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July 5, 2024

Missed Consensus 2024? Here’s a Roundup of the Best web3 x AI Talks

Consensus 2024 provided bountiful opportunities for learning about the burgeoning web3 x AI space. The Autonomys team attended numerous insightful talks, panels and side-events on this theme, cultivating our network of potential DePIN and deAI ecosystem partners in the process. Read highlights from some of our favorite talks on ethical decentralized AI (deAI), decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), and self-sovereign identities (SSIs) below.

Decentralized Identities: Building Online Security in a Privacy-Indifferent World

w/ Irene Hernandez, CEO, Gataca

Hernandez spoke about the importance of decentralized digital identities, or self-sovereign IDs (SSIs), and having exclusive control over your personal information.

A privacy-centric world that lacks proper identity controls is just as dangerous as a highly transparent world protected from identity fraud. SSIs balance decentralization, privacy and security, and are thus the next generation architecture for identity management on the Internet.

Verifiable credentials have built-in proof of authenticity and ownership, massively reducing operational costs. Instead of having multiple siloed identities for individual services, we will have a single identity across all our digital services, with the ability to grant and revoke access to specific personal information easily.

SSIs are coming very soon. “It is time that we shift our collective indifference towards privacy to a collective effort in building an improved version of the Internet where privacy is not just a nice idea, but the cornerstone that sustains it all.”

Decentralized Minds: The AI + Blockchain Revolution

w/ Dr. Ben Fielding, Co-Founder, Gensyn | Greg Osuri, Founder, Akash Network | Jiaho Sun, Co-Founder, Flock | Tommy Eastman, AI/ML Engineer, Foundry

Representatives from Gensyn, Akash Network, FLock, and Foundry spoke about the state of deAI and DePIN and the future of machine learning (ML).

FLock — federated learning on-chain for private and transparent deAI model training
Gensyn — machine learning compute protocol connecting CPUs/GPUs with ML model trainers
Akash Network — decentralized super cloud network granting permissionless access to unavailable high-density GPUs (NVIDIA H100s and A100s) peer-to-peer

Jiaho Sun highlighted the importance of GPU drivers and data privacy in deAI agent development. Decentralized compute DePIN need drivers to ensure distributed GPUs can collaborate on model training effectively and efficiently — NVIDIA’s CUDA software currently dominates. If you want to train an effective personal assistant AI agent, you must provide it with all your personal data (which you don’t want to be giving to Big Tech companies). Sun suggested deAI Agents Summer is thus on the horizon.

Dr. Ben Fielding offered two solutions for solving latency and bandwidth issues in decentralized ML training:

Short term — optimizing existing models by accounting for heterogeneous devices.
Long-term — new model architectures — moving from centralized AGI training to highly sharded, expert models.

Fielding also prophesied richer, bespoke interactions based on probabilistic AI replacing traditional app and website interfaces. However, he conceded we need much more decentralized training and fine tuning infrastructure for that future to exist, because currently there’s nowhere near enough. He foresees the future of ML as networks of mini models distributed across devices that compose to form larger models when needed. Inference queries will be paths through these mini models, similar to Internet routing protocols. An open-source compiler stack for ML training would connect high-level AI frameworks with different devices as more chips are designed.

There is lots of ongoing research into techniques for data privacy in ML training and inference, including federated learning, homomorphic and functional encryption, and differential privacy. The number one problem Gensyn is trying to solve is verification of remote ML tasks, as ZK-proofs are too expensive to verify computation. General auditing (rerunning portions of the task) is currently the most viable verification mechanism, but requires reproducible or deterministic execution via cryptographic, game theoretic or probabilistic proofs, as different devices produce different results.

According to Greg Osuri, the GPU supply chain is extremely broken today. It’s impossible to get enough high-density GPUs to do any meaningful training or inference at scale, as demand from the Big Tech quintet (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft) currently strangles the supply of NVIDIA GPUs. The complexity of the global supply chain has meant supply has failed to keep pace with ever-increasing demand, and creating chip fabricators requires lots of time and investment. However, there’s billions invested globally into compute for AI and more specialized GPUs for ML. Although AMD and Intel GPU driver software is unstable right now, NVIDIA’s dominance will wane within 3–5 years, Osuri suggests.

There are now lots of chips available as ML projects have upgraded to different chipsets, and crypto companies, such as Foundry, have moved away from PoW mining as it became less profitable. Many now supply Akash, making it the only way of accessing H100s on-demand. Akash powers numerous apps and dApps, including Brave, FLock and Venice.ai. Akash is able to reduce costs by 50–90% by tapping into this underutilized compute capacity and decoupling the resource from its control. As Foundry’s Tommy Eastman points out, “This represents a unique opportunity to onboard people into crypto as there’s no other options for them to access these GPUs. If we make the experience good, they will stay.”

Osuri believes the narrative is changing around crypto and AI, citing this October 2023 article in Semafor. As he asserts, “Open-source, decentralized systems are significantly better at guaranteeing data privacy than closed, centralized ones because of their transparency.”

Time to Unite the Tribes: Building Truly Open AI

w/ David Johnston, Open-Source Contributor, Morpheus | Erik Voorhees, Founder, Venice.ai | Misha da Vinci, Founder, GRFTF podcast

David Johnston, from Morpheus and Erik Voorhees, from Venice.ai, spoke about smart agents and the goals of building open AI.

Morpheus — community building a permissionless network for decentralized, open-source AI agents by connecting APIs with smart contracts and incentivizing people to contribute compute, open-source code, capital and agents
Venice.ai — private, permissionless chatbot with uncensored answers, built on Morpheus

A reaction to regulatory capture, Morpheus has no founder, company or foundation — just a whitepaper, written by pseudonymous co-authors Morpheus, Trinity and Neo. However, it also now has 255 contributing members and $500 million in ETH staked towards the project, contributing yield to bootstrap it into existence. Johnston claims AI experts are already saying it’s really useful for cheap compute.

