Since opening a socket, Nodefleet has been the sole maintainer of the Pocket Network testnet. Now the testnet is used more actively and by a wider range of builders than ever before, which has led to suggestions in our new v0 Builder Calls that we should bring on more testnet maintainers. We are in favor of this because it continues our decentralization journey, empowers more builders to get more deeply involved in our ecosystem, and provides more uptime guarantees to testnet and the builders that are relying on it.
This Pocket Open Priority (POP) invites 3 community builders to become testnet maintainers on an ongoing basis.
POP Specifications
Service Level Agreement:
Maintain validator(s) in good condition to ensure the smooth operation of Morse testnet
When a new consensus-breaking protocol release candidate is available for Morse testnet, testnet maintainers agree to join a coordination call and/or provide acknowledgement (async) of upgrade rollout within a 48 hour notice period
Maintainers will be available on-demand to work with Pocket Network (core and community) developers to facilitate testing of different scenarios
Competencies requested:
Skills: Pocket Network node running, Communication
Knowledge: Pocket Network protocol, Testnet
Attitude: Attention to detail, High accountability, Gets shit done
POP Funding & Application Details
Open: Now
Price: $2k per contributor/team, up to 3 teams
Funding: This submission will be funded from the Era Allocation as outlined in PEP-60 ERA Budget.
Submission Deadline: Close of day 3rd Nov
Decision Provided: Close of day 10th Nov
Submission details requested:
Evidence that you will be able to meet the Service Level Agreement outlined above
Background of contributor(s) who would be working as maintainers
Your GeoZone must be included
Submissions should be posted as replies to this thread with Submission in the first line. Submissions can be edited at any point up until the deadline.
StakeNodes.org is fully prepared to offer support for this proposal. As the utilization of the testnet continues to expand, the necessity for additional maintainers has become increasingly vital to ensure its consistent operation and reliability. This objective harmonizes seamlessly with our overarching mission to enhance decentralization and engage a broader community of builders within the ecosystem. Thus, we are eager to partake in this initiative and hereby submit our application.
Background of Contributor(s):
Our team comprises seasoned professionals with a solid foundation in DevOps, decentralized networks, and a deep understanding of the Pocket Network ecosystem. We have been actively involved in Pocket Network discussions, forums, and have made substantive contributions to diverse network-related projects. Our track record includes the deployment and management of significant bare metal infrastructure for Pocket validators, encompassing both mainnet and testnet, geo-mesh components, and peering nodes within the network. I, the CEO, @breezytm, have been a dedicated contributor and active network member since 2021. For instance, we have actively collaborated with other entities, such as Decentralized Authority (Node Pilot), which is a core product in the ecosystem. This collaboration involved validating and ensuring the smooth deployment of consensus-breaking changes for independent node runners, showcasing our commitment to the network’s stability and progress. Additionally, we are currently one of the foremost supporters of Altruism within the network, boasting impressive uptime and timely responses.
Implementation:
Deploy several instances of Pocket Nodes in the testnet.
Monitor nodes for uptime and block heights.
Ensure nodes are on the latest available release candidate version based.
Schedule daily snapshots of chain data.
GeoZone:
Our team is headquartered in the United States. However, we maintain an operational presence across all three geo-mesh regions (US, EU, and AP).
We are enthusiastic about the prospect of contributing as testnet maintainers. We eagerly anticipate becoming integral to this initiative, facilitating the growth of the network, and helping it attain its full potential.
With the recent flurry of proposals – and the changes to the protocol they may bring – having a well-functioning testnet is integral to the future success of the Pocket Network. I am fully on board with the idea of letting the builders have the best possible sandbox to play in, and hereby submit my application for the role of Testnet Maintainer.
Background
I’m a hobbyist/independent node runner who joined the ecosystem in early 2022. Having no formal training in software development - all my credentials are in an unrelated industry - I’ve spent the last ~18 months teaching myself about the Pocket protocol and many of the supported chains. As I have gotten more experience, I have tried to help out where I could – be it sharing my knowledge with other hobbyists or running nodes for the altruist network as part of DAN. This would be my first time participating in a testnet, but as the saying goes – nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Geozone
A homebrew bare-metal setup in the US-East region.
Shit I’d get done
Deploy, maintain, and upgrade Morse Testnet node(s) as needed.
Be available on short notice to the developer team for any testing purposes.
While I do have knowledge gaps regarding the finer intricacies of the procotol, I make up for that with persistence and a willingness to step out of my comfort zone and learn new things. Supporting the builders in the ecosystem is something I am eager to do, and I thank you for your consideration.
Decentralized Authority is regularly the team that identifies Testnet issues and frequently has to hunt down Testnet maintainers. Just last month when trying to build the new wallet, we discovered the Testnet was completely down, and we had to provide the past maintainers with the snapshots to get it back up and running. Having a bad Testnet has cost us many days of development time, so it’s in our best interest to be a part of maintaining it.
