Entity Information and location:
BlockHunters, Romania
Infrastructure location:
2 x data centers located in Romania and global service providers (as back-up) located in Europe
Hardware:
Bare Metal servers - The physical hardware and bandwidth capabilities we put in place are able to sustain a long-term expansion into areas we are prepared to announce as we grow the project organically
Technical make-up of team (elaborate on no. of dev ops engineers, experience, etc.):
1 Head of Infrastructure (10+ years of experience)
1 Solution Architect (6+ years of experience)
2 Senior DevOps (4+ years of experience)
Years of experience:
3 years (since 2020)
What other networks are you running validators for?
Mainnet: Cosmos Hub, Axelar, Sommelier Finance, Juno, Stride, Carbon, Gravity Bridge, e-Money, Evmos, Nomic, Chihuahua, Crescent, Lum Network, Rebus, Teritori, Rizon, Dig, Pylons, Desmos, KI Chain, Konstellation, MediBloc, BitCanna, Provenance, Starname, Odin Protocol, AssetMantle, Canto, Bluzelle, Iris, Humans.ai, Neutron
Testnet: Dymension, Babylon, Lava Network, Router, Shardeum, Massa, Taiko, Subspace, etc.
Based on your participation in any previous testnets, mainnets, are there any best practices to be aware of? What are some things that made previous testnets, mainnet launches successful and/or things to avoid that have gone poorly?
Communication:
• Dedicated Telegram groups with validator teams in order to assure responsiveness;
• Dedicated Discord channels for the testnet and mainnet + severate announcements channels for testnet and mainnet
• Bridge alerts from Discord Announcements to dedicated Telegram groups
• Clear timeline for each phase of the incentivized testnet
• Utilizing a user-friendly task submission portal, such as Knack, to facilitate task evaluation
• Dedicated Telegram Announcements channels for mainnet and testnet
Validator best practices:
• Thorough Testing: Prior to the network’s launch, comprehensive testing is essential. The foundation should conduct meticulous assessments to identify and address bugs, security vulnerabilities, and scalability concerns. This ensures the avoidance of any unforeseen issues when the network becomes operational.
• Avoiding Hasty Deployments: Recognizing the significance of thorough testing and the resolution of critical issues before initiating a Testnet or Mainnet launch. Hastily deploying the network can lead to unanticipated vulnerabilities, security breaches, and other complications.
• Validator Precautions: It is important to ensure that validators do not enable auto-compound in a testnet environment and restrict inflation activation to specific tests during testnets. Additionally, validators should use the correct genesis file for each testnet phase, verifying its SHA256 hash.
• Timezone Considerations: To prevent confusion when collaborating with validators across the globe, it is advisable to utilize UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) instead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).
• Timely Coordination: Establishing a well-defined timeframe, such as 5PM UTC, for upgrades, genesis events, and other significant activities that require the attention of all participants.
Do you have a validator voting framework and process?
• Monitor the general state of the ecosystem
• Participate in Commonwealth discussion
• Internal team discussions before we make any decision
• If necessary, we discuss the matter with our private investors and community
• We post the votes on Twitter
Are you planning to play any additional roles in the dYdX ecosystem (e.g. market maker, trader, indexer, front-end, other)?
We plan to run IBC-relayers and public nodes - RPC, REST, GRPC, State Sync, jSon RPC, Seed Nodes, Peers, Snapshot Nodes + ReStake so that delegators can auto-compound their assets
Are there other products or services you want to highlight that could be relevant for dYdX?
Analytics, on-chain indicators, on-chain market intelligence, on-chain vaults, on-chain trading strategies