In Johnston’s words, “Ethereum pioneered smart contracts. Morpheus is pioneering smart agents.” Built using open-source LLMs (Llama 3, Mistral), which caught up with closed LLMs (ChatGPT) last year, Morpheus agents can run on personal hardware, lowering the cost of access to AI for everyone.

Agents need web3 for economic action. The future is wallet-connected personal agents that you own and control, Johnston claims. AI-powered interfaces will be the Internet search engine moment of the mid-90s for web3, improving UX, matching intent with the best results, and helping onboard billions without technical knowledge, truly bringing web3 to the mass market. For example, you tell MetaMask to send 1 eth to Bob. An agent finds the most efficient path before allowing you to approve the transaction with a single button.

Voorhees’s example is more complex, giving the user the ability to interact with a financial intelligence: You tell your agent to put your USDC (on MetaMask) into the highest yielding stablecoin. The agent responds that it’s XYZ with a rate of 32.3%. However, it has a market cap of $50 million. The second-highest is ABC with a market cap of $10 billion. Do you want to buy it? Tap yes and it buys it.

“You don’t want all that stuff going through a centralized company. That should be obvious to anyone in crypto,” Voorhees suggests. Crypto’s permissionless composability will transform AI. “If you can incentivize a decentralized compute function, everything else AI can organically build on top.” deAI will grow like DeFi did despite established players, because it is open, permissionless and composable. We are building systems of interaction and exchange which are easier and more frictionless, which will draw developers and users.

Venice pulls inference data from open-source models run on decentralized GPUs via encrypted proxy servers. Data is otherwise stored locally. Why use Venice? Everything you’ve ever sent to ChatGPT goes to a centralized company (and any other entity, government or hacker they give, sell or leak your unencrypted data to) tied to your identity forever. If you don’t want to be spied on and don’t want censored answers, use Venice.

Don’t Trust, Verify: An Overview of Decentralized AI Inference

w/ Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner, Dragonfly

Dragonfly Capital’s Haseeb Qureshi spoke about decentralized inference and the state of the deAI industry: “Crypto is a technology that creates trust. AI is a technology that needs trust.” web3 x AI is big, but right now it’s early and hard. The next generation of AI protocols needs to be cheap, easy and fast for mass adoption, but needs to solve core scalability issues first.

The current deAI stack:

Decentralized GPU compute networks, including Render, Akash and io.net are the largest in web3 x AI. Decentralized training protocols include Bittensor (the most famous) and Gensyn (in the research stage). Decentralized inference (running the model to ensure its returns the right output) is being worked on by Ritual (the most famous) and Modulus (doing zero-knowledge inference). AI inference is very computationally intensive. It is virtually impossible to do directly on a decentralized blockchain. Lastly, there are AI-powered web3 apps, including Kaito (market intelligence), MyShell (character chatbots), Alethea (interactive AI companions).

Approaches to verifying LLM computation on-chain:

zkML (zk-proofs of off-chain computation): EZKL, Giza, Modulus
cryptoeconomic ML (PoS/token voting for decentralized trust): Ritual, Atoma Network
optimistic ML (optimistic roll-ups for fraud proofs): Gensyn, ORA

These are not new ideas — they map almost perfectly onto how we think about blockchain security:

ML is ultimately a type of computation, but it has important differences with computation normally on a blockchain. A key challenge is the fact ML was not designed to be proven. This matters for zk-proofs as they won’t compute with even minute differences caused by:

non-determinism (different GPUs/CUDA versions can lead to different results even with the same model).
floating points (decimals can be computed differently depending on how the computation is parallelized, meaning even with the same GPU/CUDA version, you can get a different output).

There is a fourth way of verifying deAI computation: using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) — special enclaves for storing private information with hardware-level security. The newest generation of NVIDIA chips have these TEEs that can guarantee privacy and verifiability of computation way faster than any other form of verifiability. However, you have to trust NVIDIA (which everyone ultimately has to do if they work in AI). Qureshi says the market will decide how to answer this question.

At present, few decentralized cloud projects have a good privacy solution for sensitive data, but this also applies to managed cloud providers. Data is the single hardest thing for deAI players, Qureshi claims. Although data marketplaces can aggregate and auction data, licensing agreement enforcement on data is very difficult. Vana is building Reddit Data DAOs to allow users to sell their collective user-generated data for AI training (Reddit data is very valuable for this), and undercut Reddit in the process (Reddit licenses their site data for $50m a year — none going to users).

How to (Ethically) Build Human AI

w/ Teana Baker-Taylor, COO, Venice.ai | Dr. Ben Goertzel, CEO, SingularityNET Foundation | Arif Khan, CEO, Alethea AI | Jeff Wilser, Host, AI-Curious podcast

Teana Baker-Taylor (Venice.ai), Ben Goertzel (SingularityNET) and Arif Khan (Alethea) spoke about the opportunities and challenges of deAI.

Crypto’s ‘killer app’ could be AI smart agents, Baker-Taylor suggested. Tokenization is very useful in a decentralized, digital-native ecosystem as it allows for efficient incentivization and automatic financial transactions between agents via smart contracts.

She offered this as an example: I type in natural language my instructions for my agent (permissioned by me) into a generative interface. That agent works with other agents to complete tasks and automatically settles with them via a tokenized currency and smart contracts.

However, Taylor warned, “This is uncharted territory. Unlike cryptocurrencies, we don’t have an existing relationship with AI in the same way we did with money. The adoption cycle for these technologies could be faster, meaning we have less time to figure out what good looks like. We really need to think about our privacy in a different way” because the more we give to AI, the more open we leave ourselves to manipulation. We need to translate crypto’s notion of financial sovereignty into an AI context.

