Nowadays, consensus nodes have become a popular part of the crypto thematic. Today, we would like to introduce on your attention the NEO blockchain and its two tokens. My aim will be to present you how to become a consensus node and everything you need to know to do so.
NEO tokens – NEO & GAS
The fifteenth largest crypto project worldwide offers two different tokens. The first one NEO possess around 100 million tokens and half of them are distinguished between the users. The other half part is handled by the NEO Council for long-term supporting of the ecosystem. This second half of 59 million token won’t enter the exchanges. 10 million will motivate developers and go to the NEO Foundation and another 10 will be delegated to developers in the NEO ecosystem. 15 million will get used for the purpose of investing in other blockchain project and the last 15 will be saved for contingencies and commitments.
GAS is the token, which realize the network control and has a total supply of 100 million. It’s used to charge users with it and the min GAS unit is 0.00000001. What do you get charged for? Well, performing operations, even storing tokens, signing smart contracts, creating incentives or prevent resources abuse.
NEO consensus nodes
The Foundation will vote for choosing partners to run consensus nodes on their network. Applicants can submit a candidature to both on and off chain governances and the NEO community will take the final decision. All the candidates should possess a website, social channels, organization name, location and team information (contacts and photos). The motivating reason to choose one will be their proposals on stability in long-term, how to maintain the network, node’s security and failure comprehension (tolerance and ability to recover backups). Crucial factors for the final decision stay the budget and also plans for scaling. Check on the minimum requirements as well:
- 4 Core GPU
- 8 GB RAM
- 100GB HDD
- 10M bandwidth
How to become a NEO consensus node?
The main-net of NEO has 7 consensus nodes at the moment – 5 owned by the Foundation, one of KPN and one of CoZ (CityOfZion). The test-net also has 7 of it – 2, property of the Foundation, 1 of the global development, 2 ot CoZ, 1 of KPN and 1 of Swisscom. To apply for a consensus node, you should send all the required documents to consensus@neo.org (only for off-chain proposals). If your application is successful, you’ll be first invited to join the test-net for 6 months. If you’re aiming for an on-chain candidature, they go to your NEO-GUI and open your wallet. When you choose the Advanced option, you’ll see the field Election. When you select your public key, you’ll get charged with 1000 GAS. And same story here – 6 months of trial on the test-net.
Bottom line
Every NEO node will be able to vote for its favorite. After the process of voting is done, the network will calculate the results in real time and sort it by number or candidates. Then if will remove the first and the last 25% of the data and redo the calculation regarding the average weight of the remaining information. The top candidates are going to perform the highest number of votes, respectively they will become consensus nodes.