Aleph Zero Testnet Launch and Validator Requirements

Authored by Antoni Zolciak

Aleph Zero Testnet Level 1 will launch on the 12th of July, 2021, with support for fast native token transfers.

It’s been a busy summer as we have juggled recruiting new team members, undergoing the Trail of Bits audit, and working on several use cases for the network. Despite all the work, the Aleph Zero team is happy to announce that the very first implementation of our testnet — which we’re calling Level 1 — will launch on the 12th of July, 2021.

Launching the testnet is an opportunity to strengthen the link with our community as we share every important update. We want to deliver a system that is operational at every level. A system that is capable of delivering the security and transaction speed we promised throughout our development. The rollout is tiered so that bugs can be fixed gradually. If the testnet will not perform when using 10 nodes it will not deliver its promised results at 100.

We’ve split the testnet roadmap into four levels, as well as the governance track and the feature track. If all goes as planned then who knows? Maybe we will be looking at a mainnet rollout at the end of September? Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

Aleph Zero Testnet Level 1

Network hosted by the Aleph Zero Foundation and Cardinal Cryptography.

Governance track:

• 10 nodes run by Aleph Zero Foundation and Cardinal Cryptography
• Coins awarded by the faucet

Features track:

• Native token transfers

Aleph Zero Testnet Level 2

Network hosted by the Aleph Zero Foundation, Cardinal Cryptography, and external validators from an authority list.

Governance track:

• 25 nodes run by Aleph Zero Foundation, Cardinal Cryptography, and validators from an authority list
• Authority list to be centrally updated every couple of days

Features track:

• Smart contracts

Aleph Zero Testnet Level 3

Network hosted by the Aleph Zero Foundation, Cardinal Cryptography, external validators from an authority list, and selected members of the public.

Governance track:

• Up to 100 nodes
• Random election of validators from centrally managed authority list
• Validators are required to stake coins (provided by the Aleph Zero Foundation to everyone on the authority list)

Features track:

• Simulated wrapped coins
• Decentralized Exchange (DEX)
• Bridges to other testnets
• Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to hold a treasury of coins created from inflation under the control of the community.

Aleph Zero Testnet Level 4

Network hosted by the Aleph Zero Foundation, Cardinal Cryptography, external validators from an authority list, and selected members of the public.

Governance track:

• Up to 200 validators
• Automatic validator rewards
• Stake-weighted random elections

Features track:

• DAO treasury voting
• Smart-contract-based bridges to Ethereum, Near, Cosmos

Validator hardware requirements

Our idea is to ensure everything works properly internally and then start opening the network up for external validators: first, the ones from an authority list before opening up to the public. In order to prepare you for what’s coming, we see sharing the hardware requirements for the nodes as crucial. It will also be possible to host some of the nodes on Amazon Web Services; however, we want to keep the number of nodes on a single provider as small as possible.

Basic node
Consumer-grade, recommended by Polkadot

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7–7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz (4 cores)
• Storage: 160GB NVM SSD
• Memory: 64GB

Basic+ node
Consumer-grade with an upgraded CPU

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)Intel® Core™ i9–9900 CPU @ 3.10GHz (8 cores)
• Storage: 160GB NVM SSD
• Memory: 64GB

Advanced
Recommended by the Aleph Zero team for when the committee size will be larger than 32

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)Intel® Core™ i9–9900 CPU @ 3.10GHz (8 cores)
• Storage: 160GB NVM SSD
• Memory: 64GB

Cloud
AWS-hosted

AWS m4.2xlarge:

• 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon® E5–2686 v4 (Broadwell) processors or 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon® E5–2676 v3 (Haswell) processors
• vCPU cores: 8
• Memory: 32 GB
• Storage: Elastic Block Store (EBS) only

Server-grade

In case we’d want to challenge VISA, an upgrade to server-grade CPUs, such as AMP EPYC/Threadripper or Intel Xeon will be necessary.

Software Recommendation

• Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
• Support for other

How to become a validator?

Soon enough, we’ll announce several editions of the incentivized testnet that will be supported with a call for validators. The mechanics will be quite simple; we’ll need you to register and download a Linux installation script. Be on the lookout for our communications!

Bear in mind that as we move forward, we want to ensure that our network can be powered by renewable energy by 2030.

Our testnet is an invitation to participate, not a cause to celebrate.

With the launch of our testnet, we’re closer than ever to achieving our goal of deploying a public blockchain that allows enterprises to fulfill their privacy and security requirements while leveraging the full benefits of a scalable, flexible decentralized system.

We’re grateful for our community’s ongoing support and understanding, and we’re continuously working to ensure the delivery of the highest quality technology via peer-reviewed scientific research and external audits provided by the best firms in the industry.

That being said, we’re taking a completely different approach than our competitors, so we understand that the onus is on us to demonstrate our platform’s value. That’s why we encourage anyone — supporters and skeptics alike — to test out our system as a validator, audit our peer-reviewed code, and ask honest but critical questions in our community channels. We’re confident and excited in what we’re building, but we want everyone who’s following our journey to pressure-test their assumptions and understand why we’re so sure of ourselves.

This article was originally posted on the Aleph Zero blog on July 1st, 2021. Read the original blog entry here.