Dr. Ben Goertzel (who popularized the term AGI) said he tried doing decentralized AI in the 2000s and it wasn’t possible. Ethereum’s revolutionary smart contract ecosystem inspired and enabled SingularityNET’s founding in 2017 with the goal of building infrastructure to run various AI systems across large numbers of decentralized machines.

deAI tools still work a lot worse than Big Tech AI tools, Goertzel claimed. We need to fix that because “the amount of people who will use a decentralized AI because it’s decentralized is not enough”. We need to build systems that are smarter, more powerful and easier to use. Near parity between open and closed-source LLMs isn’t enough. The deAI community has tremendous size and diversity on which to draw from on its side. Goertzel is working on open-source AGI architecture project OpenCog Hyperon which brings together neural, symbolic and evolutionary AI in an integrated cognitive architecture built on decentralized infrastructure.

“Although we’re not there yet, when you take seriously our aspiration to make machines that can think as creatively and originally as people, and not be constrained by their programming or data, it becomes clear that who owns and controls that system is a big deal. Ultimately, the answer is going to be they will own and control themselves,” Goertzel said.

Alethea allows people to tokenize their generative AI models, characters, agents, datasets etc. via the The AI Protocol. Its key application is ALIagents which allows you to create emotive, human-like characters that can be interacted with in real-time. Khan posits the main challenge in building deAI at the moment is the coordination of capital, compute and intelligence. He suggests this is partly because it’s incredibly difficult to step away from existing structures with strong network effects — whether it’s a capital-based (VCs), compute-based (cloud computing) or intelligence-based (post-ChatGPT).

To create deAI agents, Khan claims, you need to solve 3 the Cs:

Coordinated incentive layer
Compute layer (truly decentralized so agents are uncensored, uncensorable & permissionless)
Capital attribution (agents need capital to deploy & bid for compute).

Blockchain tech is the perfect solution, particularly when you integrate primitives like EigenLayer, which uses Ethereum’s security and yield to provide opportunities for developers to build applications.

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Thanks for reading this summary of the best talks and panels on decentralized AI from Consensus 2024. We hope you found this crash-course on one of the most exciting emerging technological trends informative and insightful. We’re looking forward to further building on our deAI knowledge and developing our partnership network at future industry events, including EthCC[7] (and its many side-events) in Brussels on 8–11 July!

Bonus Consensus 2024 Autonomys Team Pics 👀

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July 4, 2024

From Space Race to Long Tail: Crafting a Sustainable Token Issuance Model for a Resilient Autonomys Network

Autonomys is crafting a token issuance model that will allow our network to thrive for decades to come. We’ve invested a great deal of resources into diligently conducting a process of mainnet modeling and issuance parameter selection to this end — in collaboration with leading complex systems engineering firm BlockScience. The original analysis provided by the BlockScience team is available here. We are sharing some of our research and development findings to offer greater clarity about the conclusions we reached.

Introduction

Terminology

Fees: Payments for transactions on the network.
Issuance: The amount of tokens minted as a reward per block, total for all recipients.
Proposer: Farmer who won the block solution challenge.
Rewards: Newly minted tokens issued by the protocol to farmers as compensation for their work.
Voter: Farmer who won the vote solution challenge.

Background Reading

For a high-level background on dynamic token issuance, read the relevant section in the Autonomys Academy and the forum post.
For an extensive description of our technical implementation, see the Dynamic Issuance specification on Github (not required for most readers).

Goals

We designed the economic parameters of our protocol issuance to align with the broader objectives of the network:

Rational Economic Incentives: Ensure the economic parameters encourage behaviors that support the network’s long-term viability and growth.
Community Incentivization: Create incentives that encourage participation from all defined stakeholders (farmers, operators, nominators).
Distributional Equilibrium: Balance the issuance and distribution of tokens to support both the network’s scalability and the fair distribution of resources among participants.

Mainnet Issuance Values

Total ATC Supply: 1 billion

The total ATC supply cap will be 1 billion, as per our simulation. The exact allocations to the team, investors and others will be announced when we have the final numbers following the conclusion of the incentivized testnet and Stake Wars 2. Our implementation keeps track of the total issued tokens to date and ensures the total supply cap is never exceeded.

Space Race Duration: <7 days

The algorithm for the Token Generation Event (TGE) is largely the same as that for the Gemini-3h testnet described here (TL;DR: we will hold a Space Race that starts automatically at genesis block until a certain amount of pledged space is reached, at which point protocol rewards begin).

The results of the simulation suggest rewards are likely to start within 7 days of our mainnet launch. It did not estimate the amount of pledged space required. We will compute this in the final days of testnet based on the total space pledged, as well as the speed of growth (~1.3 PiB/day so far). This will all inform how we choose our Space Race target. The longer it runs, the longer it would take to achieve optimal community-ownership. However, a longer Space Race would slightly increase the lifetime of the protocol issuance.

NOTE: The release of our official GPU plotter (if ready before mainnet launch) will also likely impact our Space Race expectations.

Initial Reward: ~5 ATC/block

The first block after the Space Race target is reached will immediately start minting tokens to reward the proposer and voters. The value of the reward issued is indicative: if we set it to $x$ ATC, the real issued value may be higher or lower depending on utilization and the number of votes, but on average, it follows the curve below. This value, which we call reference subsidy, decreases from the next block following an exponential curve (explained further below).

This issuance curve uses example values consistent with overall recommendations, and as such, these may not be final. The illustrated value per block is the total rewards distributed among all recipients in that block (as described below). Greater rewards significantly aid the growth of the community-owned supply, but at the expense of runway and distributional equilibrium (as a smaller number of early farmers receive a lot more than later ones).

