This week we kicked off phase two of the Beta Rewards program. This one is open to everyone who wants to start up a node or two. Or in some cases 2,000. We currently have more than 137,000 nodes operational — these records are falling like ninepins. 
Some avid tinkerers will have noticed that although the nominal node size for this experiment is 32GB (plus 3GB for logs) they can start up multiple nodes on a small disk. Should node operators do this, as things start to get crowded in terms of resources, we would expect to see nodes being shunned. How that pans out in terms of earnings will be interesting to see. And while we would encourage participants to allocate the full 32GB space they are committed to, we are ramping up data uploads and carefully measuring drop off as we do.
Hopefully most of you who have tried have been able to get nodes connecting now. Most should have a few hundred chunks per node in the record store and possibly have earned a few nanos. If not, try the different connection methods available via the Launchpad (Options | Change Mode). The most foolproof method is custom ports, so long as you’re happy with port forwarding on your router.
Speaking of the Launchpad, there’s a new version (v0.3.18) ready for your downloading pleasure.
On top of a bunch of tweaks, UX improvements, and one or two fixes, the Launchpad will now show you more useful stats and metrics for each node, along with the nanos each have earned. Very handy!
The current experiment will run until Tuesday, when we will be launching another combination of node and chunk size TBD.
General progress
The team has been focused on migrating to the autonomi library, including building a new CLI to operate with this codebase. We’re also continuing with the EVM integration, moving forwards with integrating Wasm into the APIs, as well as stripping out legacy code.
@chriso is mostly engaged with making sure the test releases are running smoothly for our node/chunk size experiments, ably assisted by @shu who ran a capacity and growth analysis for the number of uploaders vs network size.
@qi_ma has been looking at the distribution of payments and running tests on the EVM integration.
@roland raised a PR to add a metric that tells node operators if the node has recently been marked as bad and is likely to be shunned. He also worked on EVM testing with Qi.
Meanwhile, @bzee stripped out the old auditor and faucet code from the codebase, and tested local EVM payments and the APIs involved in readiness for building the vault API with the Scratchpad data type.
@rusty.spork has been mostly fielding questions about node sizing and other Beta issues.
@anselme has been working on the new CLI which plugs into the new autonomi crate, replacing the sn_node interface. Once complete, this will have much the same functionality as the existing CLI for put, get, transfers, interrogating the wallet, etc.
@mick.vandijke demonstrated successful EVM payments to the team. He also made some updates to the features of autonomi, updated the readme with usage instructions and looked into failing tests for autonomi when running with the registers, vault and file features. And he fixed a bug where the Launchpad was showing zero nanos on restart.
Ermine is making progress with Wasm including getting the test client running on the browser with test results output to the console for debugging. He’s currently working through library choices and syntax errors.
@mazzi continues to refine the Launchpad, creating a new popup that warns the users that the nodes will be reset when changing the connection mode. He also got the Discord bot up-to-date for the new Beta testing program.
Finally, @joshuef has been debugging the EVM tests and improving payment simulations.
