Elrond AMA recap — Exciting phase 1 launch, staking and next steps
Thank you for attending the Elrond AMA on Friday. Your attention and support were well received. Please find a recap below.
Summary
- Big thank you to the hardworking team and amazing community
- Mainnet code ready, phased launch imminent
- Phase 1: mainnet pre-staking with 20–30% annual yields starts in December
- Goal of staking +50% of circulating ERD supply for security reasons
- Incentivized testnet event Battle of Nodes updates & next steps
- Mainnet overall plan explained
Our team members have outdone themselves in the past couple of weeks, working 14+ hours days, in order to make progress at the fastest pace possible. For this hardcore dedication we are grateful to each and everyone of them.
We want to also underscore the hard work of the community members which have echoed the team’s efforts, supporting everyone and pushing for larger adoption within the blockchain space.
Bootstrapping a Layer 1 protocol with a state sharding architecture and PoS is not trivial work and has a number of risks. We will mitigate these risks with a phased launch which will be executed according to clear plans. The first phase of mainnet launch will start in December before Christmas, with the deployment of a pre-staking mechanism with yields of 20–30% annually.
But before we dive into that, I want to acknowledge the participants in the Battle of Nodes event and their contributions. A lot of effort went into the event, as this was for us a way to teach the community how the Elrond network works, allow people to interact with the technology and especially allow us to improve many things on the protocol and client.
Some Battle of Nodes figures:
- 2 months duration, $50k prize pool
- 300 people aged 13* to 66, 43 countries, 800 nodes
- 30 patches, 1 community Telegram bot, several community scripts, new installation tool
- 5 educational missions about blockchain, 50 users migrated from Windows to Linux
- 3 attacks, 40 useful GitHub issues and pull requests
- Feedback, tutorials, suggestions, constructive criticism, a “resurraction” team & more
- 1.5bn transactions, 30k TPS transaction peak, sustained 2k TPS
Special thanks to community members that went above and beyond the call of duty:
Alwin for his scripts and support, Dr Delphi (Mihai) for his Telegram bot and support, Ben, Randy, Reddy, Victor, Eddie, ag, Koen, Frank, Dan, Ken, Sorin, Micabytes and all the others for their outstanding support and contributions.
Battle of Nodes continues with the BoN: Shadowshards expansion, to further test new features, give a chance for attacks.
Mainnet launch plan:
The testnet event so far has revealed a lot of areas of improvement which have been addressed. It also reconfirmed the novelty of a state sharded architecture and the challenging security implications of bootstrapping a Layer 1 protocol. So our mainnet plan is centered on security, and has set in motion an unstoppable phased launch.
Before we discuss the mainnet launch plan, let’s first share our definition of mainnet:
- Feature complete
- Robust & performant
- First and above all, SECURE
Our technical implementation is nearing “code-freeze” readiness and our private and public testnet events are improving the robustness and performance. Security is being tackled with multiple parallel audits, an internal team hacking effort & the ongoing Battle of Nodes event.
Security is never enough, so we’re adding more of it through a phased bootstrapping period.
Here’s how it will look like:
Phase 1: Enable pre-staking in preparation for the second phase, allowing everyone to lock tokens and earn rewards and get familiar with the staking process. Goal of locking 50%+ of circulating supply in pre-staking phase
Phase 2: Launch with trusted node operators: Battle of Nodes performers, official staking infrastructure operators and Elrond operated nodes
Phase 3: Gradually replace Elrond nodes with node operators certified via the Battle of Nodes Academy
All these phases will happen during the next few months as we’re pushing to get everything ready on all fronts.
At the end of the bootstrapping period, we will have:
- A high-value staking economy
- A robust & secure mainnet
- A decentralized network of nodes
Economics:
Our Economics have been rehauled to factor in this secure phased bootstrapping process. The important 500.000 ERD limitation has been removed right from the pre-staking phase and further made redundant by enabling staking via delegation in the second or third phase. The ballpark figure for initial returns during the pre-staking phase sits at 20–30% annually. The pre-staking mechanism will be enabled in multiple successive waves, giving community members the opportunity to start earning rewards as soon as possible.
All the details of our phased bootstrapping process will be made available in the following days, when the pre-staking mechanism will be launched, together with a more detailed plan and relevant information for all who wish to join us on our journey.
We take your support and trust very seriously and are working to ensure they are matched with an exciting product launch that brings useful functionality, robustness, and performance with the highest security standards.
Thank you and stay tuned for the upcoming announcements!
* under supervision of a parent who underwent our KYC procedures & in synch with the team