Proposer Share: 10% reward + 10% tax

Each block, on average, includes 9 votes, so we anticipated 10 recipients per block (this number may change once our sharding upgrade is implemented). Currently, the protocol issues 10% of the initial reward to the proposer, and 10% to each voter. In an empty block with exactly 9 votes, we would issue exactly 5 ATC; 5.5 ATC if there were 10 votes; 4.5 ATC with 8 votes, and so on. Assuming an initial reference subsidy of 5 ATC, the rewards for the first block would be issued as follows:

Proposer: max. 0.5 ATC (reduced if block utilization > 0)
Voters: 0.5 ATC each

The proposer also takes a 10% tax from each voter to disincentivize them from censoring votes. The final reward per block credited to the wallets would therefore be:

Proposer: max. 0.5 ATC + (10% * 0.5 ATC * [# of voters])
Voters: 90% * 0.5 ATC each

The proposer share % has not shown conclusive correlation with any of the simulation goals.

Slower Decline: ~1.5 years

To incentivize early adoption and community-owned supply growth, we have developed an issuance curve that begins with a period of slower decline, before accelerating at a certain inflection point. This is achieved by taking the sum of two exponential components: one where the decline starts immediately, and another where the decline starts after a while:

The plot shows the curve for ~15 years (in blocks), with an inflection point at 1.5 years. Although the simulation suggested the duration of this period of slower decline should be 1.5 years, it showed no strong correlation with our goals. A later inflection point would moderately benefit community-owned supply growth, but negatively impact the runway of token issuance.

Runway: >40 years

For each curve, we controlled the initial reference subsidy (the starting point on the y-axis). The rate of decline is effectively controlled by the amount of tokens we ‘allocate’ to each curve component. Taking our estimated supply on TGE and allocating 50% to each component, we can expect a 40+ year runway.

The model simulated the first 3 years after TGE, and thus this runway calculation is based on the functional form of the issuance curve and the initial reference subsidy. The component allocation value is the strongest estimate for runway: lower values make the decline faster initially, but significantly prolong the tail after the four-decade mark.

Long Tail Issuance

The component allocation cap is not enforced in our implementation. The only enforced cap is the total supply cap. The protocol will continue issuing small amounts (i.e. ~0.1 ATC/block, as the exponential function never reaches 0) until the total supply cap is reached with no outside intervention. This allows us to gracefully handle uncertainty over the duration of the incentivized testnet as no extra tokens will be left unissued, nor will the protocol exceed the 1B cap.

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Want to farm or build on the Autonomys Network?

Check out the Autonomys Academy, join the Discord & come say HAI!

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Thanks for joining us on this brief tour of Autonomys Network’s mainnet protocol issuance parameters. We hope that you enjoyed this breakdown of our process, and that it helps the community better understand how we arrived at these values. Keep a lookout for our forthcoming follow-up post on protocol economics.

NOTE: The Subspace Foundation reserves the right to adjust the Autonomys Network’s token issuance parameters based on further research and testing up until mainnet launch. The Foundation does not intend for ATC tokens to be available for sale or resale within the United States or to U.S. persons.

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September 20, 2023

Wen Subspace | Network Update

On September 6th 2023, the Subspace Network successfully launched Gemini III, our third and final incentivized test network, in the lead up to our Mainnet βeta launch! A huge thanks goes out to our core team and enthusiastic community for making this possible!

At mainnet launch, our goal is to make Subspace into the world’s most open identity and payment network. By connecting both Humans and AI through the magic of Web3, Subspace will allow anyone, anywhere, to participate in the emerging autonomous economy. Look out for more on our Web3 AI thesis in a series of upcoming blog posts.

Our mission has always been to create the world’s most scalable, most secure, and most decentralized blockchain network, while staying true to Nakamoto’s original vision to make the digital economy accessible to everyone. After nearly five years in the making, the time for Subspace is nearly here. So without further ado, let’s answer the question: Wen Subspace?

🔍Overview

Gemini III will be lengthy and develop across three distinct phases, each with specific technical upgrades, product releases, and incentive programs.

Key Features:

🏃‍♂️ Our longest-running network, lasting up to five months.

🔧 At least three hard resets, for new features and upgrades.

👨‍🌾 Different incentive structures for farmers and operators.

Tokenomics

Farming: Unlike previous incentivized test networks, Gemini III will follow a token issuance model for farming much closer to what we will deploy at mainnet launch. This means that instead of having a fixed allocation for Gemini III, we will have a continuous issuance of tokens at a constant rate of .1% of the total supply per week. The total allocation for farmers will vary based on the duration of Gemini III, which we expect to last for approximately 24 weeks, yielding approximately 2.4% of the total token supply.

Stake Wars: An additional fixed pool of .6% of the token supply will be allocated to Stake Wars, our incentivization game for domain operators, which will run during the second and third phases of Gemini III. This will be allocated pro-rata to operators based on their percentage of Subspace Credits locked towards domain staking.

These percentages reflect our commitment to equitable token distribution while fostering sustained community involvement and network fortification.This allocation not only incentivizes broad participation but also ensures robust network security.

Beyond Incentivized Testnet: In a manner consistent with our commitment to innovation in the blockchain space, we’re working closely with the team at Blockscience to help us refine our mainnet token economy. While the total token supply will be fixed with a deflationary issuance model (similar to Bitcoin), the specific numbers for the token supply and issuance rate are still being determined. We can share that the Subspace Network will employ a novel dynamic issuance model. As blockspace utilization (and transaction fees) increases, the block subsidy will adjust accordingly, ensuring a balanced ecosystem for all participants across the decades or centuries-long lifecycle of the Subspace Network.

🧱Phase 1: Laying the Foundation (In Progress)

Throughout Phase 1 we’ll be aggressively working to improve and stress test the network. While this phase will likely be the shortest of the three, expect a number of ongoing changes:

Technical Upgrades During this Phase

Sync from DSN: Nodes, by default, sync from the DSN rather than archival nodes on the network. This means that the network no longer requires archival nodes, which essentially solves the Farmer’s Dilemma, as farmer’s are not required to store the full history of the blockchain, freeing up the more space to pledge to the network.
EVM Domains: This phase of the Incentivized Tesnet will introduce EVM domain functionality, facilitating more familiar interactions within the network and development on the network
Domain Withdrawals: The ability to withdraw from domains to the consensus chain and deposit from the consensus chain to domains will be enabled.

