Update January 10th, 2022: This Program is now closed for applications.
December 1st, 2021 - As part of its commitment to supporting the growth and development of the Algorand ecosystem, and in the context of the early completion of the inaugural Node Runner program (due to accelerated vesting), the Algorand Foundation is launching a Community Relay Node running program, to run in parallel with our Relay Node Pilot program.
The goal of this program is to ensure that while the Foundation and the Algorand community work together to create a permissionless Relay Node mechanism, the live Relay Node network remains robust and capable of delivering the performance requirements of our growing ecosystem. The program will run for a 1 year duration and can be re-evaluated annually to understand if the program continues to be necessary. Once permissionless Relay Node running is active, this program will expire.
There will be a total of 30, globally distributed, Relay Nodes run under this program. Applicants to this program must commit an amount of Algo for each 1 year period - with this amount then being locked for the duration in a smart contract controlled wallet. The applicants with the highest Algo commitment and who also exceed the minimum system performance requirements and suit the geographic coverage, will participate in this program. To ensure broad participation, each applicant is limited to running a maximum of 3 Relay Nodes. The 30 nodes will be allocated to the applicants making the highest commitment to the ecosystem.
Successful applicants will move their Algo to dedicated smart contract controlled wallets, where they will be locked for 1 year. Once locked in, these Algo cannot exit until the 1 year period is complete.
While this program will provide basic funding to cover node running costs, there is no incentive model attached to this program - rather this model enables engaged community members to commit to supporting the long term growth of the ecosystem itself. Participants may choose to commit the Algo in these smart contract locked wallets to Community Governance if they so wish.
Applications are now closed.
Finally, it is crucial to re-state that the Algorand protocol’s Pure Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism executes across our permissionless, Participation Node network and is fully decentralized since mainnet genesis.
