This article introduces Sentinel’s several $DVPN incentive programs on its native Cosmos-based Sentinel Hub. These incentive programs include:
- Bandwidth Mining Incentives
- $DVPN Token Staking Incentives
- White-label Operator Incentives
- Liquidity Mining Incentives
- dVPN User Incentives
- Grant Program and Initiatives Towards Developers Adoption
Incentives related to ‘Bandwidth Mining’ done by physical Hardware devices operating as Sentinel dVPN nodes will be detailed in another article.
dVPN Network Transition
The time has come for the transition of Sentinel’s dVPN network from the Ethereum ecosystem, to Cosmos.
Sentinel’s Ethereum-based dVPN network produced a tremendous amount of utility with over 400,000 registered devices using the network, primarily powered by the Sentinel dVPN and Velocity dVPN (built on Sentinel) Android applications available on the Google Play Store. However, Ethereum’s limitations in terms of throughput and transaction scalability do not allow for Sentinel’s dVPN structure to be truly decentralized.
Sentinel’s Hub built on Cosmos SDK is now connected to the Osmosis via IBC, and is processing inter-blockchain transactions. The significant scalability that the Cosmos SDK has to offer allows for the Sentinel dVPN to become ‘truly decentralized’. Nodes hosted on Sentinel’s Cosmos-based dVPN infrastructure communicate with the Blockchain periodically to indicate their availability and other information, making the Sentinel Hub a decentralized ‘node query’ system.
Community members can now host a Sentinel WireGuard-based dVPN exit-node by following the instructions at:
The new dVPN network on Sentinel Hub can be used through CLI (Linux/Mac), with fully-fledged UI Desktop applications releasing soon.
Download the Sentinel dVPN CLI client (Linux/Mac):
Commands for Sentinel dVPN CLI client:
These CLI-based clients act as foundations for sophisticated, user-friendly Desktop and mobile applications to be built on top of.
Sentinel’s Incentive Programs on Sentinel Hub
Sentinel is excited to announce its much-awaited dVPN incentive programs on its own native Hub that the community can participate in. These incentive programs are funded in $DVPN tokens and these programs will be made available immediately following the new Desktop client release. This post provides an introduction to the various incentive programs and there will be follow-on articles with more thorough details.
We hope that the community is prepared for the massive network expansion and growth that the Sentinel ecosystem will soon experience, similar to the exemplary results that Sentinel’s first incentive program yielded in 2018 (linked below).
Sentinel has a new Explorer that will soon be released that will also show the Sentinel dVPN network statistics in real-time. The Sentinel ecosystem will have a much more proactive approach in boosting network adoption and creating the right incentive alignments preparing for the network for mass consumer use.
The incentives plan is designed to support both new infrastructural and user-related onboarding, while also creating incentives for our existing network stakeholders.
1. Bandwidth Mining Incentives
After the launch of Sentinel’s new dVPN Desktop client, a reward program for dVPN node hosts will be launched.
The process of generating network rewards in exchange for providing Bandwidth to Sentinel’s dVPN network is known as ‘Bandwidth Mining’.
Initially, the ‘Bandwidth Mining Incentivization Pool’ will intend to distribute $25,000 worth of $DVPN token per month with an intention of encouraging the participation of between 4000-6000 nodes, which is the number of nodes that Sentinel’s centralized competitors generally have.
These rewards will be distributed on a monthly basis and the total amount of rewards will be scaled up overtime. These rewards will initially be distributed by the Foundation, and may later be distributed at the protocol level.
The pool’s monthly payout amount will be of a fixed size, and it will be shared proportionally by all nodes which are eligible for the program. In order to be eligible for this incentive program, nodes will have to prove 99%+ up-time in the daily reward snapshot for every day of the entire month. While the payouts are made on a monthly basis, the monitoring of node performance is done on a daily basis.
The pool will be able to target to incentivize a specific amount of nodes by varying its size as needed, thus maximizing efficiency and for the observed network usage. The amount of rewards earned per user is inversely correlated with the number of participants, so high rewards should incentivize the community to participate in a situation where there is less participation.
2. $DVPN Token Staking Incentives
We believe that the POS networks of tomorrow will offer community members staking tokens with additional benefits and resources apart from just the protocol-level incentive distribution.
For Sentinel’s first ‘$DVPN Token Staking Incentive’, all paid-dVPN sessions that happen after the first 2 months of the new Desktop dVPN application release will be refunded. The refund will be up to $5 worth of $DVPN tokens per user or up to $25,000 shared proportionally with all users (each month), and in order to be eligible users must have at least 20,000 $DVPN tokens staked.
This initial staking incentive program is just the beginning of a series of incentive programs meant to provide $DVPN related benefits for community members of Sentinel who are securing the network by staking their tokens to validators.
3. Liquidity Mining Incentives
After the launch of the Gravity DEx, Sentinel will be looking to incentivize liquidity provision from the community side by offering a reward that will be paid on a periodic basis.
More details will come after we understand whether Gravity DEx will feature automatic incentive distributions or not. If automatic incentive distributions are not possible or will take too much time to be implemented, we will look to distribute rewards manually.
Otherwise, Sentinel will be using Osmosis to provide incentives to liquidity providers on Osmosis.
4. White-label Operator Incentives
Sentinel will be looking to incentivize newly launched white-label applications by offering a grant of a fixed size which will be distributed over the period of 6 months (if a minimum threshold of subscriptions is reached). There will also be a bonus for the white-label client achieving various subscriptions and session-related milestones. Specific details will be released at a later date after the Desktop client is released.
Sentinel will also offer an incentive to already existing centralized VPN companies that make the decision to transition to Sentinel’s distributed and decentralized dVPN infrastructure. The bonus reward will be based on the amount of paying subscribers that a legacy VPN application can bring to the Sentinel network.
5. dVPN User Incentives
Sentinel dVPN application users will be able to earn incentives by:
- Downloading Sentinel dVPN applications (Desktop CLI/GUI)
- Consuming bandwidth from the Sentinel dVPN network and spending $DVPN tokens
This incentive program will be similar to Sentinel’s initial ‘utility drop’, and will begin after the release of the Sentinel’s new dVPN Desktop application.
6. Grant Program and Initiatives Towards Developers Adoption
Within the next month, Sentinel will be announcing a grant program and other initiatives focused on developer adoption. Our goal is to foster an active developer community around Sentinel by attracting developers who care about Privacy and furthering Cosmos SDK development and can make the Sentinel Bandwidth Marketplace more attractive for users, node providers and white-label operators.
All incentives will start after the new Desktop application is launched.
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