The core contributors have been hard at work and are now ready to introduce the incentivized testnet phase. We are happy to announce the final Gemini III Incentivized Testnet phase is set to begin on September 6, 2023, at approximately 5 pm UTC.
We are incredibly grateful for the patience and dedication that our early community members have displayed with your unchanged support as we work towards building the world’s most distributed, decentralized, and permissionless network.
The primary objective of this phase is to battle-test the underlying infrastructure as well as every individual feature. Towards the end of this phase, we will establish a network that will simulate a feature-complete mainnet environment. As a result, the duration of the incentivized testnet phase will be much longer compared to the previous phases.
Additionally, Gemini III will continue to evolve with new iterations and multiple network resets throughout the entire duration of the incentivized phase. While the hard resets may pose challenges, we want to expedite the transition to the incentivized phase in response to the feedback received from our community. We want to show our gratitude for the support we have been fortunate to receive by delivering what our community requested.
The hard resets, however, will present a strategic opportunity for proactive farmers to claim a significant portion of the block rewards in the early stages. We advise everyone to leverage the hard resets to refine your farming strategies and maximize rewards. Joining a new network early will be an opportunity to get a larger proportion of the block rewards.
The Gemini III incentivized testnet phase will be an important learning experience that will require hard work from both the core team and the Subspace Network community. As we’ve always emphasized, we envision our community ultimately owning and governing the Subspace Network in the long run. As we get closer to our next milestone together, we have two requests:
- During the incentivized testnet phase, please help us educate and onboard the new wave of farmers and be patient with them.
- Please help us spread the word about the Subspace Network.
Incentive Structure
Many of you might have seen on the block explorer that when a block is produced, beyond the expected rewards.BlockReward event, there are also multiple rewards.VoteReward events being generated. The former is self-explanatory; it is the reward earned by the node that farmed (built) that particular block, while the latter is an extension to our consensus aimed at increasing the reward frequency for farmers and broader network participation.
Without going into technical implementation details, voting rewards are granted to farmers who have found a solution to the block challenge within an accepted range, which is set to be broader than what the block authoring difficulty range is. Currently, the consensus is set to reward the block author (producer) and nine voting rewards on average. What it means is that the block author is always guaranteed to receive the block reward, set as 0.1 TSSC currently, while the number of votes accepted into each block could vary, with each accepted voter also earning 0.1 TSSC. It is important to note that both block reward and voting reward are distributed proportionally to the amount of storage pledged by each farmer.
You might wonder why we extended our consensus with voting rewards. In short, we want to prevent the scenario where the difficulty of generating a block is so high due to the total amount of space pledged, that it might take the median farmer months or years to earn the first reward. By introducing the voting reward, we can adjust the number of votes accepted without lowering the security of the core consensus model. This averts pooling, which consequently leads to centralization.
Some Voting Reward Math for the Nerds
The current voting implementation distributes 0.1 TSSC for every vote successfully included in a block and 0.1 TSSC for the block author. However, the reward isn’t dynamically split within each block. When the reward parameters are set, including the number of votes expected, the reward per block author and voter is fixed regardless of the number of actual votes being accepted into each block. If we take the initial setup as an example, with vote parameter = 9, it is not uncommon to see one vote in a block and 16 votes in another, but the average should converge toward the set parameter. As with block rewards, the chance of getting a voting reward is also proportional to the amount of space pledged. The net result is that instead of getting one 1 TSSC every N blocks, farmers will get 1/(V+1) TSSC every N/(V+1) blocks, where V is the expected number of votes per block on average. Currently V=9, meaning 0.1 TSSC per block is the standard voting reward. Again, the rationale is that it’s better to get a small amount per block versus waiting to win a full block reward. While data sharding is seen as the longer-term solution, this provides an intermediate solution for more frequent rewards that will evolve into a more useful feature in future iterations of the protocol.
The reward distribution will be proportional to the amount of TSSC credits earned during this phase and will not be a 1:1 conversion ratio for mainnet tokens.
Incentivized Testnet Milestones
- Domains
- In the Subspace Network, a “domain” represents an execution environment layer on top of our consensus layer. Domains function as layer 2 chains, often referred to as rollups, embodying our commitment to scalability through a modular approach. There will be a follow-up announcement detailing the functionalities and specifications in the coming weeks.
- Stake Wars
- Stake Wars is a staking-based initiative involving Operator nodes designed to battle-test our domain execution and staking protocols. Through this initiative, we will be able to establish a robust network of Operators that will provide crypto-economic security to execution. The details are still evolving and we plan to share more information once we’re ready to do so. Stay tuned!
Eligibility
From day one, the Subspace Network remains open for anyone to join, exemplifying our commitment to creating a truly permissionless and decentralized network. Anyone can join the network and start farming.
No waitlist
No registration
No special hardware required
No staking required
Recommended Minimum Hardware Setup
CPU: 4 Core+
RAM: 8 GB+
SWAP: 4 GB
Storage: 100 GB+ SSD
Resources
Subspace Networks Docs - Set up and sync your farmer node now!
We welcome all feedback and consider all questions valid. We have an incredibly supportive community in Discord with a passionate group of ambassadors who will be able to answer any of the questions you may have.
