NKNx v3.0 — new features and roadmap
Dear NKNx-ers,
It’s been a while since you heard something from our side — mostly because we both have been working on projects like vault, rule110 and surge. You already saw that in the recent weeks and days the NKNx project has come more and more to our attention. We fixed the ongoing performance issues and made FastDeploy free for everyone. In this article we want to show you some awesome features of our upcoming version 3.0. V3.0 will set another milestone for the oldest project in the NKN ecosystem — bringing you improved functions and new features you will definitely love. So without further ado let’s start:
Improved security features
NKNx was always a service that took care of its users credentials and security. As all modern services your passwords are stored safely and encrypted in our database. FastDeploy didn’t store any of your node’s data and forgot the password right after randomly generating it. Now we will introduce two new things to make NKNx even more secure: 2FA and SSH public keys for FastDeploy.
With 2FA you can make your NKNx account more safe and add another layer of security to your data. Recovery codes provide a second try for you when you lost your 2FA device.
Also you will be able to add SSH public keys to your FastDeploy installations. That makes your node even more secure than the regular user and password combination. It guarantees that only your PC can connect to your node through SSH and nobody else. Since this is a feature for more advanced node operators SSH public keys will be optional but available for everyone.
Notifications
Let’s be honest: nobody has the time to regularly check NKNx and see if all nodes are operating properly. That’s why we will introduce notifications to NKNx. Notifications can be configured to your personal preference. Want to set an alert when your node is offline for more than 5 minutes? Then set a notification rule. Want to know when your FastDeploy installations are done? Set a notification for that. NKNx will inform you about everything that is going on with your account.
Also notifications are not bound to a certain medium. You can receive them through eMail, over the NKNxCompanion telegram app or through push notifications on the NKNx IOS and Android… oh wait — that is still a secret :)
Subscription tiers
We talked A LOT about this. And when we say A LOT we mean A LOT! Since the NKNx infrastructure has to be maintained and paid a solid business model is necessary for shipping new updates and developing new features.
In the original concept we used the “first mining donation”-payment to cover our costs. This worked quite good but because of the recent price surge on NKN tokens and the fees necessary to run a node it is now quite too much.
That is why NKNx 3.0 will introduce a FIAT based subscription model. That means two things:
- Prices will be stable and much more acceptable for our users
- NKNx will be an official company based in Germany — land of cryptocurrency (…not).
We will offer multiple tiers starting from a free one to a tier for professionals who want to run a professional mining farm. Tier lists will be announced in a future message on our social media streams.
API functionality for 3rd party apps
The NKN community grows day by day — and with it there are some awesome new apps and methods to deploy and monitor your nodes.
NKNx will therefore open its API to 3rd party apps to utilise data and extend functionality. Like on a big exchange each user will be able to generate one or more API keys and use it to connect 3rd party apps.
Want some examples? Maybe you run your own deployment script to create nodes on your server farm but want to monitor them with NKNx to make benefit of the new notification feature? No problem, just use your API key to add your nodes directly to NKNx after the deployment. No manual CSV-import needed — it just works! Or maybe you want to import all your nodes into an excel sheet to calculate ROIs? Just use our API with your API key to get all your nodes monitored in NKNx.
API functionality opens a whole new world to the NKN community and we’re proud we can give you such a great feature!
Payment gateway for ID generation fees
No, that can’t be true, let’s read that heading again… wow, wait? That is really happening? Yes, we are serious: NKNx will provide a payment gateway for node ID generation!
Since the latest update starting your own node has become quite difficult. FastDeploy makes it easy to install your node but wait: you now have to pay 10 NKN mainnet tokens to run it? Where do I get that tokens from? Well, that is a little bit complicated since all the major exchanges just support ERC20-NKN tokens. When you don’t have access to the Upbit exchange (which supports mainnet tokens) you will first have to buy ERC20-NKN tokens, transfer them for high fees to the official NKN swap website and then to your wallet. Not to forget that the exchange itself wants fees for all the transactions.
That is where our new payment gateway comes to the rescue. With NKNx 3.0 you will be able to buy NKN mainnet tokens directly with FIAT money and send them directly to your node to generate an ID — easy and with one click. That saves you a lot of time and money so we’re really happy to give you the opportunity to make NKN mining easy again. But don’t run out and tell everybody out there that you can buy cheap NKN mainnet tokens on NKNx soon — we are no exchange and (as said before) a company that needs to pay taxes. So we wont be able to offer you a 1:1 conversion from FIAT to NKN but still we are proud to tell you that it will be much cheaper than sending ERC-20 tokens :)
WEN 3.0?
We’re working our a**es off to release NKNx 3.0 as soon as possible. At the start we wont release all the features mentioned in this article at once — there are more technical and organisational hurdles in our way than you might think. Nonetheless we will release a feature-timeline in some weeks to keep you on track with everything. Till then feel free to ask your questions on our official channel (#nknx) on the NKN Discord server or post your questions below. Also feel free to follow us on twitter for more shorter updates.
Till then stay healthy and stay awesome!
Yours
Andrey and Chris (NKNx Team — not related to NKN)
