Nodle Polkadot Parachain Migration Increasing Security and Moving toward Decentralization

The Nodle team has been busy migrating from the current solo Substrate chain to the Nodle Polkadot Parachain. This transition comes with several requirements noted in our article on March 16. Here is what will happen as we execute this great migration:

What We Are Doing

On Monday, May 23rd, 2022, at roughly 8:30 am CET, our engineering team will proceed with the following non-exhaustive steps:

1. The oracle in charge of settling rewards on-chain will be halted. It will continue to compute and queue rewards, but will not send them on-chain for a few minutes.
2. The Nodle solo-chain, previously referred to as “mainnet,” will be halted. Since we still control all the validators there, we can simply “pause” their production of blocks. This will be done so we can take a snapshot of the chain without having it change later. This means that it will not be possible to send any transactions to the solo-chain, so you will have to switch to the parachain.
3. Our engineering team will take a snapshot of the solo-chain based on its last block. This process is automated by a tool developed internally.
4. The snapshot will then be forcefully written into the Nodle Parachain by the same tool in a fully automated manner. This means your balances, vesting schedules, and other metadata will now live on the parachain.
5. Once the Nodle Parachain is set to the last state from the solo-chain, our team will proceed with the allocation of the crowdloan bonuses to all participants. The allocations will show up in each participant’s account immediately.
6. Our team will deploy an upgrade to the Nodle Parachain to enable its core features and thus re-enable balance transfers, claiming, etc.
7. Finally, the oracle will be restarted on the parachain to start settling rewards there.

The crowdloan NFTs (NodleX) will not be issued at this stage, as doing so will be part of a separate process. The NFTs will be issued on the Nodle Chain, as we feel this is the best choice for crowdloan participants as more parachains start to build NFT bridges with XCM. We estimate that the NFT drop will be around Q3 2022 — and further communications will be sent accordingly.

Consequences

This migration should be seamless for token holders, balances, and accounts, as they will not experience any changes. Network contribution rewards will continue to be allocated as usual.

For more advanced users, there are three things to keep in mind:

1. When using Polkadot JS, you will now need to select the “Nodle” Parachain in the “Polkadot & Parachains” tab. You will be able to choose a node hosted by our partners at OnFinality and Dwellir.
2. Our customized block explorer available on explorer.nodle.com will be deprecated. It was a great solution to index and explore our solo-chain, but now that we are parachain, we can rely on our partners at Subscan to provide a fully-featured and more-stable block explorer for the Nodle Parachain, which you will be able to view at nodle.subscan.io.
3. If you use the Polkadot JS wallet extension and set your Nodle account to show up only for Nodle Chain, you will want to allow it for any chain (see screenshot).

The Road Ahead

As we have mentioned previously, this is only the beginning of the Nodle Network. Once our parachain is fully active, the following updates will follow, in no specific order:

• Begin decentralizing the means of block production on the Nodle Parachain by allowing third parties to run a collator node in exchange for a part of the protocol revenues. This will help bring more redundancy and decentralization to the Nodle Parachain while also lowering the control the Nodle team will have over it.
• The first steps toward a decentralized governance model for the Nodle Parachain will be announced and executed. We will gradually empower the token holder community to participate in decisions that directly affect them and their holdings, such as parachain upgrades and more.
• With Polkadot enabling network interoperability features, opening cross-chain channels with other parachains and integrations will be possible.

About Nodle:

Nodle is a mobile blockchain network on Polkadot providing secure, low-cost connectivity, and data liquidity to connect billions of devices worldwide. The Nodle network is powered by millions of Bluetooth-enabled smartphones that earn Nodle (NODL) for providing network coverage. Nodle’s powerful stack allows multiple uses including connecting and securing physical assets, tracking lost or valuable items, capturing sensor data, and authenticating security certificates. Nodle provides insights for consumer electronics manufacturers, enterprises, smart cities, the finance industry and more. Since its creation in 2017, Nodle has become one of the world’s largest wireless networks by number of base stations. Join by downloading the Nodle Cash app for iOS or Android.

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