It’s official! KYVE’s mainnet genesis file has been finalized, locking in the current code, official genesis validators, and other details such as the mainnet launch date and time ofMarch 14th, 14:03:14 UTC.
To provide further transparency on the process and preparation leading up to mainnet launch and afterward, this article will unveil more of the behind-the-scenes and what to expect on Day 0 of KYVE’s mainnet launch.
Genesis Validator Program
For those not already aware, genesis validators play a critical role in the creation of the initial state of a blockchain, seeing that they are responsible for creating the genesis state — defining the initial state of the blockchain.
Our team specially selected 14 experienced validators from all over the globe to take on this role and partake in KYVE’s genesis validator program. Most already familiar and experienced within the Cosmos ecosystem.
In order to best prepare our genesis validators and finetune the launch process, we completed a successful dress rehearsal whenlaunching Kaon, KYVE’s official testnet and mainnet replica.
However, one thing will be different between the Kaon and mainnet launch, that being the fact that the KYVE Foundation*, due to security standards, wasn’t able to perform the necessary delegations within the genesis block, posing a security risk. Therefore, mainnet launch will require a few starting phases to solve this.
Mainnet Day 0 Roadmap
When launching Kaon, our team was able to delegate to the genesis validators before the launch, enabling them to spin up their validators and hold a strong position to create the initial blocks before the other validators joined the network.
Seeing that the KYVE Foundation must wait until TGE to be able to delegate to genesis validators, all who have claim in $KYVE could have a higher stake than the genesis validators. This would pose a security risk seeing that anyone (with $KYVE) would be able to spin up a node and hold a stronger position than the trusted genesis validators.
To solve this timing dilemma, we decided to take a more phased rollout approach for the launch, unlocking certain abilities throughout the first few hours of TGE in order to make sure the genesis validators have the time they need in order to start running, as well as enabling a smooth onboarding experience for those who have claim to $KYVE and want to run their own validator.
Let’s break down the timeline:
Disclaimer:In case of unexpected behavior, this timeline may be subject to change.
TGEOnce mainnet launches, our team will focus on two things: monitoring network stability and the Foundation Delegation Program (FDP).
In order to go through the different phases in a timely manner, mainnet will start with a temporary governance voting period of 1 hour. The first phase will focus on the stability of the chain. Our team will monitor it closely in order to ensure that everything has launched smoothly.
With the launch, there will be a fixed number of genesis validators, being the 14 chosen by the KYVE Foundation for the Genesis Validator Program (GVP). It’s important that we have a restriction to just these validators at the start in order to focus on getting them their delegation before introducing other validators onto the chain. In order to maintain a neutral chain state, inflation and staking (but not delegation) will be disabled during this time.
Then onto the FDP, our team will start delegating to the 14 genesis validators. If you’d like to know more about the delegation, see our tokenomicshere.
TGE + 1 HourThen, the KYVE team will introduce a governance proposal to remove the custom gas restriction. The governance proposal will also propose an increase in the voting period to 1 week (1 week will be the initial voting time for KYVE mainnet). No changes to inflation will be made yet.
TGE + 2 HoursTwo hours post-TGE, the previous governance proposal should pass, updating the voting period to 1 week. Staking will be enabled at this time, allowing anyone with $KYVE to create their own chain node.
Once all is in order, the KYVE team will create a second governance proposal to enable inflation. Given that the voting period is one week, this means that this proposal will take one week to pass — allowing anyone wanting to spin up a chain node one full week to do so before inflation is introduced.
Following the Launch Day
One week after TGE (March 21st), the governance proposal for enabling inflation will have passed, providing a fully functional and secure KYVE mainnet chain. The next step will be $KYVE’s listing, enabling all to join in and participate in KYVE’s network!
The Protocol LayerOnce our validator network on the chain layer is flourishing and $KYVE is officially listed, we can focus on the protocol layer. You can expect that after 6–8 weeks from TGE, the first data pool will be launched on mainnet with the following process: The data pool creation will first be proposed to governance a few weeks after mainnet launch; once passed, it will be created on Kaon** for initial testing. After a month running on Kaon, a further proposal will take place on our governance forum to launch the pool on mainnet. Once this is passed, the data pool will be officially live.
Each pool launching on KYVE will go through this process in order to maintain a secure and stable mainnet environment, as well as a decentralized manner to bring on new data pools. You can expect partnered integrations, as well as proposed data pools proposed by the community.
By introducing data pools on KYVE’s protocol layer, users will be able to operate protocol nodes or delegate to earn rewards, just like on Korellia and Kaon. However, seeing that this will be on mainnet with official $KYVE at risk, we highly recommend only experienced node runners participate in the mainnet network.
Final MentionsWe’d like to thank our genesis validators, partners, investors, community, and more for your support throughout KYVE’s development. We wouldn’t be here without you! And we definitely look forward to going through this launch with you all.
As always, we will continue to stay transparent during this process and keep you all up to date! Be sure to follow KYVE onsocial mediaand orsubscribe to our newsletterto get KYVE’s official and most recent news.
More About KYVE
KYVE Networkis revolutionizing customized access to on- and off-chain data by providing fast and easy tooling for decentralized data validation, immutability, and retrieval. Its data lake archives and validates data in a decentralized way, making trustless data easily accessible via solutions like KYVE’s Data Pipeline.
The network is powered by decentralized uploaders and validators funded by $KYVE tokens and aims to operate as a DAO following our mainnet launch. This past year KYVE has gained significant support, currently backed by top VCs, including Hypersphere Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Distributed Global, Mechanism Capital, CMS Holdings, IOSG Ventures, and blockchains such as Arweave, Avalanche, Solana, Interchain, and NEAR.
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*The KYVE Foundation is currently in progress of creation and only has limited legal capacity until its officially established.
Written by Margaux Stancil, Head of Marketing at KYVE.