Subspace Network is the infrastructure layer powering Web3 at Internet scale. The core contributors created Subspace with a vision of providing a unified experience to enable a true multi-chain future without compromising decentralization, scalability, and security.
To ensure the network is robust, we are battle-testing several components within the Subspace Network architecture through different phases of the Gemini Incentivized Testnet. During Gemini I, the focus was on the wide range of possible node combinations, from Raspberry Pis to cloud server providers with a few GBs to TBs of space pledged.
After gathering valuable information from the first phase and implementing necessary improvements, we are thrilled to announce that the Gemini II Incentivized Testnet is ready to go live.
Gemini II Incentivized Testnet Details
Date: September 20, 2022
Time: 8 am PT / 3pm UTC
The main focus during Gemini II will be testing the resiliency of the consensus and farmer uptime. Several improvements have been implemented to the consensus layer since Gemini I that will allow all new nodes to join the canonical chain and farmers will not need to restart. We will continue to assess these factors during this phase.
For Gemini II, the network will be initially seeded with just 5 GB of history to allow farmers to sync faster and start farming. Additionally, similar to the stress test, the default plot size is 100 GB, which is also the maximum a farmer can pledge to the network. Farmers may lower their plot size to a reasonable size below 100 GB without affecting the farming experience. And since every node will be an archival node by default, farmers will need approximately 50 GB of free disk space in addition to the amount pledged to account for the chain history growth.
Gemini II Configuration Summary
- Initial history will be set to 5 GB
- Max plot size for farming is 100 GB for each farmer node
- Additional 50 GB required to account for chain history growth
*Important: CLI and Docker are the only two officially supported farming methods for Gemini II.
The core contributors of the Subspace Network prepared a small surprise for our farmers currently participating in the Stress Test. The existing stress test network will be converted into Gemini II next Tuesday when we turn on rewards! This means farmers who are already synced to the “Subspace Gemini 2a” network will not have to restart their nodes or resync. Our engineering team worked unbelievably hard, day and night, to make this happen, so please let them know they have your support by sharing some words of encouragement.
For other farmers in our community, please use the time before Tuesday to sync to the network and keep your node online to start farming rewards.
For instructions on how to start farming, please visit our documentation page:
Our aim is to bootstrap one of the most distributed networks in the blockchain space and see how our consensus fares. The goal is to surpass 25k nodes, our previous record, during Gemini II. To make this phase a little more interesting for our early supporters, we’ve added a twist to the incentive model.
Help Us Help You
The goal is to push the Subspace Network to its limit. How many nodes will it take? 25k, 50k, 100k?
Gemini II is about bootstrapping the largest decentralized network together, not about who can sync faster or pledge more space. As a result, we’ve created an incentive model that will unlock ONLY if everyone in our community can come together to collaborate.
What does this mean for Gemini II Rewards?
Rewards for this phase will be distributed evenly amongst all unique qualified reward addresses, which means rewards will not be calculated based on space pledged.
There are three milestones that can be unlocked in this phase, each granting a higher cumulative amount of tokens. If the third milestone is reached, the total reward for Gemini II participants will be 0.5% of the total token supply. If hypothetically the total token supply is 10B at mainnet launch, then 0.5% means 50,000,000 tokens available for this phase.
*Please use caution when considering any capital investment toward running farmer nodes.
As we reach (and hopefully surpass) each milestone together, each qualified participant will receive a higher reward than the previous milestone. Higher aggregate achievement = higher individual rewards!
Conditions
While Subspace Network has been permissionless from day one, we want to do our best to ensure everyone has a fair chance. Therefore, there are three conditions that must be met in order to unlock each milestone.
- The telemetry must show at least 80% of the total node count required for each milestone.
- The total number of unique reward addresses with at least 0.5 tSSC must be equal to or greater than the number of nodes required to unlock each milestone.
- The total space pledged to the network must be equal or greater than 0.75 PB, 1.5 PB, and 2.25 PB for milestones 1, 2, and 3 respectively. It considers an average of 30 GB of storage pledged by each node.
This means it is time to brush up on your social media skill, finish that “mastering digital content” course you had in progress, dig up your old contacts, and most importantly, be nice to your family and friends! Because it is time to spread the word across the four corners. Every new participant will be helping you to unlock the next milestone while benefiting themselves too in the process! A rising tide lifts all ships.
Subspace Network with Future in Mind: SSD Friendly
The Subspace Network was created with the vision to become the infrastructure for Web3 that scales massively without sacrificing security or decentralization. Throughout our journey, we have had to constantly remind ourselves to build a future-proof network that will withstand decades of use coming ahead.
After months of extensive research and deep discussions, the core contributors of the Subspace Network have decided to go towards an SSD-friendly direction. We are aware that optimizing for SSDs comes with the undesired consequences of making farming with HDDs more challenging. However, we’d like to ask for your understanding and hear us out on what our rationale is behind the new SSD-friendly direction for Subspace.
The SSD-friendly direction provides:
- Better security with lower CPU usage (less power consumption)
- Lower energy consumption rate and better performance (random reads)
- Allows of simpler protocol design (simplicity is security with blockchains)
- And overall, it allows us to design a substantially better user experience for broader adoption
Unfortunately, HDDs may not be able to plot large plots further along in our roadmap. However, we believe the SSD-friendly direction will be highly beneficial for the Subspace Network ecosystem and for our community of farmers in the long-run. For example, smaller farmers will have more opportunities to earn rewards, since the discrepancy between large farmers and small farmers will be less than when HDDs are used, which contributes to greater decentralization.
We are always striving to be as transparent as possible since we are all here for the same purpose: To build the Subspace Network ecosystem together with the future in mind. As always, thank you all for your support and we look forward to seeing your feedback!
Subspace Network Forum
We want to remind everyone that our forum (https://forum.autonomys.xyz/) is the official technical support channel. On Discord, we will try to help on a best effort basis but expect it to be primarily peer-to-peer. So please be courteous to all community ambassadors and volunteers who dedicate their precious time to help others.
Gemini II FAQ
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Can I update the reward address used for my farmer over time?
We understand there are legit reasons a user might need to swap their reward address in the middle of a phase. For example, they might have lost the private key of the original reward address. While there is no penalty in doing so, please be aware that only the last reward address will be considered valid for the token reward distribution. So each farmer node can only have one eligible reward address for this phase. This is the same for unique reward addresses counted toward a milestone in Gemini II. -
Is multi-farming banned in Subspace?
Multi-farming, referring to concurrently running multiple farmer nodes, can benefit the network’s security by providing higher resiliency and broader distribution. While we do suggest each user exercise moderation because each node requires a certain amount of maintenance, multi-farming is not a cause for banning.
Helpful links
