In brief
- Coda is launching a testnet of its lightweight blockchain, designed to be decentralized across millions of devices.
- Coda is rewarding testnet participants with 1% of the total supply of Coda tokens and Genesis Grants.
- Coda’s blockchain uses zero-knowledge proofs to create a blockchain just a few dozen kilobytes in size.
Coda, a crypto project building a blockchain light enough for anyone to operate a node, is launching an adversarial testnet that rewards users for trying to break the network.
Coda, developed by O(1) Labs, announced today a limited-capacity signup for its “Testworld” testnet. Testers can receive shares of 1% of the total supply of Coda tokens by uncovering vulnerabilities and attack vectors against nodes on the testnet Coda blockchain.
Participants will also be qualified to receive a Genesis Grant for helping develop the community and learning more about the technical aspects of the protocol. If successful, the Coda blockchain could create one of the most widely distributed networks spanning millions of smartphones and other connected devices.
The Coda protocol uses zero-knowledge (ZK) SNARK proof technology to verify all nodes are connected to the Coda blockchain, while keeping the data storage requirements for the nodes themselves tiny. ZK SNARK proofs use hash signatures generated from previous blocks in the blockchain to verify that everything in the blocks is in order without needing to know the specific contents of the previous blocks themselves.
Using this system, a Coda node requires just a few dozen kilobytes of data storage, about the amount of data in a few tweets, while still maintaining transaction speeds of up to 100 transactions per second. Other blockchains, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, are several hundred gigabytes in size, and still growing.
Given its minimal size requirements, Coda is clearly focused on maximizing the number of nodes on (and, therefore, decentralization of) the network by being welcoming to newcomers. Moreover, through the Mentor Nodes and the Technical Ambassadors programs, Coda plans to onboard additional users to earn testnet rewards.
“Users can accumulate testnet points for producing blocks and SNARKs during the adversarial phase, and novice users can get help with block production and SNARKs in our dedicated mentor-nodes Discord channel,” O(1) Labs CEO and co-founder Evan Shapiro told Decrypt.
“We’ve also onboarded more than 20 Technical Community Ambassadors to help new users get started with running a node. Alongside our technical adversarial challenges, we will also offer community challenges for users who have valuable skills in other areas, such as content creation and community outreach.”
O(1) Labs, the developer group behind Coda, was founded in 2017 and has raised $18 million from investors like Coinbase Ventures and Polychain Capital. The Coda protocol mainnet should eventually allow developers to build decentralized games and applications that use the Coda blockchain to deliver decentralized and secure data.
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that O(1) Labs had raised more than $33 million from investors. According to O(1) Labs, the actual figure is $18 million.