New Product Release(s) During this Phase

Astral: We’ll be introducing our block explorer, Astral, which will provide a more transparent and user-friendly way to monitor transactions on the network, including our EVM domain.

🦧Phase 2: The Evolution Continues (starting by October 31, 2023)

Technical Upgrades During This Phase

Proof-of-Time (PoT): In order to protect against long-range attacks we will be implementing a proof-of-time protocol. This will add the concept of timekeepers that run verifiable computations proving the passage of time. Proof-of-Time will trigger a network reset that will kick off Phase 2 of our Incentivized Testnet.
Compact Blocks: Released alongside Proof-of-Time, Compact Blocks will allow us to vertically scale the transaction throughput of the network up to the bandwidth limitations of the average farmer.
Secure Domains: Fraud proofs will be enabled which will help secure our domains against malicious operators. Domains will be secure as long as there is one honest operator who can submit fraud proofs when they observe malicious behavior from any other operator.

New Product Releases During this Phase

Subgraphs Support: Subgraphs help to index blockchain data, transforming it into a more performant and easily queryable format allowing dApps to run faster and offering a better user experience.
Rewards Dashboard: Our rewards dashboard provides operators and farmers with real-time metrics and data related to their contributions and rewards. The goal is to enhance transparency and create a strong feedback loop for network participants.
Node Docs: Our node documentation serves as a cornerstone for educating our community and other ecosystem stakeholders by facilitating troubleshooting, encouraging best practices, and fostering a robust, transparent, and decentralized ecosystem.
Early AI Integrations: Initial experiments around an open identity for Agentic AI through Autonomous Identifiers (AutoID) and secure management of private keys by personal agents on behalf of users through the Sapial Developer framework.

New Incentive Programs

Stake Wars: This incentivized competition will herald the introduction of a new class of network citizen — the operator. Operators are responsible for processing transactions on our execution environments which we call domains. They do this by committing a deposit to the network (their stake). This stake is locked and can be confiscated (slashed) if there is any malicious behavior. This provides crypto-economic security to execution on Subspace. Additionally, any token holder will be able to nominate their coins to their favorite operator in order to earn a portion of the transaction fees they receive. Stake Wars will validate our staking processes and contracts and build a network of operators who will join us on day one of mainnet beta.

🚀Phase 3: The Final Frontier (starting by December 20, 2023)

Technical Upgrades During this Phase

Performance Upgrades: The main goal of this phase is to ensure ALL features for mainnet and the final secure parameters for our consensus protocol are working as expected, any features not working will be addressed during this phase.
Cross Domain Messaging: Users will be able to transfer assets or exchange generic messages across different domains.
Permissionless Instantiation of Domains: Instantiating a new domain with an existing domain runtime will be a permissionless process, allowing for anyone to launch their own domain.
Tokenomics Simulations: Look out for an in-depth analysis and real-world testing of our token economics from our partners at BlockScience. This will allow for the final parameterization of our tokenomics prior to mainnet launch.

New Product Releases During this Phase

Advanced AI Integrations: A re-imagined Web3 user experience suitable for mass adoption, facilitated by agentic AI and natural language interfaces for managing keys, payments, cross-chain transactions, and running a node, farmer, or operator.

🪐To Mainnet Beta & Beyond! (starting by February 14, 2024)

Phew! That’s a lot, but we’re not stopping there. Following the completion of all of our technical upgrades and product releases we will move to Mainnet Beta.

The How: We will have a pause between the final testnet and mainnet beta launch, with the goal of creating a fair and secure launch. During the transition we will calculate all incentivized testnet rewards to be minted. We will then launch the Space Race, a race for farmers to pledge as much space as needed to secure the network. Once the space pledged has reached a secure threshold the network will be activated by enabling block rewards.

Following the launch of Mainnet Beta, you can expect to see the following major milestones:

A Community Token Offering, gated to participants from any of our three test networks, followed by a much larger Public Token Offering, open to all. Both sales will be Web3 native and facilitated by Tokensoft.
To ensure compliance with Swiss regulations, we have obtained a ruling from FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, confirming the qualification of SSC as a utility token. With this classification, the listing of Subspace Credits (SSC) on major exchanges is forthcoming, alongside liquidity integrations with DeFi protocols on Ethereum through a trust-minimized bridge.
The bifurcation of the core team at Subspace Labs into two distinct entities: The Subspace Foundation, a registered Swiss foundation, which will manage the blockchain protocol and governance, and the Continuum Collective Corporation, which will focus on promoting our ecosystem of projects and applications.
A phased transition from permissioned governance under the Subspace Foundation to Decentralized Community Governance, led by our global ambassador program. With guidance from seasoned legal experts, we’re exploring optimal governance structures with a commission-driven framework. This commission is the Foundation’s arm responsible for coordinating proposals from our community guilds and leveraging the treasury’s resources to activate proposals in line with the project’s objectives. Initially, the commission will blend both team and community voices, but our aspiration is for it to transition towards being predominantly represented by elected community members.
The launch of Mainnet Omega, which will introduce dynamic data sharding, our unique approach to limitless horizontal scalability, and open domains, allowing for fully permissionless registration of new domain runtimes.

Stay tuned for more details in follow-up announcements on how to get involved in these exciting opportunities. Thank you once again to our supportive community and core team for making all of this possible!

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August 23, 2023

Ecosystem Update | August 2023

TL;DR

The Subspace Network August community call was a success with several key updates: check out the recording on YouTube.
Domains coming soon! In the Subspace Network, domains function as sovereign chains, often referred to as rollups.
Introducing 3 ways to participate in the Subspace Network: run a Farmer node, run an Operator node, or participate as a Nominator.
Stake Wars, an initiative designed to test domain execution and staking protocols, is scheduled to launch during the Gemini III incentivized testnet phase.
Space Race, an initiative designed to encourage farmers to pledge as much disk space as they can, will strengthen our consensus in the lead-up to the Mainnet Beta launch.
Simple CLI has been renamed to ‘Pulsar’ to streamline technical support and provide clarity.
The Incentivized Testnet phase will commence upon confirming the stability of Gemini 3f.
Gemini 3f non-incentivized testnet is live. Join now!

