Vitalik Buterin announced in their recent meeting on Ethereum that Casper is far enough along that a new test net for casper development should be rolling out soon! Vitalik hinted that the code is mature enough to begin rolling out real world test to prepare for the next big upgrade to Ethereum! Remember this is NOT ready for the real main net yet but rather a sign that development is progressing.

What is Casper?

Casper is the name given to the next expected protocol upgrade in Ethereum that will transition the network from Proof of Work as it currently is, to Proof of Stake. The goal of Casper is to allow the Ethereum network to scale while reducing the costs to operate the network.

The developers in the meeting indicated that they have fully implemented in Python a release they hope to begin testing soon!

Take aways

My opinion is this is great news, but still indicates Casper is many months, possibly years away from even discussions of a hard fork to include Casper in the main net. I would say this is over all good news but not news that will drive the price of Ether higher today. We will have to wait and see!

Read more

Official GitHub PoS FAQ: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQ
https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-soon-launch-first-casper-testnet/