For the benefit of those who haven’t followed the project from its launch in February 2025 or earlier, here’s a short summary of what I consider the most important events. This list is entirely subjective, and I’ve probably overlooked many important events.
- April 2021: First commits to * neptune-core and cryptography library * twenty-first.
- April 2021: * Whitepaper is published.
- Oct 2021: Triton Software AG is founded with the purpose of launching the Neptune blockchain.
- Nov 2021: Triton Software AG gets its first investments so it can pay for the development of Neptune. The investor gets premine tokens in return.
- Nov 2021: First commits to ZK-STARK engine * Triton VM
- 2021-2025: Work, work, work: cryptography, virtual machine, Triton VM programs, mutator sets, node software.
- March 2024: * First verification program running in Triton VM, so Triton VM can prove the verification of its own proofs.
- February 11, 2025: * Main net launch! With * pre-announcement of launch posted on bitcointalk.org.
- March 1, 2025: Independent listing by * safetrade.com, on their own initiative.
- March 23, 2025: Hardfork 1 happens. It increases the max block size from 2MB to 8MB to allow for more inputs in each block.
- July 4, 2025: * Inflation bug discovered in consensus code. Network is paused.
- August 5, 2025: Network is relaunched with a fix of the bug, with a * redemption process so that all funds on the old network can be transferred to the new network, protecting user balances. The redemption pool is capped to the intended supply at the time of the pause, so the total supply is guaranteed to not exceed its intended amount. All redemptions come with cryptographic proofs such that the true premine (which excludes redemptions) can still be proven to be less than the promised 1.98 %. At the time of writing 80 % of the redemption fund has been paid out.
- Nov 27, 2025: * More than 1.5m NPT are burned. This amount to almost two times the premine amount, giving Neptune Cash an “effective premine” of -1.65 %.
- Jan 16, 2026: OtterSec contacts developers about * vulnerability in Triton VM v1.0.0 which Neptune uses. Network is paused.
- February 3, 2026: Network is * started again with a fixed Triton VM. The fix is included in Triton VM v2.0.0 and neptune-core v0.6.0. When the blockchain is resumed, ~2000 blocks are rolled back, to block height 23,400. So unlike the 1st vulnerability fix, this does not restart the blockchain but only rolls it back. This avoids the situation where the founders have to manage a redemption fund. In order to provide a cryptographic guarantee that the money supply was not inflated, a future transparency gateway/lustration barrier is planned.
What did I overlook? Comment below to add more points to our timeline 