The following was posted in the EOS dev chat on Telegram.
David Moss:
As many in the EOS.IO development community are aware, we've been working since December on merging two lines of development, Dawn 2.x and Dawn 3.0. The merged code base is now stable enough to make public as an Early Alpha and will now become our Github master branch. The prior master will be renamed “dawn-2.x” and will continue to be available as a non-master branch.
Community developers will notice that the next time they “git pull” from Master, they will obtain the new Dawn 3.0 code. Those wishing to continue to pull the Dawn 2.x code that connects to the current TestNet can do so by following instructions in the new readme.md, being made available at the same time as the re-mastering.
Please note that the Dawn 3.0 code is still in Early Alpha and is not compatible with the current block.one-provided public TestNet; it will not be available in a public TestNet until the end of Q1 2018. In the interim, developers may create their own testnets with the new Dawn 3.0 code. As a reminder, Dan Larimer and the development team have changed the way we forecast development. This means we won't be announcing the date for the Dawn 3.0 Testnet until the timeline is close enough for us to have high confidence in its capabilities.
The current public TestNet at “https://testnet1.eos.io” will continue to run the Dawn 2.x software until the release of the Dawn 3.0 Testnet, and will then be retired.
Smart contracts written for the Dawn 2.x codebase will need to be revised to work on the new 3.0 codebase and take advantage of the new features.
Major changes in Dawn 3.0 include changing “eos” to “eosio” in all locations throughout the code. We have also renamed "message" to "action", and removed the need for developers to manually specify 'scope'; all scope specification is now automated.
Additional new features in the Dawn 3.0 Alpha Release include: deferred transactions, staking pools, a new currency contract, and a new emerging token standard. A complete list of new features will be included in the 3.0 Final Release notes, expected by the end of Q1 2018. A complete list of EOS.IO Software Releases can be found here: