Report of the Testnet Period of the Nebulas PoD Node Strategy Nebulas Follow Mar 17 · 4 min read

The two-month Nebulas PoD (Proof of Devotion) node strategy test period has ended, as of reaching a block height of 3,522,200 on the testnet (on about Mar 9, 2020, UTC + 8 Beijing time). The all-new Nebulas Voyager will begin the mainnet upgrade process this week (review the mainnet launch steps). It is expected that the upgrade process will be completed on March 30 ushering in the public release of Proof of Devotion (PoD). This day marks exactly the second anniversary of the launch of the first Nebulas mainnet: Eagle Nebula.

A total of 64 nodes participated in the test period, including the well-known professional mining pool institutions such as InfStones, Allnodes, Wetez, Everstake, StackOfStake, Zpool, SNZPool, etc. in addition to the blockchain technology community university (BTCU) and the exchange Gate.io. The public chain alliance PCTA, the media association LianKe, the Nebulas ecosystem project ATP and many individual Nebulas community members.

The new Nebulas PoD mechanism is based on the contribution of the community and includes the consensus mechanism and governance mechanism, which have been tested these past months on the testnet.

PoD consensus mechanism

The PoD consensus mechanism was launched on the testnet on January 8th, 202. Based on the comprehensive node ranking algorithm, considering the stability of the node, the contribution of token holding, and other factors, 21 nodes were selected from 51 candidate nodes to participate in block generation. Community members can receive mining rewards by the successful operation of nodes.

The consensus mechanism has ran stable on the testnet for 67 days which is equivalent to 1,834 polling cycles(52.5 minutes per cycle). During the testnet node invitation system, a total of 85 nodes signed up with 64 nodes actively participating and 53 nodes successfully producing blocks. In total, 376,974 blocks were produced during the testnet phase.

During the testnet process, the optimization of penalties for missing blocks, system stability and reward distribution of blocks were optimized. Functions such as email reminders, node management, and node suspension were also improved during the testing phase.

For further details, please review:

PoD governance mechanism

The governance portion of the testnet was launched on March 6th, 2020. The governance committee is composed of the nodes that produce the most blocks in a governance cycle and participates in the governance process such as voting on proposals and projects on the community collaboration platform go.nebulas.io.

During the governance voting process, 49 of the nodes were given the opportunity to participate in the first PoD governance vote of which 42 nodes participated in the vote leading to a high participation rate of 85.7%. During this process, decisions were made on PoD penalty rules, technical committees, NAX-based Nebulas Awareness Development & Content Creation Plan, Launch NAS nano Wallet Currency Voting, etc… To view the voting results, visit https://medium.com/nebulasio/first-pod-governance-vote-has-ended-with-the-nebulas-awareness-development-content-creation-plan-89267410cd92.

Testnet Incentive

According to the testnet incentive plan announced in January, the testnet program was live for 67 days and the total reward amount reached 335,000 NAS (150,000 NAS per month).

Reward distribution formula: single node reward = single node online time / SUM online time of all nodes x total award amount

Opportunity to participate in reward distribution if:

Recorded penalty records shall not exceed 4 times during the entire testnet period; Successfully produced more than 100 blocks.

According to the statistics during the entire testnet cycle, 53 nodes produced more than 100 blocks. For a review of the block generation situation, see PoD Block Statistics (Google Online Form) or the screenshot below.

Among the above-listed nodes that produced a minimum of 100 blocks and excluding the situation that all nodes are temporarily unable to generate blocks due to the testnet upgrade, there were 2 nodes that have missed blocks and incurred a penalty up to 4 times. These two nodes will not receive any reward distribution. Therefore, the 51 remaining nodes will share the 323,949.5 NAS. The 51 nodes will receive an average of 6,741.88 NAS.

Thanks to all the nodes that have participated in the testnet for their contributions to Nebulas. Nodes participating in the testnet phase test will be given the opportunity to take the lead in the mainnet deployment. The reward will be sent to the mainnet incentive address of the relevant node two weeks after the release of the new mainnet upgrade is completed on March 30, 2020!

If you have any questions, please contact your inviter or email us at contact@nebulas.io. Live assistance is also available in the Nebulas node Telegram group at t.me/nasnode.