Obol Network Testnet

The following is a break down of the intended testnet roadmap, the features that are to be complete by each testnet, and their target start date and durations.

Bia Attack Net​

At this point, Obol has tested best-effort, happy-path validation with supportive participants. The next step towards a mainnet ready client is to begin to disrupt and undermine it as much as possible.

This testnet needs a consensus implementation as a hard requirement, where it may have been optional for Athena. The intention is to create a number of testing tools to facilitate the disruption of charon, including releasing a p2p network abuser, a fuzz testing client, k6 scripts for load testing/hammering an RPC endpoints and more.

The aim is to find as many memory leaks, DoS vulnerable endpoints and operations, missing signature verifications and more. This testnet may be centered around a hackathon if suitable.

Participants: Obol Proto Community, Immunefi Bug Bounty searchers

State: Client Hardening

Network: Kiln or a Merged Test Network (e.g. Görli)

Target start date: September 2022

Duration: 2-4 weeks operation, depending on how resilient the clients are

Network: Merged Test Network (e.g. Görli)

Goals:

Cerce Public Testnet II​

After working through the vulnerabilities hopefully surfaced during the attack net, it becomes time to take the stakes up a notch. The second public testnet for Obol will be in partnership with the Gnosis Chain, and will use validators with real skin in the game.

This is intended to be the first time that Distributed Validator tokenisation comes into play. Obol intends to let candidate operators form groups, create keys that point to pre-defined Obol controlled withdrawal addresses, and submit a typeform application to the testnet team including their created deposit data and manifest lockfile and exit data. (to verify the validator pubkey they are submitting is a DV)

Once the testnet team has verified the operators as real humans not sybil attacking the testnet that have created legitimate DV keys, their validator will be activated with Obol GNO.

At the end of the testnet period, all validators will be exited, and their performance will be judged to decide the incentivisation they will recieve.

Participants: Obol Proto Community, Gnosis Community, Ethereum Staking Community

State: MVP

Network: Merged Gnosis Chain

Target start date: Q4 2022

Duration: 6 weeks

Network: Merged Gnosis Chain

Goals:

Demeter Red/Blue Net​

The final planned testnet before a prospective look at mainnet deployment is a testnet that takes inspiration for the Cyber Security industry and makes use of Red Teams and Blue Teams.

In Cyber Security, Red team are on offense, Blue team are on defence. In Obol's case, Operators will be grouped into clusters based on application and are assigned to either red team or blue team in secret. Once the validators are active, it will be the red teamers goal to disrupt the cluster to the best of their ability, and their rewards will be based on how much worse the cluster performs than optimal.

The blue team members will aim to keep their cluster online and signing. If they can keep their distributed validator online for the majority of time despite the red teams best efforts, they will recieve an outsized reward versus the red team reward.

The aim of this testnet is to show that even with directly incentivised byzantine actors, that a distributed validator client can remain online and timely in it's validation, further cementing trust in the clients mainnet readiness.

Participants: Obol Proto Community, Gnosis Community, Ethereum Staking Community, Immunefi Bug Bounty searchers

State: Mainnet ready

Network: Merged Gnosis Chain

Target start date: Q4 2022

Duration: 4 weeks

Network: Merged Gnosis Chain

Goals: