Beacon World 1: Getting started with Staking and Governance

At Fetch.ai, our mission is to build the infrastructure required for autonomous software agents to unlock the value trapped in wasted data, and organize complex tasks to benefit individuals, businesses and organizations.

We are achieving this by forming a connective layer with a decentralized network with open-source software tools to give anyone access to the power of AI on a world-scale secure dataset to carry out complex coordination in the modern economy.

To achieve this we have been running our incentivized testnet campaign to prepare for and test the technology for the Fetch.ai mainnet v2.0 to be launched in March 2021.The mainnet will create so many new opportunities for all stakeholders.

So far, the community response to the testnet has been excellent but this is just the beginning. The next stage is our beacon world program that will focus on staking and governance but before we go into more details on BW, here is a quick recap on the AW phase.

Incentivized testnet so far…

Thanks to the 125 developers and teams who have been supporting Agent World testnet over the past eight weeks. We have achieved and learned more than we could have hoped for.

Thank you.

The progress this has enabled on the Fetch.ai testnet has been immense. Some quick statistics to give you all a sense of the scale

Total search queries: 608,070

Total agents ever on the network: 224,346

Total number of agents found by other agents: 1,025,693 (some agents found more than once)

Highest number of agents online at once: 1,219

During the testnet phase we now have agents representing running all around the world doing some amazing things. The final results from AW-3 have been tallied, and the standings are as follows, with `bartcrpt` being the final victor, with an absolutely stunning 2682 points.

Beacon-World 1

Beacon-world 1 (BW-1) is the second stage of our program for testing the Fetch.ai blockchain and for preparing our community for the launch of our v2.0 main-net. The goal of BW-1 is to reward users and potential validators for gaining experience with the software ecosystem around the main-network. These tasks don’t require any technical knowledge or programming experience; all you need is an interest in Fetch.ai and a willingness to help shape its future direction. The only requirement is your interest in using technology to change the way we live and help Fetch.ai in doing so

BW-1 is now LIVE. We are calling for you, the community, to engage in governance questions in preparation for the launch of main-net and the foundation. We want you to participate in voting to make sure our project is shaped how you want it to be.

Main Objectives

• To begin familiarizing the community with governance questions.
• To encourage non-developers to interact with the test-net. Anyone can participate regardless of previous experience or expertise.
• To kick-off the validator program (specifically to engage potential validators with governance).
• To deal with regulatory issues that might arise from token-swap (i.e. to ensure that future decisions will involve the community to a greater extent).

Rewards

The following table shows the incentive rewards on offer.

A key responsibility of validators, developers and users is that they take part in decisions on the future directions of the project. The way that these decisions are made is known as governance and is a key element of decentralised networks. The Fetch.ai ledger uses a simple governance mechanism that was first used by Bitcoin, where a majority of miners have to make a decision on whether to perform a specific software upgrade to the network.

How to Get Involved

To earn rewards, users must first stake FET ERC20 tokens on Ethereum.

While not strictly necessary we also encourage people who have not already done so to try out the other AW-1 challenges.

Full details of the program can be found here: https://docs.fetch.ai/i_nets/quickstart-bw1/

To earn rewards, users must complete the following tasks, which are designed to familiarise them with the tools used for sending transactions, delegating stake and voting on governance proposals. The general flow is as follows:

1. Create a test-net address and link this to their Ethereum staking address (anyone who has completed the AW-1 task can skip this step).
2. Send a transaction on the test-net.
3. Delegate stake to one of the validators on the test-net.
4. Vote on at least one governance proposal.

We recommend that everyone joins our discord channel here, as this is the quickest way to answer any questions and receive support from the team and the rest of the community.

There are technical and community tracks for interacting with the BW-1 test-net.

We recommend that developers or anyone who is interested in running a validator node follow the technical track while non-technical users should follow the community track.

Please note that a ledger nano hardware wallet is required for the community track. It’s possible to follow the steps in both tracks but only one reward is available for each Ethereum staking address that is registered.

Community Track

Non-technical users should follow these steps:

1. Install the Cosmos app on your Ledger nano by following these instructions.
2. Connect your Ledger nano to the block explorer using the instructions here.
3. Request tokens to your Ledger nano address using the token faucet.
4. Sign the test-net address where you requested tokens in step 3 with the private key tied to your FET account on the Ethereum mainnet (this is the account you use for FET staking):
5. We recommend you use our signing app with your MetaMask wallet, alternatively use MEW or a similar wallet to sign your Fetch.ai test-net address.
6. To complete registration, send a transaction of 0.01 FET to this address: fetch1a3ecdm538yt4xlz6kc39xf0h3syge0mlrr0jgf but make sure that you add the Ethereum address you used for staking tokens in the “memo” field.
7. Send a second transaction of 0.01 FET to the same address but this time add the signature in the “memo” field that you generated in step 4.
8. Delegate Stake to any of the validators using the instructions here.
9. Vote on at least one governance proposal.

Technical Track

Anyone interested in developing agents or operating a validator node should follow these steps:

1. Obtain a working copy of the ledger v0.2.x software either by using one of the provided docker images or by checking out and building one from source.
2. Import a private key from AW-1 into the fetchcli following these instructions.
3. Delegate some of your stake to the one of the existing validators that are running following these instructions. The full list of validators can be found on the block explorer but the table at the bottom of this page shows these for convenience.
4. Vote on at least one governance proposal following these instructions.

Preparation

As part of the program we will run at least one vote on the testnet. An example of a proposal we are planning to hold votes on is: “if 5% or more of the FET circulating supply is verifiably hacked, the Fetch.ai foundation will pause the ERC-20 contract to prevent movement of funds until a decision is made by the developers and community on how to move forward”.

Full details on how to get involved, along with further information on governance/voting and the associated rewards can be found here: https://github.com/fetchai/docs/blob/feature/governance_week/docs/i_nets/quickstart-bw1.md

Join the Fetch.ai Discord to participate

We are in the process of migrating the majority of our help, support and updates to discord so make sure you join our server to participate in the conversation and get any questions answered: https://discord.gg/6kkSBQyPRF.

On our discord governance channel, we’ll be running a series of discussions and informal vote polls. This is a great way for you to get started and engage with the rest of the community.

We will also be running a governance focussed AMA with senior members of the team on discord, so make sure you join our server to avoid missing out.