This FAQ covers questions for participants in The Great Celo Stake Off about participating in the upcoming Celo networks – the Release Candidate 1 network which may graduate to Mainnet, and (in the coming few weeks!) the new Baklava testnet.
How do I claim Mainnet Celo Gold?
To be eligible to receive Mainnet Celo Gold, you must complete an identification process. All leaderboard participants will be emailed directly. If you have not yet received an email, please reach out to hello@celo.org.
All identification processes must be fully completed (including any follow up requests) by March 13 2020 5pm PDT.
Please remember that all awards of Mainnet Celo Gold are subject to The Great Celo Stake Off Terms and Conditions.
I’ve verified my identity. What happens next?
If cLabs is able to establish your identity and eligibility for Mainet Celo Gold, the configuration of the Release Candidate networks will be modified in two ways.
First, if you wish, one of your validator signer keys will be added to the genesis block, so that your validator has the ability to sign the very first block in what might become Mainnet, and can continue to validate until the first validator election is held.
Second, you will receive your Celo Gold through one or more instances of a ReleaseGold contract for which you are the beneficiary. These will be deployed soon after the Celo community begins validating the network. You can use this immediately to stake for a validator or validator group, and to vote with your Celo Gold.
What address(es) will be associated with any award?
We will ask you to provide new account and validator signer addresses for the Release Candidate network. One way to generate these is by using a HSM. If you haven’t already, you may wish to purchase a Ledger Nano S now.
Please note that the addresses for the Release Candidate network must be different from addresses you provide for the new Baklava Testnet: see below for more info about those.
So what HSMs would I be able to use with Mainnet?
For mainnet, ideally you’d have three HSMs:
- One for the account key (usually kept offline) - these can be a Ledger Nano S since they only need to sign regular transactions. Support for the Ledger Nano S “spender app” should be available soon. Work is ongoing to support a “spender app” for Nano X for this purpose too. Since this HSM should be kept offline for most of the time, you might want to consider just the Ledger Nano S.
- Two for separate validators to enable key rotation between the two machines. These must be Ledger Nano X since they need to do BLS signing.
What happens if I am eligible for enough Mainnet Celo Gold to stake a group and a validator, or more than one validator?
Nice work for placing that high on the leaderboard! We will ask you to provide multiple addresses and tell us how to divide up any reward for which you are eligible, in minimum units of 10,000 Celo Gold. For example, if you are eligible for 40,000 cGLD, you might choose supply three addresses: two with 10,000 cGLD to each stake one validator, and the third with 20,000 cGLD, enough for a validator group that can affiliate both of those validators.
What are the restrictions associated with any award?
The ReleaseGold contracts implement a ‘cliff’ of 12 months from deployment of the contract, after which you can withdraw the Celo Gold and transfer it. Until that point, you cannot transfer Celo Gold.
You can specify a validator signer key to use the Celo Gold in the contract to register a validator group or validator. You can also supply a voting key to use the Celo Gold to vote for a validator group.
How will I pay for transaction fees?
Great question! We’ll be topping up any award by setting the initial balance of each account address you provide with 10 Celo Gold. This will be unrestricted and is intended to cover transaction fees. Please don’t lock this amount up!
When will the first validator election happen?
Depending on what genesis settings the community decides to start validating, the first validator election will occur once a minimum threshold of validators are actually electable. That means they have locked a stake, registered, and become affiliated with a validator group that itself has sufficient stake to affiliate that validator. We anticipate this will be a day or two after the first block is produced.
How do I receive epoch rewards?
After the first validator election has been held, we envisage that a governance proposal would be passed to enable epoch rewards for validators and groups. Epoch rewards for voting with Locked Gold may be enabled at a later point.
All epoch rewards for validators, groups or voting with Locked Gold funded through a ReleaseGold contract accrue to the contract account. Rewards for validators and validator groups are made as Celo Dollars, and may be withdrawn in their entirety immediately. Rewards for locking the Celo Gold and using it to vote can only be withdrawn after the 12 month cliff.
What happens if I get slashed?
If you use a Mainnet Celo Gold award as stake for a validator or group, your Celo Gold is at risk of being slashed. If you get slashed, you can make a transfer to these contracts to ‘top up’ above the minimum required stake. This additional Celo Gold will be withdrawable after the 12 month cliff.
What happens if there are several Release Candidate networks?
If the community encounters a showstopper issue and agrees to create a second or subsequent Release Candidate, then the process starts again with the new network. All balances on the earlier Release Candidates will be lost, and the ‘cliff’ for the ReleaseGold contracts reset.
How will a Release Candidate graduate to Mainnet?
Through on-chain governance, the community will decide when the latest Release Candidate network will graduate to Mainnet.
What’s the timeline for the Release Candidate stand up?
Ultimately, the community decides when to start validating any network, but one pre-requisite for the Release Candidate is that the new Baklava Testnet is stood up and running smoothly.
Can I help with the new Baklava Testnet?
Glad you asked! We hope to launch the new Baklava Testnet shortly. Keep an eye out on Discord.
The new Baklava test network will incorporate all the learnings and improvements made over the course of the Stake Off, as well as some additional changes that couldn’t be deployed during the Stake Off. Most importantly, this network will be created without any cLabs validators. This network will be a full reset, with a new genesis block comprising Stake Off leaderboard validators.
How do I get fauceted for the new Baklava Testnet?
If you ranked on the Stake Off leaderboard, you will be fauceted automatically in the Baklava genesis block using the addresses you previously supplied. When you originally registered for The Great Celo Stake Off, you provided a link to a file containing addresses for a validator and group to faucet. If you are happy with those, you need not do anything. If you would like to generate new addresses for the new Baklava testnet, you may do this as well.
Please update that same file before March 15 2020. If for some reason you cannot update that file, please email hello@celo.org. The updated contents of those files will be picked up prior to generating the genesis block for the new Testnet.
How do I get to be a genesis validator for the new Baklava Testnet?
If you ranked on the Stake Off leaderboard, and you’d like for your validator to have the ability to sign the first blocks of the new Baklava Testnet, please add a key CELO_GENESIS_VALIDATOR_SIGNER_ADDRESS to this same file.
I didn’t take part in the Stake Off. How can I try out validating on Celo?
Once the new Baklava testnet is live, cLabs will be operating a faucet process to fun new participants. This post will be updated then. Please check back for more details.
Question not answered?
Please reply here, or hop on over to Discord.