Estimated read time: 6 minutes, 39 seconds

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Subspace Network Domains

Domains can be conceptualized as application-specific blockchains that are securely anchored to and validated by the core network.

In the Subspace Network, a “domain” represents an execution environment layer on top of our Decentralized Storage Network (DSN). Domains function as sovereign chains, embodying our commitment to scalability through a modular approach. While farmers provide consensus on transaction sequencing, operators handle their execution.

Deploying a domain is simple, and our architecture supports unlimited domain creation. We will be deploying a shared Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible domain, called “Nova”, designed for those interested in running their Solidity contracts without having to deploy their own domain. It will be possible to create a personalized runtime, allowing domain behavior customization. Soon, anyone will be able to deploy a domain with just a transaction.

Detailed documentation on these functionalities coming soon!

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3 Ways to Participate in the Subspace Network

There will be three key roles powering the Subspace Network.

Farmer Node

Farmers pledge space to the network, which is used to build plots.

Plots are used for two things:
1. Plots are used to store things
2. Plots are used to solve puzzles based on the data stored. This is how a farmer proves they are actually storing data. The data-based puzzle-solving is at the core of how we are an eco-friendly PoAS network.

While farmers on the Subspace Network power the PoAS consensus, they do not execute.

Operator Node

Operator nodes are responsible for executing transactions and do not have to run a farm.

They will do this by staking a number of slashable Subspace credits to provide crypto-economic security to execution. Higher their stake, the greater the chance they’ll be picked to execute a transaction, and therefore earn a tx fee.

Nominator

Nominators are Subspace credit holders who choose to stake with a specific operator.

The combined stake of an operator includes their own contribution and that of their nominators. As this collective stake grows, the operator processes more transactions and earns higher fees, of which a share is then distributed to their nominators.

More details coming soon!

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Stake Wars

Stake Wars is an initiative designed to battle-test the intricacies of execution and staking on domains.

Stake Wars is a fun staking-based game designed to test domain execution and staking protocols. There will be multiple phases, beginning with a focused bootstrapping stage, collaborating with select expert teams for setup and early bug identification. Once we achieve desired stability, we’ll expand access, enabling anyone meeting the minimum stake requirement to serve as an operator. Additional fun will be unlocked when we activate nomination. Anyone will be able to earn additional rewards on the Subspace credits they farmed by staking with their choice of operators.

While our plans are still evolving, it is certain that there will be a dedicated reward pool for Stake Wars.

Stay tuned for more updates!

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Space Race

Space Race is a collaborative initiative scheduled to launch ahead of Mainnet Beta.

As we approach the culmination of our incentivized testnet, we’re thrilled to introduce Space Race!

Space Race is an initiative that will encourage our farmers to pledge as much disk space as they can, contributing to strengthening our consensus in the lead-up to the mainnet launch. It will be a collective effort that will drive us to our final stage.

Details coming soon!

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Simple CLI renamed to ‘Pulsar’

This change aims to streamline technical support and provide clarity.

We’ve renamed “Simple-CLI” to “Pulsar”. A pulsar is a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. NASA compares a pulsar to a lighthouse. At night, a lighthouse emits a beam of light that sweeps across the sky. Even though the light is constantly shining, you only see the beam when it is pointing directly in your direction.

This revision addresses naming ambiguities and better encapsulates our product’s core identity while staying in harmony with the Subspace Network’s commitment to continually enhance the product with new features.

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Incentivized Testnet Update

Gemini III marks the final testnet stage before advancing to Mainnet Beta.

We are excited to share that Gemini III Incentivized Testnet will run for an extended period, offering farmers the opportunity to earn greater rewards than in previous incentivized testnet phases.

Our commitment to building a robust network means we will be performing rigorous testing and debugging, which will involve several resets. Full transparency, even after transitioning into the incentivized phase, Gemini III will continue to evolve with new iterations as we integrate essential features for the mainnet. This means there will be multiple network resets.

The Rationale
Although the multiple network resets may present challenges, our goal is to transition to the incentivized phase as soon as possible in response to community feedback. We want to show our appreciation for the continuous support we’ve received by giving our community what they asked for.

The hard resets, however, will present a strategic opportunity for proactive farmers to claim a significant portion of the block rewards in the early stages. Please keep an eye on our announcements for network resets and take advantage of the opportunities.

One of our primary objectives during the incentivized phase is to establish an active network of committed farmers in preparation for mainnet to assist us in testing the network in conditions that mirror the mainnet environment.

What you can expect:

Extended Testing Period: More time to understand, engage, and optimize your farming strategies.
Capitalization Opportunities: Leverage the resets to refine your methods and maximize rewards. Joining a new network early is an opportunity to get a larger proportion of the block rewards.
Collaborative Community Effort: Your input is vital in our collective effort to build a groundbreaking decentralized network.

While Gemini 3f will initially launch as a non-incentivized testnet, we want to stress the importance of everyone’s contribution. Your active participation, feedback, and support will help us ensure a seamless approach to the mainnet.

Stay tuned for more details on timelines, participation guidelines, and reward mechanism.

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Gemini 3f is Live — Join Now!

Gemini 3f non-incentivized testnet is now live.

We’re happy to share that Gemini 3f, the latest iteration of Gemini III is now live. While Gemini 3f will initially commence as a non-incentivized testnet, we anticipate initiating the incentivized testnet phase once we have confirmed its stability.

As we continue to enhance our codebase, it’s possible for users to encounter some technical issues, such as bugs or slow sync times. Additionally, periodic network resets are to be anticipated as part of our ongoing efforts.

