Celer Network team is proud to announce the Testnet launch and open source code release of Celer State Guardian Network (SGN), a major part of our cEconomy constructs.
State guardian network (SGN) is an efficient, general-purpose and scalable decentralized “watchtower” that ensures the state channel state security and smooth usability. It provides highly reliable and decentralized services including client channel state protection, delegated payment receiver, and app connectivity oracle through CELR staking in a decentralized sidechain construct. State Guardian Network is built as a general-purpose layer-2 state watch tower service and can be used in many other settings. For a more detailed description of the motivation and design of SGN, please refer to our Celer core architecture document at www.celer.network/docs/celercore. You can sign up here for upcoming early-bird testing programs for validators and delegators.
What is State Guardian Network?
The figure above shows the high-level SGN architecture. This decentralized watch tower mainly consists of four components: smart contracts, CELR token delegators, sidechain validators, and sidechain users. Below we briefly describe each component:
- Main chain smart contracts specify and enforce the fundamental rules and configuration of the watchtower services including roles, stakes, delegation, rewards, punishments, and fees for all SGN roles.
- Delegators stake their CELR tokens on the main chain contracts to vote on validators and governance proposals. Delegators receive rewards proportional to their stakes in two forms: state guarding fee payments and also block rewards on the sidechain.
- Validators are elected by the delegators as service nodes to provide services including watchtowers, connectivity oracles, and payment delegation. While offering services, these validator nodes also connect to the main chain for reward distribution and penalty execution. In addition, they bear higher responsibilities in SGN governance. With a minimal CELR token requirement to be elected, validators also receive commission rewards from their delegators.
- Users are State Channel clients who pay subscription fees and submit service requests to the SGN.
State Channel state proof guarding is the most important service of SGN, as it ensures the security of using state channel. A subscribed state channel client can sync its latest off-chain state to the SGN sidechain and then safely go offline without worrying about losing its local data or channel being maliciously closed by its peer.
The figure above illustrates the basic channel guardian service flow. Numbers in brackets show the order of the events. A subscribed user can keep sending guard requests to the sidechain. The request is stored by all sidechain validators who also serve as channel guardians. Each guardian keeps monitoring the main chain state channels’ state settlement events. Once an event on a guarded channel is caught, the guardians will compare the attempt sequence number and the guarded sequence number, and respond to the settle event at its assigned time slot if the guarded number is larger.
What is in the open-source code release?
We have released our open source code, including solidity main chain smart contracts, Tendermint-based SGN sidechain implementation, and delegator and validator operation dApp. We are conducting two independent external security audits for all the open-source code and implementation and will launch bug bounty soon to incentivize public feedback and auditing.
As the first release of the Testnet, there are additional features still under development or being planned including CELR-based SGN governance, scaling and robustness enhancement, and various production-readiness improvements.
How can I participate in the SGN Testnet?
We have deployed the main chain contracts on Ethereum Rinkeby Testnet, four initial validator nodes, and a web gateway for users to connect. Here is the deployment information.
📖📝 Docs and instructions
To get familiar with each of the roles in SGN, please refer to the following operation manuals:
- Operation manual for delegators
- Operation manual for validators
- Operation manual for state channel users
We highlight some main operations and things each role can do with by following the testing manual:
Delegator
Interact with a web portal to perform the following operations:
- Query current list of validators and candidates, staking pool sizes and other status.
- Delegate stakes to a validator or candidate pool
- Withdraw states from a validator or candidate pool
- Query and claim rewards
Validator / Candidate
Interact with the web portal to perform the following operations:
- Initialize candidate
- All functions as a delegator
State Channel User
Interact with the web portal to perform the following operations:
- Pay subscription fee on the main chain
- Query remaining balance on the sidechain
- Query request price
Use client test program to test channel state guardian functionalities
🙋🙋🏻♂️Sign up for the early-bird CELR staking test!
In the next few weeks, we will roll out CELR staking community programs on Testnet for both SGN validators who are interested in running the full node and also delegators who are users delegating their CELR stakes. These community programs will involve testing out the operation process through a Web interface and, for validators, the process to set up a node and connect to the SGN network and perform state proof protection duties.
For validators partners, we are looking for experienced validators from the global community with a track record of running full nodes and validating nodes for existing infrastructures and blockchains and with a deep reach in the community.
For delegators, we are open to our large community to get a “rehearsal” before the real delegation starts!
Sign up here for validators and delegators.
We will also have cryptoeconomics and state guarding reward schedule releases in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
Have questions about the doc? Find us here:
- Github: https://github.com/celer-network
- Discord: https://discord.gg/Trhab5w
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CelerNetwork
- Medium: https://medium.com/celer-network
- Telegram: https://t.me/celernetwork
Celer Team
