## Sovryn’s Testnet Trading Competition: Announcing Winners and Key Takeaways
Community Call #18 was a debriefing session following the conclusion of Sovryn’s first-ever **testnet trading competition**. The team celebrated the high level of community participation, announced the winners, and shared the critical lessons learned from this large-scale stress test of the protocol.
### A Successful Stress Test
The primary goal of the trading competition was to battle-test the Sovryn smart contracts and user interface under realistic, high-volume conditions before the mainnet launch. Thousands of users participated, executing tens of thousands of trades and pushing the system to its limits. The team reported that the core protocol performed exceptionally well, with the smart contracts remaining stable and secure throughout the event.
### Announcing the Winners
The team officially announced the winners of the competition, who were ranked based on their final Profit and Loss (PnL). Prizes in the form of SOV tokens were awarded to the top traders, recognizing their skill and their contribution to the testing process.
### Key Lessons and Improvements
The competition was an invaluable source of data and user feedback. The team shared the key takeaways and the improvements that were being implemented as a direct result:
* **UI/UX Feedback:** Users provided extensive feedback on the trading interface, identifying areas for improvement in clarity, responsiveness, and information display. This feedback was directly incorporated into the final designs for the mainnet launch.
* **Gas Optimizations:** Analyzing the thousands of transactions revealed several opportunities to optimize the smart contracts to reduce gas costs for users.
* **Oracle Performance:** The competition was a real-world test of the oracle system that provides price data to the protocol, helping the team fine-tune its performance and reliability.
* **Identifying Edge Cases:** The high volume of activity helped uncover several minor bugs and edge cases that had not been found during internal testing. These were all patched before the mainnet release.
The trading competition was a resounding success, not just as a community event, but as a critical part of Sovryn’s security and pre-launch process. It demonstrated the power of building in public and leveraging the community to create a more robust and user-friendly product.