Gemini 3f contains key upgrades and improvements based on our community’s feedback, including, but not limited to:

DSN syncing implemented and enabled by default. This means nodes can be pruned as they can sync history from the DSN rather than each other.
Farmer plot resizing.
Domains, including an EVM domain runtime.
Performance improvements.
Sector expiry and replotting.
Farming command structure changes on the advanced CLI.
A number of bug fixes.

To get started, please visit the Subspace Network documentation page.

Recommended Minimum Hardware Setup:

CPU: 4 Core+
RAM: 8 GB+
SWAP: 4 GB
Storage: 100 GB+ SSD

*There are breaking changes. If you are switching over from Gemini 3e, please execute the ‘wipe’ command before initiating Gemini 3f.

Gemini 3f Resources
Subspace Network Telemetry
PolkadotJS Explorer

We’re Hiring!

If you’re passionate about blockchain, crypto, or Web3 and have a strong background in software engineering and computer science, please check out the open roles on our career page.

Thank you for the continued support and we look forward to seeing you in our community!

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May 16, 2023

The StarGazer Vol. 3

Captain’s log: Stardate 47634.44

Jeremiah Wagstaff
Chief Hacker at Subspace Labs

It’s been an interesting couple of months with many exciting developments inside and outside the company. We’ve been heads-down finalizing some key artifacts to set Subspace up for long-term success.

With the support from our Research Team, Nazar completed an initial implementation of our consensus v2, dilithium, on a private test network, which we continue to test and improve. We’ve also deployed MUD on our core-evm domain, bringing the framework to Substrate. MUD is a framework for ambitious Ethereum applications that compresses the complexity of building EVM apps with a tightly integrated software stack. We plan to launch our core-evm domain on Gemini III soon.

We’re thrilled to welcome two new contributors to support our continued growth. Our Gemini 3d testnet is live with thousands of farmer nodes distributed across 60+ countries. We’ve also successfully launched our Open-Source Block Explorer!

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In This Issue

Dilithium: Consensus v2 Update
Hitchhiker’s Guide to Subspace
Gemini III Public Stress Test Updates
Dev SDK
Open-Source Block Explorer
New Cohort of Ambassadors
Subspace in the Wild
AI Initiative

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Dilithium: Subspace Consensus v2

Nazar achieved a huge milestone by completing an initial implementation of dilithium in a private test network. With the support from our research team, we are in the process of making further improvements through rigorous testing.

Our research team, in collaboration with our partners, has made significant progress in ensuring the robustness, security, and ASIC resistance of Subspace consensus v2, dilithium. Through our combined analysis approach, we have developed a more comprehensive understanding of potential attacks and vulnerabilities. For the dilithium security proof, we’ve incorporated some ideas from Security of Blockchains at Capacity, an academic research paper co-authored by one of our Affiliate Research Partners, Joachim Neu.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Subspace

We’ve recently unveiled our latest blog series, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Subspace,” which aims to provide a comprehensive overview of our cutting-edge research findings and technical details about our new consensus v2, dilithium. Through this blog series, we share in-depth insights and analysis that, we hope, will inform and educate our community.

Ep. I — Polynomial PoRs for Subspace v2: In the first episode, Polynomial PoRs for Subspace v2, Jeremiah explains the technical details of our v2 consensus, which constructs proofs-of-replication (PoRs) and proofs-of-archival-storage (PoAS) — among several other exciting things, from polynomial schemes such as Reed-Solomon erasure codes and Kate-Zaverucha-Goldberg (KZG) commitments.
Ep. II — Combining KZG and Erasure Coding: In the second episode, Combining KZG and erasure coding, our Research Engineer, Dariia Porechna, outlines our lessons learned from combining RS and KZG and provide an overview of existing schemes, some described in research papers and others currently used by different teams in the space.
Ep. III — Dilithium: Subspace Consensus v2: In the third episode, Dariia provides an overview of how we combine the underlying proof-of-space from the Chia protocol with erasure coding and KZG commitments. Their synergy produces a lightweight, secure, and energy-efficient proof-of-archival storage (PoAS) consensus variant, a significant step forward in security and user experience.

Subspace Network Community Call - Hitchhiker's Guide Deep Dive with Dariia & Dr. Chen

Join us for an exclusive event where our brilliant researchers Dariia and Dr. Chen dive deep into their groundbreaking…

www.youtube.com

What’s Next for Research

Our research discussions have found a new home in the Subspace Network forum, providing a central place to publish our findings and facilitate deeper engagement. In addition, we plan to release a list of open research problems in the next few weeks to encourage participation from the academic community, allowing us to leverage the collective knowledge and expertise of the wider community.

Gemini III

The non-incentivized stress test of Gemini III has been launched successfully, thanks to the unwavering efforts of our dedicated engineering team. As previously mentioned, the initial stages of Gemini III will be non-incentivized, and we anticipate making some significant changes in the upcoming weeks. Our focus on testing the protocol on a live network is paramount as we implement dilithium consensus and enhance the features of Gemini III. By conducting these iterative tests, we can anticipate and proactively resolve potential issues, ensuring that our network is resilient and secure.

Gemini 3c

In Gemini 3c, we upgraded the consensus to v2.2, adding enhancements to the security guarantees of the network. We also upgraded our Distributed Storage Network (DSN) to v2, enabling farmers to download data (sync) from other farmers (not nodes). Our engineers are already working on the next iteration, where nodes will be able to sync from the farmer network. These huge milestones bring us closer to finally resolving the farmer’s dilemma.

Gemini 3d

After a few weeks of successfully testing Gemini 3c, we launched Gemini 3d. A basic Proof-of-Space has been implemented, KZG implementation has been aligned with primitives used for erasure coding, and runtime solution verification has been implemented. Other exciting upgrades include domains and cross-domain messaging. We are currently testing the implementation for system domains, core payments, and more.

