Come and Stake It (CASI) Incentivized Testnet

In 480 BC, at the Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas of Sparta rejected the Persian army's demand of surrender, instead challenging Xerxes and his mighty force to "Molon labe," or in English, "Come and take it." This would become a classic assertion of defiance against overwhelming odds.

In 1778 during the American Revolutionary War, Colonel John McIntosh and just 127 of his men repudiated the British's demand of surrender in similar fashion: "As to surrendering the fort, receive this laconic reply: COME AND TAKE IT!"

The struggle of our moment, here in the early morning hours of the information age, isn't against a festering imperial army set to attack at dawn, but against against centralization, corporate surveillance, and the hegemony of the data hoarding class. We challenge you to join this struggle; to throw off the shackles of Silicon Valley's merchants of infrastructure and Come and Stake It. We are delighted to invite you to participate in NuCypher's incentivized testnet and, for your efforts, earn a mainnet allocation of NU tokens.

Registration

First things first - head over to Coinlist to register: https://tsm.coinlist.co/nucypher-incentivized-testnet-terms-and-conditions/.

First, you'll need to agree to our Terms & Conditions via Coinlist. Then you'll fill out a supplemental form (linked from Coinlist) with your contact information and the ETH address you'll use to participate as a Staker (e.g. one that can interface with geth or another Ethereum client) in Come and Stake It.

Phases and Timeline

Come and Stake It will happen across multiple phases, each of which are designed to test various parts of the network and prepare you and your fellow Stakers/Node Operators for a seamless transition to mainnet. There will be at least three distinct task-based phases. Phase 1 will start on January 20th when the tasks are released. There will also be one ongoing Contributor Phase that will run the full duration of Come and Stake It.

We currently expect Come and Stake It to last for approximately 1 to 1.5 months, although we may add or remove phases as we progress. We've included provisional timelines and start dates for each phase below, but we may extend or delay phases as needed.

The tasks for each phase will be released on the phase's respective start date.

Phase 1 (Core Staking and Node Operations)

Estimated Timeline: January 20 - February 7

Because the start of this phase coincides with Chinese New Year, we will keep it open until at least February 7 to ensure everyone celebrating CNY has a fair chance to participate when they're back.

Phase 1 is the foundation for future phases and will require you to complete a variety of tasks like staking, launching a node, accepting policies, and performing re-encryptions.

Phase 2 (Advanced Staking and Node Operations)

Estimated Timeline: February 3 - February 17

This phase will focus on more advanced staking commands like dividing your stake, initiating a stake wind-down, toggling re-staking of rewards, and more.

This phase will help you fully understand all the various staking configurations and how they interact with each other.

Phase 3 (WorkLock)

Estimated Timeline: February 17 - February 20

This phase will test our WorkLock network node setup mechanism.

Phase 4+

As we progress through Come and Stake It, we may introduce additional phases.

Contributor Phase (Technical Contributions)

This phase will last for the entirety of Come and Stake It and is unique in that it doesn't have narrowly-scoped tasks. Instead, it is more open-ended and designed to reward high-impact contributions to the NuCypher Network.

The highest priority contributions include:‌

• Building ecosystem tooling (e.g. network/event monitoring, staking UIs, etc.)
• Report unique bugs
• Identify novel attacks
• Contribute to the codebase
• Contribute to documentation
• Advance our open research questions

To submit a contribution for consideration, email us with a description and any relevant links to submissions@nucypher.com. Include the email, name, and ETH staking address you used to register for Come and Stake It.

Focus on quality over quantity: we reserve the sole right to determine how valuable a specific contribution is and rewards will not be based on sheer volume.

Secondary priority will be given to notable community contributions - participants who go above and beyond in assisting other stakers, node operators, or application developers in our chat.

Things we're not interested in are Proof of Care type of contributions (promotional tweets, shilling, etc.). We're also not interested in translations for the time being.

If you aren't sure if something qualifies - ask us!

Historical contributions to the project may also be considered.

Prizes

We'll be distributing 1% of initial NU tokens under a six month "stake-lock" (you can stake the tokens and run a node but not otherwise transfer them until you've run a node for six months) via Come and Stake It.

To qualify for a prize, you must complete at least 90% of the tasks across all phases. The Prize recipients are limited to 333 (in the event of ties, task completion rate and Contributor Phase contributions will serve as a tie breaker).

The Contributor Phase will account for up to 50% of the tokens distributed in Come and Stake It, with the remaining 50% distributed pro rata across participants who successfully complete Phases 1 through 4+. To qualify for Contributor Phase rewards, you still must complete at least 90% of the tasks across all phases.

Remember, this is a sporting trial run of the network with a focus on preparation and building out ecosystem tooling. Purposefully sabotaging other participants via social engineering, attempting to unfairly game the prizes, or disrupting Come and Stake It is grounds for disqualification and forfeiture of any prizes.

All prize recipients will be required to complete KYC/AML checks as well as sign relevant tax forms, depending on their jurisdiction.

Next Steps

First, make sure you've completed all the registration requirements on Coinlist. Then join our Discord server: we'll make all Come and Stake It announcements in the #announcements channel and you can engage with us and fellow participants in the #staking channel.

We have secondary technical support channels in Russian (Telegram) and Chinese (WeChat QR code below).

The tasks for Phase 1 (Core Staking and Node Operations) will be released on January 20th. Get ready to Come and Stake It!