One of the most important aspects of running Game of Zones is ensuring that the participating teams have the opportunity to learn everything about the competition, the Relayer software, and what to expect from IBC. Throughout the registration period, the Game of Zones team has helped participants get ready for the challenge by holding several live-stream sessions to answer questions from the community and discuss every aspect of the competition.
Competition Scoring
To ensure that all Cosmos validators and developers are ready for the internet of blockchains, we’ve designed the challenges in Game of Zones to build on one another as the competition progresses. Each week, we will be looking for something different from competitors, with Week 1 focusing on uptime, Week 2 focusing on throughput, and Week 3 being all about deception, confusion attacks, and stress testing the security model of IBC. While incurring downtime during the competition may impact your final reward distribution, if there are uptime issues that come from significant flaws in the code, we’ll make sure that they do not negatively impact scoring. (We are still working with experimental code that’s not quite production ready, after all!)
Scoreboards + Observability
In order to participate in the competition, teams should be prepared to share some data with us, namely RPC endpoints, in advance of GoZ Launch. The RPC endpoints we collect will be used to power a regularly updated scoreboard that will give participants a way to track their participation in the competition, though this may be a challenge for us during Phase 3. Throughout the challenge, teams will need to set up some automation to support sending a packet at least every 90 minutes, a liveness metric that we will be measuring liveness through the Relayer.
We will begin collecting RPC endpoints and a few other details soon, so keep an eye out for an email from us. And for teams (like this one) who are interested in developing network visualizers or monitoring/detection logic to support the competition, we’re happy to work with you to share some of the information we collect — just reach out to us at gameofzones@cosmosnetwork.dev!
Prize Distribution
From learning the ins and outs of the Relayer software (and IBC!) to building automation that will help teams get ahead of the competition, preparing for Game of Zones requires participants to invest both time and expertise. Similar to how we handled the prize distribution for Game of Stakes, participants who are able to complete the first Game of Zones phase designed around liveness are eligible to receive rewards from the competition’s 100,000 ATOM prize pool. At present, we are currently finalizing the details of how we will manage the participant distribution, especially for cases where people are competing as both an individual and as a team. So far, we are able to share that:
- 50,000 ATOM will be split among the 3 weekly challenge winners and 5 cumulative challenge winners. We will share the more details about this split during opening ceremonies on 5/1.
- 50,000 ATOM will be split among participating teams. We’ll be able to share a projection of what this may look like during opening ceremonies on 5/1.
On your mark, get set…
Anyone who has ever won a Capture the Flag competition or Hackathon knows the biggest secret to success is being prepared. In any challenge, it is important to have your strategy, tooling, and automation ready before you cross the start line. From now through May 1, here are a few things your team can do to build a winning strategy:
- If you’re preparing for the competition, it’s important to spend some time checking out the Relayer software. Getting to know the relayer will help you understand the kinds of automation that are important for succeeding in the competition– especially since you will need to maintain a keep alive connection that sends a packet at least every 90 minutes throughout Game of Zones.
- For those of you wondering what a Chain ID is and how token distribution will work, the best way to learn more about IBC and this competition is to get familiar with the current IBC testnet that was restarted this past Monday.
- If your team is thinking ahead to your Phase 3 strategy, watch our live stream with Agoric from Wednesday to learn more about Dynamic IBC, and a few novel ways you may be able to use virtualization to create a winning strategy.
Registration for Game of Zones closes on 4/25 @ 11:59pm PST. Don’t miss out! If you haven’t signed up yet, build a team now and register before it’s too late. And if you’re having trouble figuring out what a Chain ID is, please note that in your registration and we will follow up with you to ensure you’re ready to go before launch on May 1.
goz.cosmosnetwork.dev 