Previewnet: Hedera Token Service (HTS) Early Access
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Oct 22, 2020
by Brady Gentile
Director of Marketing, Web3 Application Ecosystems

In July of 2020, the Hedera previewnet was made available to the world — for the first time, developers could take an alpha version of the Hedera services codebase with the latest functionality for a test-drive, before its subsequent stable release on the Hedera testnet and mainnet.

Today we're excited to announce that the previewnet is running v0.9.0-alpha of the Hedera Services codebase and includes early access to the Hedera Token Service (HTS). HTS is a new Hedera service that offers the ability to issue and configure tokens on Hedera, taking full advantage of Hedera Hasghraph’s native performance, security, stability, and governance. A great way to think about this is that it’s a faster and more efficient alternative to smart contract token creation.

Tokens created using HTS inherit many of the characteristics of hbar, including asynchronous byzantine fault tolerant (ABFT) consensus, world-class governance, and thousands of transactions per second with finality — this is in addition to predictable and low fees. HTS offers the ability for anyone to access stable coins, security tokens, and more issued on Hedera by creating a Hedera account.

Continue reading to learn more about how to get started using HTS on the Hedera previewnet, v2 of the officially supported SDKs and the latest Hedera API (HAPI), official Hedera feedback and community support channels, and how to earn up to $1k USD in hbars for building a demo application.

Expectations of the previewnet and HTS in early access

As with any service available on the Hedera previewnet, the functionalities in HTS may be limited and the stability of both the service and network is not guaranteed.

When testing and building applications on the Hedera previewnet, it’s expected that your data may be lost through codebase changes, improvements, and new alpha version releases. As a precaution, we always recommend preserving any important project data on a regular basis when using the Hedera previewnet.

How to get started using Hedera Token Service (HTS) on previewnet

To get started on the previewnet and using HTS, you must first sign up for a Hedera Portal profile. Once you’ve created a profile, you’ll instantly receive credentials for Hedera testnet and previewnet accounts — just select the network you'd like to join using the drop-down menu. You can also follow the step-by-step instructions found here.

Hedera SDKs and API with HTS Support

Once you’ve gained access to your previewnet account, visit the SDK section of the Hedera documentation to decide on an official or community-supported SDK with which you’d like to build — officially-supported SDK languages include Java, Javascript and Go. To start building, visit the HTS documentation. Additionally, the Hedera API (HAPI) documentation has been updated to reflect API calls available for HTS.

HTS previewnet fees

To run your application on the Hedera previewnet, you’ll need to pay fees using previewnet hbar cryptocurrency. Previewnet cryptocurrency does not have any value. The prices per each of the API calls for HTS in early access are displayed below and these fees are subject to change.

HapiTokenCreate - 44028096 tℏ (tiny bars)

HapiTokenUpdate - 818421 tℏ

HapiTokenAssociate - 8274288 tℏ

HapiTokenUnfreeze - 282285 tℏ

HapiTokenKycGrant - 282285 tℏ

HapiTokenTransact - 135658 tℏ

HapiTokenWipe - 134977 tℏ

HapiTokenMint - 12887449 tℏ

HapiTokenBurn - 134465 tℏ

HapiTokenFreeze - 282285 tℏ

HapiTokenKycRevoke - 282285 tℏ

HapiTokenUnfreeze - 282285 tℏ

HapiTokenDissociate - 4208562 tℏ

HapiTokenDelete - 6742424 tℏ

Mirror Node REST API

To query the network, you’ll need to connect to an official Hedera previewnet mirror node using the Hedera Mirror Node REST API. Follow the instructions found here to connect to the previewnet mirror node. Within this documentation, you’ll see the updates made to the accounts, balances, and transaction queries to support HTS. New token REST APIs will be added in the 0.21.0 release of the mirror node.

Hedera Heroes: HTS demo application for $1k USD in hbars

Hedera Heroes is an effort to encourage developer community collaboration by rewarding the developer community for creating demos (open source), sharing lessons learned, how-to tutorials, and other informative articles. In return, developers receive hbars once their contribution is approved and published.

As part of the release of HTS in early access, Hedera is hosting a $1,000 USD in hbars opportunity to create an easy to follow introduction to HTS which teaches developers how to mint, view, and transfer a token within an example application. All submissions must be open-sourced and Hedera will accept up to three submissions for this Hedera Heroes challenge. We can’t wait to see what you build and how it'll contribute back to the Hedera community and its growing ecosystem.

HTS support & feedback in Discord

Within the official Hedera Discord, the developer community and Hedera team members are available to offer technical support and act as an ear to voice feedback. We’ve created a channel specifically for Hedera Token Service on the previewnet for anyone to join — please feel free to jump in and discuss the latest release, ask questions, and provide the Hedera team with your valuable thoughts.

Looking towards the future with HTS

Hedera will be engaging with network explorers, wallet providers, and exchanges to support a growing ecosystem around Hedera Token Service. In addition, Hedera will continue to add functionality to HTS which supports the needs of new and existing applications running on the network. We’re looking forward to seeing what the Hedera developer community will build.