TL;DR

Participate in this Checker Network Subnet Builder Program for a chance to win $5,000. Furthermore, if your subnet creates value for the Checker Network, you will work with the Checker Network team to deploy it into production and earn a 20% builders cut for all value that flows through your subnet.

Program Details

For DePIN to hit the big time, potential network clients need to have much more trust in the networks and nodes.

The Checker Network is looking for engineers to build DePIN checking protocols - what we call subnets - that create valuable data around the performance of DePIN networks and nodes.

Space Meridian, the team behind the Checker Network, has spent the last year building out Spark. Spark is a Checker subnet that checks the retrievability of data on Filecoin. In the process, the team has built a lot of building blocks that you can use to secure and deploy your subnet that you build as part of this program.

Space Meridian spun out of Protocol Labs in March 2024.

Program Location

This is a program that you can do from anywhere - it is all managed online.

Dates

The first cohort will run January 13th -31st. Builders are expected to spend over 30 hours working on their submission during this three week window.

Rewards

The top candidate in each cohort will receive $5,000. Second place will receive $2,500.

If a subnet is deployed to Station and starts to manage a value flow, then the builder will receive a builder’s cut of 20% of all value flowing through the smart contract.

Who Can Apply

If you are an engineer interested in Web3, Blockchain, cryptography then please apply! You can be anywhere in the world.

Apply

More Details

What is a Checker Subnet?

Example: Filecoin Spark

DePIN Network: Filecoin

Spark creates a set of sample retrieval tasks by listening to Filecoin blockchain storage deal events. Spark then asks Spark checkers to perform sample retrievals against Filecoin Storage Providers to see if they can retrieve the data.

Spark records all these retrievals in Storacha and commits them to the Filecoin chain.

Spark then aggregates over the data and creates visualisations to show the retrieval success rate of Filecoin and of each individual Storage Provider. See https://dashboard.filspark.com

How do I start building a Checker Subnet?

We have created a recipe for you to get started.

Part 1

1. Choose any DePIN network: https://coinmarketcap.com/view/depin/
2. Build a client (what we call a checker) to sample the functionality of its nodes. Example functionality can include retrievability, availability, bandwidth, uptime, compute, geolocation.
1. Create a set of sample tasks from the network’s chain state.
2. Perform these sample tasks with a set of nodes in the network.
3. Create data around how successful the network is at serving your requests and how successful individual nodes are in serving your requests with them. Record this data to create scores and metrics on the chosen DePIN network.
4. Aggregate this data to create scores and metrics on each node in the network.
5. Create visualizations of the data.
6. Store the data on Filecoin via Storacha, Akava or Basin.

Part 2

If this data is useful and we see potential in the project, we can deploy the client (checker) to the Station Network. We can then add the attack vector mitigation modules to add security to the veracity of the checks.

How much support will I get?

If you are accepted into the program, you will be added to a Telegram group and to a Discord channel where you can get information and ask questions.