Everstake took part in the Game of Zones and earned a nomination for the LIVENESS REWARD

On May 1, 2020, Cosmos Network launched the Game of Zones (GOZ) to test the new protocol. The main goal of the game was to train contestants to work with the IBC module and the relayer application developed specifically for it. IBC stands for Inter-Blockchain Communication - a module that will connect the world economy via blockchain technology. The goal of IBC is to unite the blockchain and the global economy into one global ecosystem that functions inextricably. This is how IBC works:

Users will be able to interact with each other through various blockchains united in a single network. The importance of the Game of Zones competition is that participants help test the protocol in various situations under high loads and help developers make the protocol better.

How the Game of Zones competition was held

The competition consisted of three main stages:

Stage 1. Check for stability. Every team had to maintain a stable connection between their zone and the gameofzoneshub zone during the entire stage by sending a minimum number of packets between zones.

Stage 2. Bandwidth provision. Every team had to send the maximum number of packets using the Relayer key.

Stage 3. IBC security model stress test. The challenge was not to withstand attacks on the network, but to develop better attacks, user protocols, or to perform double spending to outperform other contestants.

How Everstake entered the list of winners

Our team became one of the participants claiming the survivability prize of the GoZ competition. You can find us on the list of winners on the official website of the game.

We registered in the competition and started preparing their servers for the deployment of the zone and connection to the hub. As part of stage 1, Everstake launched its own everstakechain-1a zone, and created a seed node in the gameofzoneshub-1a zone and using a relayer  and its own Goz-relayer-helper script aimed to maintain a stable connection for as long as possible.

Game of Zones organizers decided to extend phase 1A to phase 1B, for which teams were given a limited number of doubloons and the task to maintain an active connection with a minimum set period of trust.

We created our own everstakechain-1b zone and a seed node in the gameofzoneshub-1b zone.

We used the following tactics for the contest:

On the first server, a goz_1b_1 connection was created with a trust period of 240 hours. On the second server, a goz_1b_2 connection was created with a trust period of 180 seconds and using the goz-relayer-helper script Everstake updated the client every 120 seconds. Approximately 8 hours after the start of phase 1B, one of the participants managed to conduct a TX mempool flood attack, resulting in most of the connections with the shortest time being interrupted.

Thanks to multiple connections, our team managed to get into the list of stage 1 winners claiming the liveness reward.

For stage 2, a custom everstakechain-2 zone was launched, a seed node was created in the gameofzoneshub-2 zone and using the Relayer key and the Goz-relayer-helper script ir relayed as many packets as possible.

Everstake - staking-provider of the Cosmos ecosystem (ATOM)

Everstake developers support a blockchain ecosystem for ATOM holders and many other tokens. The company ensures the stability of the global network and security, so that holders can safely receive income from staking.

You can vote for the Everstake validator and stake ATOM tokens. After you nominate a validator, you will have access to detailed network statistics and a calculator that you can use to calculate the return on staking in the Cosmos blockchain. The validator fee is only 3% of the staking reward.

The Everstake team is very grateful to:

Zaki Manian for sleepless nights spent on zone settings.

Jack Zampolin for technical participants' support.

Jessy Irwin for providing information about deadlines and rules in the blog.

Many thanks to the entire Game of Zones team, as well as to the participants who make great dashboards for the game. It was great playing with you!

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