work, miners will be rewarded with the transaction fees paid by the participants.

You can access LTO mainnet via a node. It's integrated with the GUI in the LTO web-wallet, allowing anyone to use it without any technical knowledge or blockchain downloads.

Testnet – short for test network – is an alternative LTO blockchain, to be used for testing. Testnet LTO tokens are separate and distinct from actual LTO tokens, and are never supposed to have any value. This allows application developers or testers to experiment without having to use real LTO or worrying about breaking the main LTO chain.

Testnet is used a lot for developing purposes, assume you are building a new feature and it requires you to send and receive LTO and you don't have any real LTO or you don't want to waste with mistakes, here you use test network (testnet).

Mainnet vs Testnet

A mainnet and a testnet are two separate networks that operate independently from each other.

	Mainnet	Testnet
Purpose	LTO Functional blockchain	LTO Testing environment
Transactions	LTO real transactions stored on actual blockchain	Fake transactions
LTO Tokens	Posses real value	No monetary value
Transactions frequency	High	Low
Mining	Possible to earn rewards	Not possible