As the world’s first decentralized peer-to-peer cloud computing marketplace, our vision is to materialize a permissionless, sovereign, and open cloud where architects and builders have greater freedom to expand the human experience.
To gather data, identify critical issues, and ensure our network’s scalability, security, and usability, we’ve leveraged a series of testnets that started with our Founding Member Challenge in Q4 2019, and continued with the launch of The Akashian Challenge Incentivized Testnet Phase 1 in Q2 2020.
Results from The Akashian Challenge Launch in Q2 2020
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The Akashian Challenge launched in Q2 2020 and quickly became the second largest testnet in the Cosmos Hub since the Game of Stakes, with 99 active validators participating.
Through The Akashian Challenge, we tested governance and voting, and improved the process for network upgrades that strengthened our platform. These explorations have given us critical insights on how to build a healthy and vital community for growth and lead to a successful launch of our Mainnet 1 with full validator set of 64 mining blocks from Genesis.
During Phase 1, our testnet withstood an AWS outage that brought down the centralized cloud (and a good portion of the internet), further validating market need for a decentralized cloud. Our testnet also weathered a massive zero fee transaction attack.
We were thrilled to see the massive community support and collaboration that occurred in Phase 1 and Phase 2, and we’re grateful to our early Akashian Challenge participants for helping us build the foundation for a stronger network.
What’s Next: The Akashian Challenge Phase 3
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We invite you to join us in the final stage of exploration, Phase 3: Developer Operations!
With 500,000 AKT in rewards, you’ll need to leverage your technical and social prowess to maneuver your way to victory.
The Akashian Challenge Phase 3: Developer Operations will launch on Monday, November 30th at 1700 UTC / 9:00AM PST. Phase 3 will encompass two weeks of challenges.
Phase 3 Goals:
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Test platform functionality for Mainnet 2
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Distribute tokens to potential users for Mainnet 2
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Build a catalog of applications (SDLs) to launch Mainnet 2
Phase 3 will accelerate our vision for a decentralized and open cloud computing marketplace, serving as the launchpad for Mainnet 2. Users will be able to lease compute for deploying applications.
Performance Improvements from Cosmos SDK v0.40
With the upgrade to Cosmos SDK v0.40, also known as Stargate, there will be a number of performance enhancements to the testnet. The most notable improvement in Phase 3 will be the migration to Protobuf, which will increase transaction throughput and decrease the amount of data being sent between nodes.
Other upgrades shipping with Stargate include state sync, full featured light clients, and support for the first standardized protocol for Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC)!
Application Deployments
With Phase 3, users can deploy web-based cloud applications — such as static sites and API servers — most common DeFi application components. We look forward to seeing and rewarding deployment of innovations like stateless or “state light” blockchain applications; these are self-bootstrapping and have light storage requirements.
Deploying a blockchain node on our network will be one of the premier use cases, and will provide dApp developers an alternative to expensive and inflexible cloud provider services such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Even though Akash can support data-intensive full nodes, the scope of this testnet is limited to functionality tests and does not include stress tests.
We respectfully ask our community to refrain from deploying full-nodes for now as we have limited computing capacity.
Schedule
Phase 3 of The Akashian Challenge will launch on Monday, November 30th, 2020 and run for two weeks.
Rewards
To incentivize participation, 500,000 AKT will be distributed as Phase 3 rewards. Developers can build on the testnet and earn tokens by deploying applications. Validators can earn tokens by completing challenges and supporting the network.
There will be opportunities to earn additional rewards outside of deployment challenges.
How to Get Started
Stay tuned, as we’ll be announcing information on how to participate, as well as a more detailed task and rewards schedule, next Wednesday November 18th.
Don’t Miss Critical Phase 3 Updates
Join our Discord dev chat for technical support and information.
Join our Telegram for the latest Akash Network and AKT announcements.
