Vite Canary Network: An Open Invitation

Published in

Vite Labs

3 min readAug 12, 2021

To better ensure the robustness and security of the Vite network, we are now exploring the possibility of creating a Canary network for Vite. We are sharing this idea with our community in hopes of getting your valuable feedback and, if possible, soliciting dev teams as partners to build and maintain this canary network for Vite.

What is a Canary Network?

First piloted by the Polkadot team with the Kusama network, a Canary network is a stand-alone network whose primary function is to serve as a testing network. Unlike a traditional testnet, a Canary network has real value and projects can be tested and launched on top of it.

The primary features of the Vite Canary Network (VCN) will be as follows:

The code of the VCN is based on the Vite network.
The native token of the VCN may have value (like Kusama’s $KSM), which creates real world incentives for its maintenance, governance, upgrades and other purposes such as attracting potential attacks to beef up the robustness of the network.
The VCN has its own tokenomics, distribution schedule and requirements for full nodes and SBPs. All of these are yet to be designed by the VCN dev team.

What is the importance of a Canary network?

Traditional testnets have their real world limitations such as lack of value to incentivize governance tests. Other forms of testnets such as an incentivized testnet only exists for a period of time and are built to test for one specific purpose only.

To continuously increase the robustness of a network and introduce functional dApps and upgrades to the network, the existence of a Canary network allows for easy experimentation. It reduces the initial investment for developers, fosters a developer friendly environment and incubates a funnel of new projects to be launched on the primary network.

As a key example, ViteBridge is a high-stakes application that requires extensive testing for security. Deploying beta versions of ViteBridge to a Canary network for testing allows for less risk to production versions, while still incorporating live funds in real-world conditions. This deployment model gives greater security guarantees than audits and traditional testnets. It insulates against attacks that have become a common occurrence on other networks.

What are the incentives for the VCN team to create and maintain the Canary network?

First and foremost, the VCN team gets to run and maintain a stand-alone network with its own value and ecosystem. Secondly, as the developer of the VCN, the team are entitled to a portion of the initial pool of the Canary network tokens. To further protect the value of these tokens, Vite Labs can commit to spending $VITE to buy back a share of the Canary Network tokens at a pre-determined $VITE-denominated price.

What is the commitment required of the VCN team?

Development and operations. As a stand-alone network modeled after Vite, the VCN comes with all the distinctive characteristics of Vite — SBPs, full nodes, DAG design and its own community as well. As such, a dedicated team is required.
Upgrades. Being the Canary network of Vite, any planned upgrade for the Vite network requires its rollout on the VCN first.
Order book DEX. The VCN comes with its own built-in version of the ViteX. The team running the VCN will need to maintain the “ViteX“ of the VCN as well.

How to share your ideas for the Vite Canary Network?

Join our Discord at https://discordapp.com/invite/CsVY76q. We have a dedicated channel for ongoing discussions.

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