Aleph.im Staking Go-Live (part 3): Network Final Phase Explained
In this article we give answers to long term technical and economical questions addressed by the launch of the final phase of the aleph.im network that will be launched in several stages during 2021. It will include the go-live of resource nodes (a new type of node) and multiple upgrades of the core channel nodes.
This piece is especially useful for those wondering about mid-long term plans, who want to become node operators without having to stake any tokens and for developers building on top of aleph.im wondering about performance solutions offered by the system.
👉 Articles of the series: 1/ Core Channel Nodes and Node Operators, 2/ Stakers Tokenomics, 3/ Network Final Phase Explained, 4/ Launch Dates
About Aleph.im
Aleph.im’s core mission is to help decentralized apps and protocols strip off the centralized parts of their stack, achieving a fully decentralized architecture. Our ecosystem achieves this by providing decentralized databases (including file storage), computation and a decentralized identification (DID) framework. You can think of aleph.im as a decentralized AWS or firebase.
Final Phase: Growth And Maturation
While the starting phase (detailed in our previous article) ignited the fast expansion of aleph.im’s network capacity and level of decentralization, the final phase will not only further this expansion and decentralization, but also enable key components to a feature-rich ecosystem.
The final phase will not only further this expansion and decentralization, but also enable key components to a feature-rich ecosystem
By the time the final phase launches, many node operators will have gained experience and many more node operators will join the network as the new resource nodes are launched. Also, by this time, many fully decentralized apps featuring seamless user experience will have been running on the aleph.im network for months. In other words: aleph.im and its community will have built an amazing shared track record and gathered a invaluable experience.
Core Channel Nodes and Resource Nodes
The final phase will enable new features and have two broad types of nodes: core channel nodes and resource nodes.
Core Channel Nodes
Core channel nodes primary tasks will be to (i) stake and receive rewards, (ii) validate the network, (iii) control and manage the network, and (iv) dispatch the workload. Core channel nodes secondary and non-compulsory tasks will be to (i) provide databases, (ii) file storage, and (iii) computing services.
Core channel nodes will be focused on securing the network by verifying resources nodes are doing their job correctly and deciding which operators should be paid.
Resource Nodes
Resource nodes task will be to provide the following as a standalone or a combination of (i) database, (ii) file storage and (iii) computing services.
These nodes will not have to stake any token and will get rewarded on the condition that they provide resources. And their hardware requirements will be similar to the one for core channel nodes.
Channels, Sharding & Decentralized Cloud Clusters
The final phase will include channels and sharding. A channel can be created on one or more nodes and two channels can overlap with one another. Channels enable sharding — shards are subnetworks with all the aleph.im network features.
Sharding allows projects to create their own dedicated cloud clusters. By being directly in touch with the node operators of a given channel, one can have accurate control over a shard’s scaling capacity.
Sharding allows projects to create their own dedicated cloud clusters
For example if a DeFi project expects highly intensive computations, then it can choose to set up a dedicated channel and a dedicated cloud cluster, so its computations performance does not get affected by other projects running on the aleph.im network.
Another example could be an non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that encourages NFT developers to host their NFT metadata on aleph.im file storage and databases via a common standard. NFT metadata often includes media such as images, PDFs and videos. Using sharding would ensure a NFT marketplace has enough storage space readily available.
What’s Next?
Keep an eye on our Twitter and Medium blog for further updates in the coming days and weeks!
Thank you to all of you who have followed and supported us. The following weeks will mark the start of a new chapter for aleph.im.
👇 Check out our articles below👇
Articles Of The Series
- Core Channel Nodes and Node Operators (Dec 8, 2020)
- Stakers Tokenomics (Dec 11, 2020)
- Network Final Phase Explained (Dec 14, 2020)
- Launch Dates (Dec 15, 2020)
Related Tokenomics Articles
- Tokenomics update 2: supply halving & staking updates (Jul 23, 2020)
- Update on Tokenomics & Incentives Programs! (Jul 6, 2020)
