We have completed the Initial node selection for the Violet Group.
You can find the announcement blog post here and the list here
In the blog post, we gave a general overview of the process and the inputs to the selection, but I wanted to give a more detailed explanation to the node community,
As of right now, we have about 60 registered non-American nodes for the BetaNet from the Blue, White, and Teal groups. The feedback we received is that the combination of the long delay from original selection, as well as the complicated state of world affairs led many initially eager node operators to be unable to participate. As a result, we made the choice to accelerate the Violet group process to allow them to begin in July with the Blue, White, and Teal nodes.
As described in the blog post, the previous geographic bins turned out to be insufficient for the distribution of the new applicants. Fortunately, we were able to modify them and have updated the spreadsheet of accepted nodes to include the new bins.
The spreadsheet does not include those US node operators who have expressed interest in participating without compensation. They will be added in the coming weeks as we resolve this. We also have US node operators who applied in this process who we reached out to ensure they understand they will not receive compensation, most of which have responded and asked to keep their application in consideration.
I would also like to address the presence of a bin dedicated solely to a single country, Russia. This is a result of the large number of applicants from Russia (23 made it through the first pass) as well as the unique position of Russian internet access. Unfortunately, Russia’s government seems to be focused on more draconian regulation of the internet within their country. We felt that even though we very much value the unparalleled support we have seen from Russias, it was important to show the network will be viable without Russian nodes in the event the worst comes to pass.
We have also included in the Violet team three node operators who supported us during the AlphaNet and wanted to continue their support in the BetaNet process. They are labeled as “AlphaNet” in the spreadsheet.
With this selection of 110 nodes, we now have a total of 171 nodes for the July 1st launch. We feel that disallowing July 1st participation from the 21 last nodes to register is arbitrary and as a result will not enforce an exact cap of 150. The goal of the cap is to ensure we are not overwhelmed by support requests at launch, but we expect that onboarding will occur throughout July, given the Violet Group has a shorter timeline to procure the necessary hardware.
Overall, I am very happy with this selection and hope you will bring up any comments or concerns with the initial selection or the process.
I also welcome any node who feels they have been unfairly excluded to add more detail to their application and to ask to be reconsidered. This is not a final list, and we would love to include more quality nodes.
