Solana Tour De Sol Testnet Event Update – Stage 6

Solana Tour De Sol Testnet Event Update – Hitting 500+ TPS, 0.38s blocks, 251 Validator Nodes and 156,000+ $SOL Compensation

Solana’s hosts TestNet events with it’s validators in a series of stages. As of July 2020 it is up to Stage 6. Each stage lets testers get some of the 156k+ $SOL for their efforts. Want to become a Solana Tester? Sign up to Tour De Sol here! You can also read more in the forums or have a chat in discord.

Stage 6 – Details

• Start Date/Time: Thursday, 9th of July, ~10:00am PT
• Estimated Duration: 4 weeks
• Malicious behaviour will be incentivised
• The focus of Stage 6 will be Smart Contracts and Optimistic Confirmations

Registration has closed on the 8th of July 8:00am PT

For Stage 6 the focus has been on:

• Cross program invocation – The ability for different smart contracts to interact with each other
• Optimistic confirmation – Read more about this feature here 6
• Cross-program invocation attacks
• Optimistic confirmation attacks

The Tour De Sol is currently chugging away at 500+ TPS, with 25M+ blocks processed, block times of 0.38s and ~251 validator nodes.

Check out the TDS Stats Live!

Future Stages

• Additional details will be announced progressively depending on the progress made on the previous stages
• Within each stage the allowable attack surface will vary depending on engineering goals and any new features enabled with each new release. Similarly, metrics upon which participants will be measured against will vary to suit
• Our intention at this point in time is for each Stage to run for up to approximately 4 weeks.
• Future stages will not start until the previous stage is complete

Note that we reserve the right to change the schedule/duration if required, but we’ll endeavour to provide clear and ample notification if so.

SOL Testers Get Paid Compensation

This will be measured by multiple factors, including but not limited to if you’ve joined the network, are actively staked, are responsive to issues (i.e. don’t become delinquent, or actively work to resolve the issue if you become delinquent), implement patches/upgrades within a reasonable timeframe and remain so until the end of the stage.

Solana Forums

Compensation amounts are available for people who help secure the Solana TDS Testnet:

• Compensation Amount: 2,000 SOL per validator participant
• Security Bug Bounties
  • Critical Bugs
    • Loss of Funds/Safety Violation: 50,000 SOL
    • Loss of of Availability (i.e. halting the network or preventing consensus from moving forward): 25,000 SOL
    • DoS (i.e. flooding the node with messages, but not overwhelming the hardware): 20,000 SOL
    • Any bugs that are ‘Critical’ but do not fall under the above categories will be assessed on the case by case basis and awarded: Up to 50,000 SOL
  • Smart Contracts Bugs
    • Bugs specifically relating to Solana’s smart contract module: 5,000 SOL each
  • Non-Critical Bugs
    • Any other security bugs that are identified but don’t fall within the ‘Critical’ category: 3,000 SOL each
  • Accidental Bug Identification
    • Bugs that are accidentally identified by any participant during Tour de SOL will still be eligible for compensation. Note that individuals are responsible for adding the following comment in the issue “Found in TdS Stage #” and requests the Solana team to add the “tour-de-sol” label to the issue, otherwise it won’t be counted: 3,000 SOL each

How to Get Started for the Next TDS

General Documentation:

1. Our Solana Github
   Solana has been completely open-source from inception. You’ll find all of our code within this repository here
2. Our Web3 SDK
   This is the Solana Javascript API built on the Solana node RPC
3. Solana Technical Documentation
   These explain why Solana is useful, how to use it, how it works, and why it will continue to work long in the decades to come
4. Solana Node RPC

Examples to Dive Right In:

1. Building a Simple ERC20-Like Token on Solana
   This is a quick example demonstrating how you would use the Solana Javascript API to build, deploy, and interact with an ERC20-like Token example program on the Solana blockchain. For convenience the:
2. On-Chain Entry Point is here
3. Client-Side Entry Point is here
4. On-Chain Program Entry Point is here
5. Program Entry Point is Dispatched here

Read the official forum announcement here!