As all of you know, decentralization is essential for Astar, it is one of our core values.
Decentralization is a very vast topic where nothing is just black or white, but it is a goal we have to aim collectively.
This proposal covers an essential part of decentralization: peers.
To make the network the most resilient and efficient, we need a lot of peers, meaning we need new nodes across the world, we need community nodes!
I would like to submit this proposal as a 1st experiment to incentivize community members who are eager to run a node in regions where we have no Astar nodes:
South America
Africa
West Asia
South East Asia
Australia
The whole program would be divided in 3 milestones, this proposal covers the 1st milestone
Milestone 1: incentivize 2 Astar node runners of each region (10 people total) for running a node in their region
Milestone 2: extend the program to 10 more people
Milestone 3: incentivize people who have kept their node running each year
Amount requested for this proposal (milestone 1): 5000 ASTR ($200) / person = 50000 ASTR total ($2000)
Conditions:
The program is open to anyone living in targeted regions (including non technical people), candidates will be selected by me or anyone who want to help me for this program
The node must be an archive node
The node must have ran for 1 month without big interruption (no need for 100% uptime but at least 80% is asked)
The node must be connected to Telemetry
The node has to be ran on a Raspberry Pi 4 (other small ARM machines accepted), at least 4Gb RAM is recommended.
I will provide an online workshop with selected candidates who want it as part of Astar Decentracademy
Questions
Why this amount? $200 is close to the price for a Raspberry Pi full kit (including power supply, SD card, case, fan and heat sinks). It doesn’t cover the hard drive price considering people usually have hard drives home but we can consider this if there is a consensus from the community.
Why a Raspberry Pi? Because it is the most sustainable and economic way to run an archive node: it is very silent to stay at home, it consumes a very tiny amount of power and its size is very small. Of course, it can be any kind of small ARM based computer, as long as it has a low consumption (we love green).
Disclaimer
All elements of the proposal can be adapted before submit it to vote, please comment with any suggestion of improvement.
If you are interested to apply in this program, please answer to this post.
Root for this idea of spreading nodes globally and in a decentralized manner! As there are already plenty of nodes on the continent where I live, perhaps I would join this proposal for the next time! But, I could assist if necessary. By the way, I think the number of nodes on each continent could vary depending also on the number of DAU.
Thanks guys, I would love to decentralize in every country but have to stay reasonable for a 1st experiment
Of course, you are more than welcome to spin up a node on your little machines that will make Astar live forever!
Superb idea @bLd759. Im so glad that this is being put out there as it can be a great catalyst for more decentralization. Good education opportunity for our community too!
We are working on this same concept in Brazil and LATAM for Kusama and Polkadot but your Hardware suggestion is something we are going to evaluate as a possibility for our project.
We believe that simply installing Nodes and training their operators is the easiest way to break the ice when we talk about blockchains and #web3.
The installation of a node itself will certainly give rise to a great opportunity for us to introduce other concepts until we get where we want to be.
I’m deeply agree with this proposal. and add this, I think number of node itself should be increased. and keep in touch with technical point of view.
below is data from telemetry.
Number of Nodes:
Polkadot:2035, Kusama:2924, Moonbeam:550, Astar:168
CPU Architecture in Polkadot Nodes :
x86_64: 2023( 99.36% ), aarch64: 6 ( 0.29% ), others: 7( 0.35% )
CPU Architecture in Astar Nodes :
x86_64: 167( 99.40% ), aarch64: 1 ( 0.60% ), others: 0
This is very important and should be started immediately, but I think developed countries and regions of cryptocurrencies should be given priority attention
would anyone happen to know the power requirements to run a headless archive node on a Raspberry pi equipped with an SSD? would like to determine the feasibility of running it off solar
Yes I am metering consumption: it takes around 8-9 Wh for a RPi 4 8Gb overclocked to 2 Ghz with a NVMe SSD attached while syncing (so at highest usage).
Once synced the CPU and memory consumption is significantly reduced, I will measure it soon.
Image 1:
node syncing with para + relay active (left)
node syncing para only with RPC relay sync (right)
i voted yes, im stay in indonesia. but plz give me tutorial video how to run the nodes from beginning. im newbie sir, if there are Indonesians on the Astar team, or those who can explain in Indonesian, please guide me on how to install node. and how to maintain it thank you. very happy to be able to help the team and verify the network.
