Announcing Phase 3

The third and final phase: “Become a Master Validator” will begin at a new date: Monday, Feb 10th at 16:00 UTC end with the close of The Great Celo Stake Off at a new date, Wednesday Feb 26th 16:00 UTC. We appreciate everyone’s patience with the changing schedule! The extended time will allow finalization of testing on the upcoming release and ensure the transition goes smoothly.

All Master Chefs Follow the Rules!

We are working hard to keep the contest fair. Before the next phase, please read this IMPORTANT UPDATE on Stake Off collusion.

Following a proposal from several active participants, we will now require every team to claim all of their accounts in their metadata in order to make the leaderboard more accurate and transparent. ALL existing accounts must be claimed by Monday, Feb 10th at 16:00 UTC, or for any new accounts, within 24hrs of creation. Please double-check your metadata!

Smooth Like Butter: Transitioning to Phase 3

The transition to Phase 3 will be via a backwards compatible upgrade. The upgrade will be available, but you do not have to upgrade right away. Instructions will be provided on Monday.

The new release will incorporate hundreds of changes from the team building the upstream go-ethereum 1.9.8 client. We remain extremely grateful to the Ethereum community for their continued work which provided such a strong starting point for the Celo Blockchain. The release also includes significant improvements to the ‘announce’ mechanism that validators use to local and establish direct connections with each other. Some changes will further reduce node bandwidth usage plus add support for multiple proxies in a subsequent release.

Throughout Phase 3, Baklava Testnet Units (BTUs) will accrue as usual, and continue to count towards the leaderboard.

Phase 3 is also about testing your operational security through the Master Validator Challenge. There has been a phenomenal response, with more than 75 audits starting Monday. Registration is officially closed and participants who have signed up will receive a separate email on setting up audit times. Whether or not you registered in time, it is encouraged to use the scripts to check that things work and find areas for improvement. Questions or issues are encouraged on #stake-off-phase-3-audit on Discord!

The C Labs team will also be testing Celo’s on-chain governance mechanism, which includes proposing several changes to the platform through the regular governance and hot fix mechanism. Participation and feedback is appreciated! At the team’s discretion, regular participants and those serving up great governance proposals may be rewarded through the Incentivized Community Challenge.

Another Chef in Town

To add a little spice, the Baklava Voting Bot will be introduced to give new validators a chance to replace validators with low scores and votes. Validators will be allowed to compete to stay in the elected validator set by achieving a high validator score and voting with their rewards. Things will ramp up slowly! Follow details and updates on this post.

Keep Serving!

The Attestations Challenge wraps up at the start of Phase 3. Shortly after, the boosts will be added to successful teams on the leaderboard.

A Potentially Larger Kitchen

While the original plan was to downsize to 80 validators in Phase 3, the engagement in the Stake Off has convinced the team to stay at 100 slots. The scale testing this week will hopefully allow TGCSO to expand the number of validators to 120 and widen participation. Stay tuned!

Pass the Sugar!

Last but not least, the team will be hosting a community feedback call on Thursday, Feb 13th at 16:00 UTC (Calendar Invite) to discuss the dynamics of the competition thus far and understand any further suggestions or concerns that you have. There will be another chance for feedback at the end of Phase 3 Retrospective.

Looking forward to the next phase!

The Great Celo Stake Off team