Shardeum Sphinx (Betanet) is Live!

Minimum hardware requirements:

– 250 GB ssd storage
– Quad core CPU less than 10 years old if self hosting
– Dual core CPU works if hosted with newer Xeons / EPYC
– 16 GB of ram, 4+ GB of virtual memory recommended
– Hosting: 8 GB RAM + 8 GB Virtual Memory

With GUI, you can start running a node with a few clicks of your mouse. Shardeum is one of the first L1 networks to enable user-friendly GUI feature for node validators. CLI is the primary interface used by the vast majority of blockchain networks. It is enabled for more advanced users and developers who intend to work with nodes more deeply and technically

Your node will earn Betanet SHM, but these will not have any value. That said, we will be keeping track of the addresses that helped out during Betanet. While we haven’t yet decided on Mainnet rewards for Betanet users, we’ll announce in due time if and when it is decided.

When you have the needed amount of SHM staked and you start your node, your Node starts with a Standby status. This means that it is ready to be included in the network. Whenever network rotation occurs, your node will get the opportunity to become Active. This will entirely depend on the network demand and there is no fixed timeline when your node will become Active.

Please Reset your Metamask Wallet. (Settings > Advanced > Reset Account)

While the team has not done extensive testing on windows, technically if you have Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) in your system, you should be able to run a Shardeum validator node.

Run the following command in your shell –> sudo usermod -a -G docker $USER && newgrp docker. Then run the shell script again.

Go into the operator dashboard docker (may be different if you customized install location)

cd ~/.shardeum
./shell.sh

Get your node’s external IP:
curl https://ipinfo.io/ip

The returned IP in the format of nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn is your EXTERNAL_IP.
Set the number above in place of EXTERNAL_IP:
export APP_IP=”EXTERNAL_IP”

Use the following commands in your shell:

cd ~/.shardeum
./cleanup.sh
cd ~/
rm -rf .shardeum
rm installer.sh

After these, Start from Step 2 from the Validator Node Installation Guide

During betanet the community can operate Validator nodes. After mainnet, community can also operate Archiver nodes.

Requirements for running an Archiver will be determined during betanet, but approximately, it would be: 32 core, 256GB RAM, 4TB SSD

Please report bugs on betanet here. Details of the bounties will be announced after the release of Betanet.

Whitepaper will be released during betanet phase of the project.

Shardeum has begun open-sourcing its codebase on 09th March 2023. Public can now access and contribute to these validator source codes considering validator nodes are now run by community since the launch of Betanet. The project intends to open source all the repositories by the time it reaches mainnet in 2023.

Dynamic State Sharding
Consensus and processing are done at transaction level on Shardeum instead of the block level which you find with existing blockchain networks. Validators on the network will be assigned dynamic address spaces across multiple shards with significant overlap. Through dynamic state sharding, the network will shard its state by evenly and dynamically distributing compute workload, storage, and bandwidth among all the nodes. This not only allows for parallel processing of transactions but also very low overhead for validator nodes as they will store only the state data of transactions they are involved in. Shardeum will be the first Web3 network to scale linearly . Dynamic state sharding is the most advanced version of state, transaction/network and static state sharding employed by more recent sharded chains which runs into both inter-related and standalone problems such as high latency, vertical scaling (as opposed to linear scaling), sybil attack, weak finality and lack of cross shard composability. Shardeum will retain atomic and cross-shard composability.

Linear Scalability
With the help of dynamic state sharding, every node added to the network will increase the transaction throughput instantly. So basically, by simply adding more nodes from the network’s ‘standby’ validator pool during peak demand, the TPS will increase proportionally making Shardeum the first Web3 network to scale linearly. And this is the main X factor that impacts every other outcome on a blockchain network favorably including throughput, decentralization, security and constant transaction fees irrespective of the demand in the network.

Low & Constant Gas Fees
As noted previously, linear scaling on Shardeum allows the validator nodes on the network to download only the latest state of the transactions they are handling while historical transactions are handled by archiver nodes on the network. Combined with autoscaling where the network independently increases and decrease its capacity during peaks and troughs, cost of running the operations on Shardeum will be low which directly ensures low and constant transaction fees for users and developers.

EVM-based Smart Contract Platform
There is a popular saying among the Shardeum community members aka Shardians, that “If you have built for Ethereum, you have built for Shardeum”. What it means is that, any dapp/product/service built atop Ethereum can be migrated to Shardeum seamlessly in a matter of few minutes. Since you just need to deploy a smart contract written in Solidity or Vyper on Shardeum (with a bonus that you will never have to worry about rising gas fees again), the environment is tailor-made for both new and experienced developers.

Anyone can operate a node on Shardeum and earn rewards
As of a result of linear scaling and low hardware requirements to run a node, average users can run a validator node and keep the network safe in return for networks tokens. By scaling horizontally, network will be decentralized. No blockchain network has demonstrated its ability to scale linearly and instead were mostly able to scale vertically making it expensive for average users to run a node on such networks. As a result, large institutions and node providers fill the vacuum created and operate nodes on them leading to centralization and increased chances for sybil attacks.

Solid Security with Unique Consensus Mechanism
Shardeum will use a combination of two consensus algorithms namely proof of stake (PoS) and proof of quorum (PoQ). Staking native coins will be mandatory for validators to participate in the transaction validation process in return for rewards. Nodes that act maliciously will be penalized. Proof of Quorum, in a nutshell, allows the network validators of a transaction to approve it only if it receives 51% of votes which is then followed by batching such transactions together and passing it onto archive nodes. Moreover, consensus algorithm on Shardeum will randomly rotate validator and standby nodes in and out of the system which will make it extremely difficult for bad actors to attack the network.

The Shardeum Foundation plans to launch a grants program in 2023. Early adopters that have demonstrated measurable progress in development and community growth on Shardeum’s testnets will be prioritized.

Please submit this form.

Shardeum’s Leadership Advisory Group is available to brainstorm and discuss the potential of projects and its GTM strategy. These leaders have led and helped world-class projects launch and succeed, and they are available to help and advise.

You can find and interact with the active projects building on Shardeum here

Please list your dapps that you are building on Shardeum here