Playing with TomoChain testnet 2.0
There was a time when we went into the wild, to the adventure, and we hunted, and at the end of the day we used to gather in front of the fire and tell stories
I tested TomoChain testnet 2.0 playing the Tomo Hunt game and here is my story. In fact, I come with two stories: testing the testnet by running a Masternode; and testing TomoChain being a voter or staking coins. Finally, I will give you a special gift I have created for TomoChain fans.
Running a Masternode
TomoChain’s architecture is composed by a network of max 150 Masternodes with POSV consensus. Masternodes confirm transactions and sign blocks. For this service to the network, masternodes participants are rewarded.
“Blockchains are a new invention that allows meritorious participants in an open network to govern without a ruler and without money. They are merit-based, tamper-proof, open, voting systems. The meritorious are those who work to advance the network. As society gives you money for giving society what it wants, blockchains give you coins for giving the network what it wants.” — Naval Ravikant, AngelList CEO. June 21, 2017
I set up a Masternode from the beginning. You can follow this How to Run a TomoChain Masternode from A to Z tutorial written by me ;) It took a few hours to figure it out, join all the pieces, and prepare the step by step guide; now you can easily set your Masternode in about 10 minutes, without technical knowledge.
What did I learn?
- The process of setting up a Masternode is quite easy and straightforward
- Security is important! Don’t use root user: create a new user; use strong passwords; activate 2FA, etc…
- 2 Wallets Better than 1! For security reasons, it is better to have 2 wallets for your Masternode: one is the public wallet aka ‘coinbase address’; and then the private wallet to make the 50K deposit and where you will receive the rewards.
- Synchronizing the node is toooo slow. When you first run your node, it starts to sync and it can take “one hour or more”. My node Atlantis spent over 24h syncing on TomoStats— apparently this was due to overload caused by intense TE-FOOD testing and having 1–2 underperforming nodes, without the Slashing mechanism active, dragging down the testnet performance
- If you have any questions, you can find the “A-Team” on Gitter and they will help you!
- When my node showed up on TomoMaster it displayed name: Anonymous; hardware: (nothing). I chatted with the team using Gitter and they renamed my node to Duque Karl. I wanted ‘Atlantis’ but didn’t want to insist too much and distract the team more
- I miss a button to edit myself the Masternode name, hardware, etc in TomoMaster
- Every epoch (~30 minutes) I received a nice amount of TOMO in my TomoWallet!
TOMO Hunt game
Every hunter was given 1'000 TOMO to vote (stake) on Masternodes. Your goal was to use them wisely and get the highest rewards as possible in one week. Belong in the top 10 voters (stakers) with the most staking rewards and you will win REAL TOMO.
When I received my free 1'000 testnet TOMO I went to TomoMaster to watch the list of available masternodes. There were 12–13 of them. The first masternodes on the list were the most voted. The bottom masternodes were the less voted.
Where to stake your coins?
My initial strategy was to vote on Moon and Sun masternodes with half of my TOMO. Why? People will probably choose either top nodes (many votes) or bottom nodes (few votes) in TomoMaster. Then masternodes in the middle will go under the radar. The rewards will be normal, but probably will stay constant. This is what happened. These two masternodes stayed the whole week in the middle and at the end of the game, they had even lost some positions on the list and were closer to the bottom.
Few people sharing: they get a big piece of cake. Many people sharing: they get a small piece of the cake
With the other half of my TOMO I chose to stake on the bottom Masternodes. Having less votes means you share with less people and the piece of the cake is bigger for you. However, it is not that easy: many people will think the same and vote for the “profitable” masternodes, so they will become crowded and the rewards will decrease. Also, the last masternode on the list was underperforming, it was generating like 5 TOMO ‘masternode rewards per epoch’ when other nodes were getting 8–9 TOMO, so it was a poor choice. I finally staked on my own masternode — Duque Karl.
The first list of Top 20 voters
After a few days we got the first list of temporary winners. I was #18, so I needed to improve if I wanted to win the game. I did some research and many of the Top 10 wallets were staking on a new masternode called Anonymous — later Tomocalc — and other masternode.
Unfortunately, Duque Karl got some heat, it was performing very well and people noticed — so, very soon a lot of votes moved into my masternode and the rewards decreased. The difference in rewards was not too big — but now other nodes with less votes were winning. I was getting left behind. Or maybe, it was my fault for voting Sun and Moon.
