Alpha testing has not yet begun, if you'd like to get an update as soon as the final call for testers goes out then please join the mailing list at atomicdac.org.

We are now finished with the process of appending transaction data via transactions scripts as described in the documentation. What we're working on right now is the proof of exchange algorithm (and the way that we will be making payments to nodes who earn rewards). I'm nearly done writing up a paper about how exactly this process will work but essentially the coinbase transactions of newly discovered blocks are going to contain a pubkey for which only the node that mined the block owns the private key. That public key will be used to create transactions whose output is only spendable by the node which own the private key. So for example, ATOMIC Node 'X' discovers a new block that can be inserted into the blockchain, their public key is inserted into the coinbase and as the POE protocol approves exchanges there will be additional rewards (in atoms) inserted into the blockchain whose output is ONLY spendable by the node that processed all of those transaction. This way, the ATOMIC network can reward 'miners' for not only appending a block to the ledger, but also for processing the transactions (the reward for processing transactions will be significantly larger than those who just mine blocks without running as a full node and processing transactions) Don't confuse this with the way that bitcoin handles transactions, we are doing it a little differently to allow more useful transactions that we can build utilities on top of.

We'll be using a very similar process for handling the dividends that will be paid out to the owners of the ATOMIC assets, they will obviously be receiving their percentage of the income generated by ATOMIC.