Dark Node Previews — A Step Closer to Federation Zero
A reminder to our community: stay safe! Our preview uses the Ethereum Ropsten Testnet. Anyone asking you to spend actual REN, or ETH, on Ethereum Mainnet is illegitimate.
As the second quarter of the year draws near, our development team has been getting ready for the release of the Republic Protocol Testnet, Federation Zero. Over the last two weeks, we have been preparing the installation procedure for Dark Nodes, running large-scale network tests, improving the order matching engine, and putting the finishing touches on our visualization website.
Today, we are excited to announce that we will be running a preview for our Dark Nodes. This will be the first opportunity for a select group of members from our community to get their hands on a Dark Node, get familiar with the installation and operation process, and to give us feedback on how we can streamline the experience.
What is a Dark Node?
Dark Nodes are the core of Republic Protocol. Dark Nodes coordinate with each other to process parts of the hidden order book, and reach consensus on orders that must be executed.
To do this, Dark Nodes must register with the Dark Node Registry, an Ethereum smart contract, by committing an amount of REN as a good behavior bond. The Dark Node Registry will periodically shuffle Dark Nodes into randomly sampled Dark Pools, where each pool runs a secure multi-party computation to process a designated shard of the hidden order book.
The result is a parallelized network, matching hidden orders that cannot be revealed to anyone — including the Dark Nodes themselves — unless a super-majority of the network is corrupted. As more Dark Nodes register, hidden orders will be more secure and the network will be able to match them faster.
Why are Dark Nodes being previewed?
At the heart of every decentralized network is the community behind it, and the security of Republic Protocol relies on a large number of people in our community running Dark Nodes. This preview allows our development team to get some early feedback on how to improve the process of installing and operating a Dark Node. The simpler it is, the more people will get involved, and the more secure and the more efficient Republic Protocol will become. Security has always been our top priority and we are committed to addressing it at every level of our project.
Previewing the Dark Nodes also provides us with an opportunity to run tests in an environment where we can provide one-on-one support for operators, and we can roll out updates quickly and predictably.
Dark Ocean Visualization
https://darkocean.republicprotocol.com
The community will now be able to access our visualization website, which shows how the Dark Node Registry has organized Dark Nodes into randomly sampled Dark Pools. It also shows the health of the network, and the flux of orders being opened and matched.
During this preview, Republic Protocol will run five of our own Dark Nodes to act as a bootstrap for the rest of the network. A very small group from the community has been selected to run their own Dark Nodes, with more to be added in the coming weeks. Once the preview is complete, we will be one step closer to the Federation Zero Testnet, which will be open to everyone!
Stay tuned for further tech updates to learn more about the progress of the Federation Zero Testnet, we are always looking for active and engaged members of our community to help preview the Dark Nodes.
— Loong Wang, CTO, Republic Protocol
About Ren
Ren is an ecosystem for unstoppable privacy. Transfer tokens in zero-knowledge, trustlessly swap between blockchains and trade on a dark pool.
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