Join Kusama’s Thousand Validators Programme

Anyone technical and determined is encouraged to apply here. By applying and following the setup instructions, you will be eligible to receive nominations from Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies

Kusama

By Polkadot•February 7, 2020

Receive Nominations to Kickstart your Validator on Polkadot’s Wild Cousin, Kusama

Kusama network launched in July 2019 as an early, unaudited version of Polkadot’s codebase. The network has increased its validators from 25 at launch to 700 validators, with a motion recently passed that will increase that further to 900. We’re on the way to achieving our original goal of decentralizing Kusama by scaling to one thousand validator nodes. To support Kusama’s validator growth, we launched the Thousand Validators Programme at the beginning of 2020. This programme was extended in December 2020 to allow participants to run multiple eligible nodes.

Anyone technical and determined is encouraged to apply here. By applying and following the setup instructions, you will be eligible to receive nominations from Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies to help kickstart your Kusama node. You will also be able to work your way up the Thousand Validators leaderboard for the chance to gain even more support for your efforts. And every validator accepted into the programme will get Kusama swag! 😀

What is Kusama Network?

Kusama is an early, unaudited and unrefined release of Polkadot, the next-generation sharded blockchain network founded by Gavin Wood, former co-founder and CTO of Ethereum and creator of the Solidity programming language. Kusama is a standalone network alongside Polkadot, allowing teams and developers to build and deploy a parachain or try out Polkadot’s governance, staking, nominating and validating functionality in a live environment. While Polkadot will be focussed on parachain security, reliability and scalability, Kusama is taking a much more diverse path.

Who was Kusama built for?

Kusama is and will continue to be used by teams and developers who want to operate on the bleeding edge. Kusama’s network will be the environment where the newest technologies are deployed, such as nested relay chains or Shared Protected Runtime Execution Enclaves (SPREE). Teams will enjoy the lower cost and the ability to experiment with the newest features on Kusama.

Finally, Kusama is a great opportunity for validators to prepare for Polkadot, since Kusama allows validators a place where they can participate with a lower barrier to entry. Kusama also allows validators to stress-test and harden their infrastructure in real economic conditions, in preparation for validating on Polkadot.

Kusama’s community and “wild cousin” mantra will lend itself to an array of wild social experiments or DAOs on the network. Join the chaos!

Thousand Validators Programme Resources

Article updated December 2020

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