Background
We built Node Pilot, Node Launcher, Community Chains, NodeWallet and countless other tools and libraries for the POKT ecosystem. We are well equipped to maintain Testnet and already run Testnet nodes.
Cryptonode.tools has been among the strongest proponents for an active and engaged testnet as an imperative prerequisite to a healthy and equitable mainnet, in order to provide a playing ground for anyone looking to come into the network without risking funds on mainnet right away, as well as provide a path for one to get their hands dirty and see how pokt nodes work regardless of their goals.
Background
CNT has as of now 500+ active mainnet pokt nodes including 42 current block producing validators, multiple fleets of gemoesh/servicers with differing chainsets/keysets. As an indie who came into this ecosystem to learn, I’ve clawed my way through the blood of this bear market to:
consistently dominate the leaderboards for servicers,
provide heavy/rare chains to altruist long before it was ever even reimbursed,
helped Grove with bootstrapping new chains,
provide the 30+ chains I run with 0 outsourcing to several other node runners in the ecosystem
run validators in several other networks and testenets,
have even helped DA with validator automations for node launcher.
participate in other DePins, hoping to understand as much as I can about distinctions and possibilities
maintaining an auxillary block explorer/indexer for pokt (PoktNest)
CNT has extensive monitoring and alerting, load balancing chains with custom healthchecks compiled to c, and multiple encounters mitigating disasters and downtime live in production already. I’m not perfect and I’m just a man with ptsd and prone to stress fatigue, but I’m relatively good and do this all day every day and have consistently demonstrated my commitment to providing top quality of service and continuous improvement. I have played with a variety of toolsets and orchestration tools, and I’m working further distribute my services to make them resilient and fault tolerant.
Geozone
Multi-region bare metal infrastructure in US, Asia, and EU,
Nodefleet is fully prepared to fullfill the needs of this proposal. Nodefleet already runs the pokt.network testnet infrastructure since march 27 as shown here: Infrastructure support - Testnet Experiment
By running the following artifacts
6 Testnet seeds
4 Testnet seeds
4 Mainnet seeds
Testnet faucets
Lowell Abbott (me) The CEO of Nodefleet was the first Devops who joined pokt.network back in 2018 and has a wide experience running nodes on testnet/mainnet and solving chain halts since then. As a company we’ve been in the space as a company starting 2022 and running around 8-12% of pokt.network nodes, we are widely known for our node performance, hardware quality and personal trait with our clients, we are composed by a high skilled technical team of 4 other more devops/technical professionals.
This grant will be run mainly by Steven Martinez (stevenmf94 on discord) already known by the community and me, along with Kael Abbott to provide high availablity and quick response to incidences.
GeoZones
We have presence in US/EU/SGP in 3 different providers. We plan to divide critical testnet infrastructure, such as we did in testnet in US/EU which are the most used geozones by node providers in order to improve latency/service availability.
C0D3R.org wants to participate in the TestNet operations.
Why we think we can run a successful TestNet?
C0D3R is currently the oldest and largest (by number of individual nodes).
We have experienced all the previous chainhalts, and we know the importance of large scale and diverse testing.
We are not only running nodes at a large scale, but also have contributed to bug fixes and feature development including pruner. We have a deep understanding of the protocol and can perform troubleshooting.
We already have our own private devnet of Pocket that we use for protocol development (PUP32, 33 and 35 were tested there)
What we are offering
We can cover 3 GeoZones: US-East, Europe-Germany and Asia-Singapore
24-hour SLA on applying upgrades.
24-hour SLA for solving problems originating on our end and in the protocol
Helping other providers with know-how and technical help if needed.
First, we’d like to thank all the teams who submitted proposals - great to see the community engagement and interest! For the teams who didn’t get selected this time, don’t fret, PNF is looking to increase the number of POP’s in Q1 2024 as we enter Shannon Testnet, because we will need all hands on deck to make Shannon the most successful launch Web3 has seen!
Second, due to the many submissions and evaluating what we will be needing in Q1 2024 and beyond in relation to the Shannon Testnet - we’ve made the decision to fund 4 teams up from the original 3. This will set us up to have a larger pool of contributors with experience running testnet infrastructure for the project, who can transfer into Shannon Testnet once this is live. We made our selections based on a combination of goals - further decentralizing protocol maintenance, welcoming new contributors, and ensuring representation by experienced users of testnet.
Third, and finally, a big congrats to our new Morse Testnet Maintainer teams that will include: Breezytm, Misskitty42, Shane/Decentralized Authority, and Iannn/Cryptonode.tools - look out for a kickoff meeting invite next week!