THORChain Testnet4 Ready for Public Nodes

2020-07-16 — 2 min read

Note, Binance Chain Testnet will be updated on 21 July, which will cause Testnet 4 to be restarted. http://community.binance.org/topic/2947/binance-chain-testnet-migration-announcement

Overview

THORChain Testnet 4 is ready for Node Operators to practice churning in.

The following are the points:

Node Candidates (or anyone who wishes to verify the THORNode set up) should follow the instructions at https://docs.thorchain.org/thornodes/kubernetes

When they get to the point at which to send a 10,000 RUNE Bond, they should apply with the team to receive these assets. The team can be reached in any of the telegram or discord channels, however https://t.me/thorchain_dev is preferred.

They can also opt-in to receive a monthly subsidy of $500 in RUNE to pay for Node Costs. They can fill out these details in a Form the team will provide.

Start here: https://docs.thorchain.org/thornodes/kubernetes

Testnet 4

The latest Testnet (supporting testnet.bepswap.com) has significant improvements in terms of allowing permissionless bonding of Nodes and churning in.

Asynchronous Liquidity Delegation

Funds are actively rotated between a main vault (Asgard) and smaller vaults, which can redeem outgoing funds faster.

Permissionless Node Participation

Any Node Operator who has more than 10k RUNE (testnet), can bond in, which reflects the permissionless way the Chaosnet will run, since RUNE is already widely distributed.

Bonding, Slashing, Rewards, Jail

All the features required to reward and penalise nodes are active. Node operators will earn RUNE for their service (testnet RUNE — not worth anything, but representative of Chaosnet rewards).

Bug Bounties

Bug bounties are ongoing and handled case-by-case. If you see something, or can contribute somehow, please get in touch with the team. There is an active bounty to convert a linux script to powershell.

Known Issues

Testnet 4 has a small TSS reliability issue, causing nodes to occassionally miss signing sessions and earn slash points. This is under investigation, but the chain is resilient to this and handles transactions fine.

Node Operators may see themselves earning slash points

Next Milestones

Testnet 4 will be reset on 21 July as per the Binance Chain migration.

If Testnet 4 is successful, then Chaosnet will immediately follow. The team are looking for several weeks of smooth operations, as well as a successful Ragnarök at some point.

In addition, the team want to see at least 30 unique nodes involved.