[DEPRECIATED] Proposal: Peers program - spread Astar nodes across the world with Raspberry Pi

Dear community

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!


View peers map on Astar telemetry

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.

Resources

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.

Let’s decentralize Astar together!

bLd
DevOps engineer at Astar Network

27 Likes

What a great idea bLd! I’m interested in helping with the selection of candidates and anything else you might need.

2 Likes

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.

5 Likes

Me too, I will join on future versions of this proposal: it seems that Italy is not in the allowed countries.
But I love it :heart:

3 Likes

Thanks guys, I would love to decentralize in every country but have to stay reasonable for a 1st experiment :slight_smile:
Of course, you are more than welcome to spin up a node on your little machines that will make Astar live forever!

3 Likes

Amazing proposal! One-person one-node is the future!

6 Likes

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!

8 Likes

Great idea. Thanks for proposing this.

5 Likes

Super amazing!

Now, let the decentralization begin

Living nodes around the globe.

5 Likes

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.

5 Likes

It’s an amazing proposal ! Best idea for Astar decentralization and community knowledge :+1:

6 Likes

Very interesting proposal, I wish you a lot of success with your project!

5 Likes

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

2 Likes

Thank you for the insights!
May I know how did you extract these metrics from telemetry?

3 Likes

from Polkadot Telemetry

and basic info from

3 Likes

This is very important and should be started immediately, but I think developed countries and regions of cryptocurrencies should be given priority attention

3 Likes

Excellent suggestion and improve Astar decentralization. Thank you!

5 Likes

great initiative!

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

1 Like

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)

Image 2: node synced

I will also share this dashboard for Raspberry users.

Some insights about RPi CO2 consumption here: https://twitter.com/bLd77/status/1566495876171894784?s=20

4 Likes

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.

6 Likes