Realised there was no SE question for what the 'stagenet' is when setting up a monero wallet via the gui or CLI.
From my understanding the stagenet is a sandbox environment similar to testnet but is a copy of the 'current' mainnet whereas the testnet is a sandbox environment were you can test upcoming features on the monero network - is this correct?
Stagenet mirrors mainnet's features. Stagenet was part of the Monero Lithium Luna release on March 29th 2018 https://getmonero.org/2018/03/29/monero-0.12.0.0-released.html
Stagenet does not use the same blockchain as mainnet, but it shares the same features and consensus algorithm. It is therefore perfect for testing transactions without having to spend real XMR. The mining difficulty for stagenet and testnet is very low, so it is easy to solo mine your own stagenet or testnet coins yourself using the Monero GUI.
To solo mine with monerod, enter the command: start_mining <address> <number-of-threads>
There is a block explorer for stagenet available here: http://162.210.173.150:8083/
Testnet is for testing new Monero features which are not yet available on stagenet or mainnet.
There is a block explorer for testnet available here: https://testnet.xmrchain.net/
If you want to quickly try sending moneroj, you can use my StageNet wallet. Please only send a few amount at a time (even better, send back after testing, or mine to it) so others could still have fun with it.
Currently 112.835 XMR available.
Address: 55LTR8KniP4LQGJSPtbYDacR7dz8RBFnsfAKMaMuwUNYX6aQbBcovzDPyrQF9KXF9tVU6Xk3K8no1BywnJX6GvZX8yJsXvt
Seeds: vocal either anvil films dolphin zeal bacon cuisine quote syndrome rejoices envy okay pancakes tulips lair greater petals organs enmity dedicated oust thwart tomorrow tomorrow
Secret view key: 0a1a38f6d246e894600a3e27238a064bf5e8d91801df47a17107596b1378e501
Public view key: eedc5c8d9e3b0a8963c04fa980e4cbaa31ac5c427e21f841a7e93f279aa2fa46
Secret spend key: 722bbfcf99a9b2c9e700ce857850dd8c4c94c73dca8d914c603f5fee0e365803
Public spend key: 5c8044a93a0d4b73fdd9698b1c8935d3bcae206e26590ce425c2085e2fb81db3
May the privacy be with you!
