Restarting Game of Zones: New Competition Schedule, Phase 1b Updates, and Hub Software for Launch

Posted on by Zaki Manian

Recently, the Game of Zones Team shared that we would be pausing the competition to achieve code and network stability for teams to reach their full potential while stress-testing IBC. Today, we would like to share several updates about the competition, including a revised timeline, revised challenge objectives, and the scoring for Phase 1b.

Competition Timeline

  • Phase 1b will begin Monday, May 18th at 7:00am UTC, and will end on Thursday, May 21st at 6:59am UTC.
  • Phase 2 will begin Monday, May 25th at 7:00am UTC, and will end on Friday, May 29th at 6:59am UTC. 
  • Phase 3 will begin on Monday, June 1st at 7:00am UTC, and will end on Friday, June 5th at 6:59am UTC. 

On Wednesday, June 10th at 7:00pm UTC, the GoZ Team will host Closing Ceremonies where we will recognize each phase challenge winner, and all of the outstanding contest challenge winners who have won prizes for their overall performance. 

New Challenge Objectives for Phase 1b

To recapture the original spirit of Phase 1a, the objectives for Phase 1b will be different than the initial challenge.  During Phase 1b, we will be limiting the number of tokens given to each team to improve the stability of the hub, removing restrictions on trust periods in the software, and disqualifying any team that pools their genesis allocated doubloons for additional gas.

For the all-new Phase 1b: 

  • Every team should append -1b to their chain ID. An official Team Roster that maps chain IDs and Relayer addresses to team names will be published on the GoZ Github repository on May 14th at 7pm UTC. 
  • Trust periods will be unrestricted on the software. 
  • Players will be restricted to 1.25 million doubloons.  
    • This amount should provide enough tokens for a minimum trust period of 10 minutes.  
  • Gas prices will be fixed at 0.0025doubloons/gas.
    • A client update should cost approximately 2500 doubloons.

Before the phase begins, the GoZ Team will provide detailed documentation that shows participants how to adjust the trust period in the Relayer, how to optimize gas, how to deal with errors and recovery, and how to ensure that a client is kept alive. 

The winning team for Phase 1b will have the smallest trust period on their client while maintaining the longest period of liveness. If Team A were to achieve a client trust period of 11 minutes, and Team B were to achieve a trust period of 15 minutes and both teams keep their clients alive for 72 hours, Team A would score higher. If no team is able to maintain a connection for the full 4320 minutes of Phase 1b, the winner will be decided by scoring the length of the longest lived connection over the trust period. 

In terms of judging, we will combine the data from Phase 1a and Phase 1b to declare a challenge winner. During this phase of the competition, we expect to provide an overview of the active clients published to the Game of Zones GitHub repo multiple times a day.

Software to Launch the Game of Zones Hub

The Game of Zones Team will begin the launch process for the hub on Thursday, May 14th at 6pm PST. In order to connect to the hub, you will need to be using the following versions of software: 

And for custom zone operators, please be sure to update to the following Cosmos SDK version:

The Chain ID for the hub will be gameofzoneshub-1b. For each phase of the competition, teams should be prepared to append the phase number to their chain ID before phase launch.

While the GoZ Team is taking several actions to improve stability for the competition, there continues to be a risk that the battle testing of the IBC implementation will uncover new bugs in the software. Any new bugs that surface may result in a hub chain halt or other breakdowns in the use of the IBC protocol. If new software issues impact the competition, we will wait on a new release from the Interchain Berlin team and then announce a restart of the phase. Additionally, there is a possibility that the outcomes of Phase 2 might influence how Phase 3 is structured. If adjustments to Phase 3 are required, teams can expect ongoing communication from us on the objectives and protocol interactions that would be exciting to see.

We can’t thank the Cosmos community enough for the patience and understanding that we have received since our initial announcement about changing up Game of Zones to improve stability and the overall participant experience in the competition. To ensure that you’re getting the most up-to-date information about the competition, follow us on Twitter and keep an eye on the official GoZ repo. 

Published by Zaki Manian