Oasis Cipher ParaTime: Incentivized Testnet

Everything you need to know about the Cipher Incentivized Testnet

3 min readJun 1, 2021

Oasis Network is a layer-one, PoS decentralized network that has a consensus layer and a ParaTime layer. The consensus layer is fully decentralized with 100 validators distributed across the globe. The ParaTime Layer hosts many parallel runtimes (ParaTimes), each representing a replicated compute environment with shared state. Oasis Foundation plans to launch the Cipher ParaTime soon, which will be the second ParaTime on the network, following Oasis-Eth ParaTime.

Incentivized Testnet

The Oasis Protocol Foundation is running an incentivized Testnet for the ParaTime before the official launch.

The incentivized testnet is designed to be a trial run of the Cipher ParaTime before it is released on the Oasis Mainnet. This is an opportunity for you to test out your node configuration while also helping the community uncover bugs or vulnerabilities in the ParaTime.

The Testnet will run from Wednesday, June 30th at 12pm UTC to early August. Pending on the progress, the Oasis Foundation might want to extend the testnet. For more information on the testnet requirements, and how to get setup, visit our docs here. You can also find the testnet parameters here.

Here are the Testnet bounties.

Rewards will be distributed to winners once the incentivized testnet is completed. If you have any questions or run into issues, please join the #cipher-paratime channel in our community Slack.

More on the Cipher ParaTime

Oasis Cipher ParaTime is the first ParaTime developed based on the ParaTime SDK and will host interoperability modules, Wasm-based smart contracts and confidentiality features. It will run on SGX-based compute nodes and use ROSE as the native token for paying fees. One of the first applications being built on the ParaTime is a privacy-preserving DEX. Beyond that, the ParaTime aims to support the whole private DeFi ecosystem as well as a broad range of privacy use cases.

Core Features:

Fully decentralized with node operators distributed across the world
Oasis ROSE tokens will be the native token used in the ParaTime for gas fees
Support for WebAssembly smart contracts
Support for confidential compute

ParaTime Incentives

The ParaTime will release tokens on-chain to reward nodes for participation.
The reward program is 2 years long, and tokens will be released per epoch.
The reward will be 10~20 ROSE tokens per entity per epoch, where the Oasis Protocol Foundation will make the final decision on the reward size upon the testnet launch. Epochs are currently produced at a one per hour speed and each node has 1/3 of chance of being selected in the primary committee to claim the rewards, hence a node entity can earn 80~160 ROSE tokens per day and 2400~4800 ROSE tokens per month.

The Meaning Behind the Name

The Cipher ParaTime name pays homage to the field of cryptography and the Oasis Network’s focus on data privacy. In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption. “Cipher” comes from the Arabic word “sifr” which means “nothing” or “zero.” The word came to Europe along with the Arabic numeral system. As early codes substituted numbers for letters to hide a word’s meaning, these secret codes became known as ciphers. If you solve a cipher, you break the code and can understand the underlying hidden message. Ciphers, and cryptographic codes more broadly, have been used since the dawn of modern civilization to ensure that important information is kept private and secure. We hope the Cipher ParaTime will continue this tradition by enabling the next generation of privacy-preserving applications. We look forward to working with our community of node operators to launch the Cipher ParaTime and set the foundation for a better internet.