On Tuesday, December 18th, 2PM UTC, iExec will run its 3rd ‘Workerdrop’ event. We invite you to get involved in this key infrastructure test and earn some RLC. Participation is quite simple: download the iExec Worker VM and join the public ‘worker pool’ and that’s it! You’ve become an iExec worker and are ready to contribute your idle computing power to earn RLC tokens.

Stuck? Technical Support: Open an ‘Issue’ on Github here, give your Worker wallet’s public key and describe your issue. or Read some of the most Frequently Asked Questionsfrom previous Workerdrops!

NOTE: If you were at one of the previous Workerdrops, you can use the same VM.

What is a Workerdrop?

iExec is a decentralized marketplace for cloud computing resources. As part of this infrastructure, public worker pools will be implemented, meaning anyone will be able to earn RLC tokens by joining the ‘worker pool’ and contributing computing resources. In preparation for their integration, iExec has held a series of infrastructure tests named ‘Workerdrops’.

The goal of these workerdrops is to guide workers (or CPU power providers) through the process of providing computing power while testing, validating and scaling of iExec on Ethereum’s Mainnet.

What’s new

The aim was to gradually introduce new mechanisms and concepts with each test. Read about our strategy for the previous 2 workerdrops. Workerdrop 3 implements the full ‘Proof-of-Contribution’ (PoCo) consensus algorithm, the protocol iExec uses to verify the result of an off-chain computation. This involves workers staking some funds before executing a task. This stake, made in RLC tokens, acts as a temporary security deposit to ensure that the computation is done correctly and not falsified. When the result receives blockchain-level validation, the stake of RLC is returned.

How to participate?

To run the iExec Worker Virtual Machine (VM), the minimum hardware requirements are:

4GB of RAM

2 Core CPUs

Anyone using Linux, macOS or Windows can install the Ubuntu virtual machine and participate.

You will also need to create and credit a wallet with some funds. Both ETH and RLC are required.

Installing the iExec Worker VM

To contribute your computing power, you will need to run a virtual machine, a computing environment where the Worker executable has been set up and configured by iExec.

You will need to first download and install VirtualBox to launch the VM. VirtualBox is available for Windows, OSX and Linux platforms under ‘VirtualBox 5.2.16 platform packages’

Download ‘Virtual Box’ from its official website and install it:

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

2. Download the iExec Worker VM

Alternative Download link: (Google Docs): http://bit.ly/iexec-worker-mirror

Import the VM to VirtualBox

To import the VM, just click on the iexec-worker.ova file. You will see the ‘Import Virtual Appliance’ window. If you only have 4GB of RAM, please change the RAM to 2,048MB in this window.

Click on “Import”. The Virtual Machine will be imported after a few minutes.

Start the Virtual Machine by clicking on “Start”

For MAC users: After the installation fails once, quit VirtualBox and then go to the System Preferences > Security & Privacy. At the bottom of the window, you should see a message saying “System software from developer, ‘Oracle, America, Inc.’ was blocked from loading.”: click on “allow”

Create and Import your Wallet

If you haven’t already, you will need to create an Ethereum wallet:

NOTE: To avoid subscription fees, use the same wallet you used for our previous Workerdrops

Go to MyEtherWallet https://myetherwallet.com

Create a wallet following MEW’s instructions

Remember your password. You will need it later.

Back up your wallet properly.

Download your Keystore file.

To Import the wallet using the Keystore file, you will need to open the downloaded wallet file with any text editor and copy its content.

using the Keystore file, you will need to open the downloaded wallet file with any text editor and copy its content. In the VM, paste the content in the encrypted-wallet.json file which can be found in the “iexec” folder on the desktop in the VM.

For MAC users: If you are using hotkeys to copy and paste. You must use CMD+C to copy and CTRL+V to paste into the VM.

Save the content of the “encrypted-wallet.json” file.

Credit your wallet with ETH and RLC

Please make sure that your wallet is credited with both ETH and RLC (if you don’t know what that means, click here):

Total ETH: 0.2 ETH

We estimate Ethereum transaction costs at around 0.025 ETH.

The remainder of the ETH is not taken, it just needs to be held in your wallet to pass web3js client checking)

Total RLC: 10 RLC (minimum)

This RLC is locked up as a deposit during computation and returned when the task is complete.

Fyi, there cannot be 2 workers on the same wallet. It will not work.

Rewards 🎊

The reward per work has been set to 69 RLC. A work is replicated on 3 different worker’s machines and the reward will be distributed between them depending on reputation. The RLC will be credited to your worker account and can be withdrawn to your wallet upon stopping the worker.

10% of the reward will be used in staking during the execution. The stake is not seized and is returned when the task is completed if you are part of the consensus.

How do I check the Balance and Score of my iExec Worker?

It is important that your Worker has been credited correctly. There are several ways to check your RLC balance. You can do it with from the SDK, with Etherscan, but also on from the Marketplace interface. Click here to find out how.

Start the iExec Worker VM

Click on “Launch Worker” on the VM desktop.

Enter the worker name and the wallet password (the password that was entered on myetherwallet.com)

When the worker initialization process is complete, the worker will be started:

❗️ Note : When setting up your worker on the VM, you MUST wait for the deposit to complete when you see making deposit…

If not, you will not have your account credited with RLC for staking and the task will fail. You may even lose your ETH.

You are now participating in the iExec Workerdrop. All you have to do is sit back, wait for a task and earn some RLC!

Stop the iExec worker VM

To stop the iExec Worker you need to click on the “Stop Worker” icon in the VM.

Then you can choose to withdraw your RLC tokens now or do it later.

What tasks am I executing?

All the Dapps powered by iExec are listed on the Dapp Store and you can learn more about innovative iExec Dapps on our blog. For this Workerdrop, workers will be powering a Fintech application applying Monte Carlo methods for option pricing on the Apple stock.