# Swarm alpha public pilot and the basics of Swarm

DevFeed: [Swarm alpha public pilot and the basics of Swarm](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/swarm-alpha-public-pilot-and-the-basics-of-swarm-16796.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.ethereum.org/en/2016/12/15/swarm-alpha-public-pilot-basics-swarm>)

Author: Viktor Tron

Published: 2016-12-15T06:36:57Z

Content type: release

Language: en

Sources: [Ethereum Foundation Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/ethereum-foundation-blog.md>)

Topics: [Ethereum](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ethereum.md>), [Cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud.md>), [Azure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/azure.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>), [Network](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/network.md>)

Tags: [availability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/availability.md>), [azure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/azure.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [community](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/community.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data.md>), [ethereum](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ethereum.md>), [experimental](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/experimental.md>), [go](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/go.md>), [guide](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/guide.md>), [hosting](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hosting.md>), [network](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/network.md>), [persistence](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/persistence.md>), [release](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/release.md>), [research-development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/research-development.md>)

## AI overview

This blog post announces the first public Swarm testnet pilot, connected to the Ropsten Ethereum testchain. It describes Swarm as a distributed storage and content distribution service, explains its experimental status and bandwidth accounting, and invites the community to run nodes and provide feedback. The testnet offers no guarantees of data persistence or availability.

## Source excerpt

With the long awaited geth 1.5 ("let there bee light") release, Swarm made it into the official go-ethereum release as an experimental feature. The current version of the code is POC 0.2 RC5 -- "embrace your daemons" (roadmap), which is the refactored and cleaner version of the codebase that was...