Pontem Incentivized Testnet Program

‍Summary:

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In order to stress test the Pontem Network prior to launching our canary network Nox on Kusama, Pontem will be sponsoring an incentivized testnet program and grant program for early collators on the network. To qualify each staker must undergo KYC to whitelist their node(s) to prevent spam on the test network. By undergoing KYC process the node is now a “Qualified Validator” Rewards will be fixed correlating to the time spent staking (not variable based on test tokens earned during the staking period).

If demand is higher than the available amount of active validator node positions, then through a lottery, the team will pick the KYC registered nodes to move into the active validator set by airdropping an amount of test tokens which will move them into the top position of the active validator set.

In order to allow for a fair chance at being in the active validator set, the “Active Validators” will only be counted after the start of the KYC process. Time spent as a qualified validator will still be rewarded prior to the KYC process going live. This means that just by going through KYC, your node now qualifies as a “Qualified Validator” and days spent as such will be honored to the timestamp that your node was originally set up. As an example, if you set up a node 30 days ago and you undergo KYC with that node today then you have already accumulated rewards as a “Qualified Validator” for 30 days.

Rewards:

The total amount of rewards distributed will be calculated simply as the amount of time spent as an Active and/or Qualified validator multiplied by a constant reward for each day spent as each. We anticipate that given the high demand for Pontem validators the below reward structure could net around 0.2% of total supply in rewards in line with other programs such as the Denali AVAX incentive program from Avalanche.

Daily rewards

Active Validators: 1 NOX

Qualified Validator: 0.25 NOX

Example:

Alice set up a Node on Jan 1 and went through the KYC process on Jan 20. She was then selected as an Active validator from Jan 23 to Jan 30. Therefore her parameters and rewards are as follows:

Days spent as a “Qualified Validator”: 31

Days spent as an “Active Validator”: 8
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Rewards = (1 NOX * 8) + (0.25 NOX * 31) = 15.75 NOX

You can copy and use this spreadsheet to help you estimate total rewards for participating:

Requirements:

In order to qualify for the program, you must:

1. Pass KYC - this ensures people can’t exploit the program by spamming the network with nodes.
2. Successfully deploy a node that is ready to be in the active validator set
   

Resources for setting up a node:

To set up a collator node, you can use the resources below. The video tutorial will walk you through setting up a node on a cloud service provider, many of which you can find free trials for online. You can reference the docs and FAQ if you have any questions.

Ask questions \ Video tutorial