What’s Next for Gemini III

Recently, we successfully deployed MUD on our core-evm domain. The Subspace core-evm domain supports smart contract development with solidity, enabling us to bring MUD into the Substrate ecosystem. We even launched a simple example world using MUD v2 on Subspace that demonstrates how to use the MUD framework to create simple on-chain applications. We plan to launch our core-evm domain on Gemini III soon.

Product at Subspace

We are excited to share that we have completed a successful soft launch of our in-house open-source block explorer. This early version provides a clear and user-friendly visualization of Subspace-specific statistics that cater to the needs of our farmers.

DevSDK

Subspace Network’s DevSDK is designed to be a powerful tool for developers, allowing them to explore the full range of the network’s capabilities. By leveraging this resource, developers will be able to easily understand how the network functions and use this knowledge to bootstrap community-driven growth loops. With an early version of the DevSDK, we plan to offer support for Moonbeam EVM builders, Solidity-on-Ethereum experts, and Metaverse builders, allowing them to get quick-started. We plan to launch our first application running on the DevSDK in the coming weeks!

Subspace Network Telemetry

The Subspace Network Telemetry has undergone an upgrade that provides more information to assist with version upgrades. It is important to note that no tracking mechanisms have been added to the codebase, and the team has no plans to include any to respect the privacy of the community members. Understanding Subspace CLI’s adoption over time and observing the time the community needs to upgrade to new releases will help us make informed decisions and provide better support to the community.

What’s Next for Product

The product design process for the Block Explorer v2 has been initiated, beginning with the account visualization stage. This step is crucial in determining how the Domain UX will be prototyped, built, and tested. The Product Team is taking the necessary steps to ensure that the Domain UX is developed with the end-user in mind.

Additionally, the team will continue to work closely with the Protocol Engineering Team to ensure fast iteration and adaptability throughout the various iterations of Gemini III.

Subspace Propulsion

Over the last month, our Ecosystem Team has been dedicated to supporting the launch of Gemini III to ensure our community members are well-guided.

Ambassador Program

After several weeks of accepting applications, we are preparing to onboard a new cohort of Subspace Network Ambassadors! Our ambassadors are the backbone of our community, driving impact around the world.

Community Project Registry

Our Ambassadors successfully launched the Subspace Network Community Project Registry. The Registry serves as the central hub for all Subspace-related community projects. This registry will enable us to create a thriving environment where community members can come together, share ideas, and collaborate on projects.

Ambassador OS Beta

AmbassadorOS, the autonomous operating system for our ambassadors, is set to revolutionize the way we manage and empower our growing community.

Our team has been working on developing a scalable and semi-autonomous system that will serve as the foundation for the future when we will have hundreds and potentially thousands of ambassadors distributed across the world. We’re excited to share that we’re currently testing a beta version, and the feedback so far has been fantastic. We are looking forward to launching the fully autonomous version and continue to empower our ambassadors in new and innovative ways.

SupportGPT

In an effort to improve our technical support processes for our community, we are leveraging the power of AI to create SupportGPT. It is an innovative tool designed to provide fast and accurate technical support to our community members 24/7. Thanks to AI, we’ve created a tool that can provide instant, context-aware support. We are in the early stages and hope to launch SupportGPT in the coming weeks.

AI Initiative

In our pursuit to remain at the forefront of the tech industry, it is essential to explore and adopt advanced technologies like AI that can redefine the way we work. Each team member has incorporated AI into their day-to-day responsibilities. We will continue to identify areas where AI can make a significant impact, allowing us to optimize processes and foster innovation across the board. Our goal is to create a smarter, more efficient workplace that leverages the full potential of technology to drive success.

AI Community Hackathon

At Subspace, we believe that AI is a critical component in shaping the future, and we want to continue fostering innovation by tapping into the collective intelligence of our community. To do so, we have launched an AI Hackathon! We are looking for the best use of AI to advance the Subspace Network ecosystem, whether it is through improving our existing products or creating entirely new ones.

For more details about the AI Hackathon, please view the full announcement in the Subspace Network Forum.

Subspace in the Wild

It has been an exciting and productive few months for Subspace. We recently attended two conferences, and as we prepare for the highly anticipated release of our new vision, we are more energized than ever. The insights gained from these events have validated the need for the innovative solutions we are building at Subspace. We can’t wait to share our vision and demonstrate how our technology will transform the industry.

Jeremiah at GDC

Jeremiah attended the Game Developers Conference (GDC), and it was an eye-opening experience for them. They noticed the significant growth of Web3’s presence in gaming and were amazed by the high level of interest in virtual worlds and persistent games among developers. These conversations validated our vision for the Subspace Network and our new vision, reinforcing the belief that what we’re building is much needed. It’s exciting to see the industry heading towards a future where our vision can become a reality.

Jeremiah and Jeremy at ETHDenver

Jeremiah and Jeremy finally got to meet Santiago Balaguer from Parity in person. He has been our main point of contact for the Substrate Builders Program from the start. Santiago invited Jeremiah and Jeremy to join the photo that captures the key teams in the Polkadot Ecosystem. Shoutout to Nazar for all the amazing work he has contributed to Substrate!!!

Join our Engineering Team in Slack!

If you want to stay up-to-date on the engineering team’s groundbreaking work, join our Slack channel! Last year, our engineers moved their discussions to Slack, which is open to the public. Do note, however, that the channel is primarily for transparency and is read-only for now.

Join the Subspace Labs Engineering Slack channel by filling out the form below and wait for an email invitation:
https://forms.gle/Yo8onAJj1TwyoMcg7

Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to seeing you in our community!

Let’s connect!

Website — https://www.subspace.network
Discord — https://discord.gg/subspace-network
GitHub — https://www.github.com/subspace
Twitter — https://www.twitter.com/NetworkSubspace

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March 21, 2023

Guide to Farming on Gemini III — Non-Incentivized Testnet