I needed to get out of my overcrowded masternode, but the unvoting lockup time was 5–9 hours and I considered that losing all that precious time was not worth it. It was too much rewards lost when the game only had a few days left. Unvoting would be a very bad decission. The small extra rewards would not compensate for the lost time without earning rewards.
Wildfires
A lot of people started voting on Anonymous (Tomocalc) too. So their rewards were also slowing down and I could keep on the race. Then something happened. TomoChain added some fun spice to the game: wildfires. Suddenly, some “whales” entered the game and staked a very big amount of TOMO on Tomocalc and Duque Karl, so two of the most famous masternodes (at the bottom of the list, with few votes) became super crowded and in the top 3 most voted, raising from 60K total staked up to 95K votes.
The rewards on my Masternode decreased a lot, from 9 TOMO to about 6 per epoch. At least my "diversification" voting Sun and Moon was saving me of a worse catastrophe. However, now I felt the urge. It was obvious I had to unvote — so I unvoted my 500 TOMO I had staked on my masternode. Once I could withdraw my coins, I splitted them on three masternodes. I was expecting many more new wildfires, so putting my eggs on different baskets made sense. It would protect me better in case one of my new voted masternodes was affected by a whale staking or a switched off node.
The Hunt is Over
Finally, the game ended. When the Top 10 winners list was published, I found on my TomoWallet aprox 31.1 TOMO, while winners had 31.55–33.48 TOMO. Game Over! Close, but Not Enough.
What did I learn?
- Voting (Staking) on TomoChain is fun and easy!
- Your voting strategy is really important and makes a big difference
- My criteria for voting masternodes is: a) high rewards per epoch/block (check TomoMaster) and b) has few votes; to optimize my rewards
- The masternode system will self-regulate itself. People will unvote weaker masternodes to chase strong masternodes with better rewards. High-ROI masternodes will not last forever and I think that in the end, everything will be very similar and stable
- You can find more info in TomoScan — Masternodes
- The lock-up period for unvoting is a good idea. It makes people think better their choices
Staking in TomoChain is very different to other projects like NEO/GAS were you just hold coins. Voters have a key role in TomoChain: you must check masternodes performance; select the best performing candidates; unvote weak masternodes, removing the weakest nodes; and also balance votes from top voted masternodes to less voted candidates; and repeat. For this meritorious contribution, Voters will receive rewards; the more optimus the choices, the higher the treasures. Thanks to this PoSV (Proof of Stake Voting) consensus, the system will be continuously renewed, fresh and healthy.
A Masternode Calculator
In TomoChain’s Economic Paper you can find 3 different scenarios and the expected rewards for Masternodes and Stakers. I have developed a Masternode Calculator, so you can quickly play around with dozens and dozens of scenarios. Enjoy this little gift!
Scenario ‘Tomo Hunt’: inspired by the Tomo Hunt game conditions. We calculate what happens with 14 Masternodes and 350'000 votes. This makes an average of 75'000 TOMO per masternode (similar to current Testnet).
The reward per epoch for a voter with 1K TOMO is: 0.11905 TOMO. And the reward per week for a voter with 1K TOMO staked is: 40 TOMO (4% ROI in just a week!)
Notice how the top 10 winners had earnt 32–34 TOMO in a week using 1'000 TOMO to stake. The real life winners received less TOMO than the theoretical scenario with 40 TOMO, because they had to face network saturation, wildfires, overcrowded masternodes, unvoting, etc.
On the other hand, a testnet Masternode is receiving 4'400 TOMO (8.8% ROI) in a week (This is testnet TOMO with no trading value).
It is worth mentioning that on testnet the ROI is huge, because the number of both Masternodes and Voters is very low. Few people sharing: they get a big piece of cake. Many people sharing: they get a small piece of the cake.
Conclusion
Tomo Hunt was a great idea to make people learn by playing. This game has encouraged people to test and learn about TomoChain products like TomoMaster, TomoWallet, TomoScan, TomoStats. This has been a great oppotunity to get trained for Mainnet launch, whether you want to set up a masternode or just staking or both options! For the team it has also been very positive because they gather feedback and improve their products before mainnet launch. A really great experience for everybody. We have saved the date: December 14th, and we are all looking forward to TomoChain’s mainnet release!
