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Beniamin Mincu, chief executive for the Elrond Network, wants to build a better blockchain by paying people to burn it down.
Thatâs why Mincu, who founded the Transylvanian network, is in the midst of a 15-day campaign to do just that. Nearly two years after first revealing his âsecure proof-of-stakeâ sharding protocol in a technical white paper, Elrondâs 24-person developer team will offer up to $60,000 to node-runners who can successfully wreak havoc upon their code.Â
Mincuâs goal with the so-called âBattle of the Nodes: Onchainedâ campaign is, of course, to have white hats expose every bug, attack vector, vulnerability and critical breakpoint on Elrond before unsanctioned hackers do so. This testnet trial by fire will prove if the network is ready for mainnet launch, he said.
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âWhen we have 15 days without interruption of the network despite this kind of attacks and stress testing, at that point we know Elrond is finally prepared and good â robust enough to go live,â Mincu told CoinDesk.
Elrondâs 15-day clock resets when the âinterruptersâ manage to take the network down. Nobody has yet: Elrondâs protocol has foiled three attacks so far. Underminers have nevertheless uncovered plenty of lower-level bugs worth fixing, and thatâs enough to keep nodes in contention for a slice of the $60,000 plunder, paid out in the ERD token.
âWeâre on a daily basis discovering some things that we can improve from the validators,â said Mincu. âWe usually do one or two releases per day,â patching the bugs, clarity issues and other pain points that the battleâs 1,700 node participants dredge up.
But the effort is not just about the money and the bugs, Mincu said â itâs also a competition for mainnet validator slots. Some 34% of Elrondâs initial 1,500 nodes (500 for each execution shard and an additional 500 for the metachain) will go in part to âtrustedâ parties who helped the hunt for flaws.Â
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It also gives Elrond a chance to flex its network specs. By Tuesday, the blockchain â which has a âdivide and conquerâ sharding mechanism with a consensus that randomly assigns validator work to members of the two sharding groups â was posting a peak transactions-per-second (TPS) rate of 712. Mincu claimed Elrond can handle 10,000 TPS at full tilt.Â
The 1,700 nodes far outstrips Mincuâs original projection of 700-800 participants when he announced the bug bounty battle with hardly a weekâs notice. All those eager blockchain breakers are potential developers who can contribute to the project over time, Mincu said.
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