Is it possible to make money on the testnet of cryptoprojects? Testnet project Aleo
Is it possible to earn cryptocurrency without investing money or with minimal investment? There are such ways. This is participation in various activities in projects at an early stage. As a rule, these are either testnet or ambassadorial programs. But there are certain nuances. This direction has become quite popular, which is used by cryptoprojects. They, for example, announce testnet, but do not say anything specifically about the rewards, making hints that they will. As a result, participants either get a ridiculous amount for their contribution to the project or NFT with unclear application in the future.
So how do you protect yourself from such situations if you have decided to participate in a particular testnet. I think you should first analyze the project itself and what it offers you. So, what I would pay attention to:
- Whether or not payment for the testnet is announced, and in what amount. If the project offers, for example, 1% or 2% of its tokens for all participants, such an offer can be considered specific. That is, the testnet must be incentivized. Otherwise, I would not waste my time, except in cases where everything can be done quickly, such as 5 minutes or 1 hour.
- What the project is about. What tasks it will solve. Will its products be in demand? If you understand that you are facing a truly in-demand project, you need to start working with it immediately. Third-party analytics and positive feedback from authoritative Influencers can also help here.
- Who are the founders of the project and which foundations support it. The project must have funding to realize its goals.
- How the project works with its community. To do this, you need to get on the project's discord and analyze it there. You have to understand that the project needs you and is interested in you, and not the other way around.
How to understand how much you can earn. Immediately I will say that it is almost impossible to determine, if the revards are announced in the coins of the project. Of course, you can try to understand what will be the evaluation of the project by the market. From this evaluation to calculate how much will be rewarded in dollars, then, for example, divide by the number of participants. But this is a very subjective calculation. Moreover, it is not known when you get the coins and how well you will be able to sell them on the exchange. So the main thing to understand that the rewards will be and the fact that they will exceed the cost of obtaining them (in testnet - a server rent, for example).
Now let's look at all of this with a concrete example. At the moment there is a testnet of the project Aleo. This is the third testnet.
A few words about the project itself. Aleo is the world’s first full-featured (zero-knowledge) private application development platform that is fast, consistent, and scalable. Aleo achieves this by using decentralized systems and zero-knowledge cryptography to protect user data on the Internet.
The Aleo testnet will consist of three phases:
Phase 1 - Developers
- Developers can start writing, deploying, and executing programs.
- The Aleo team bootstraps the network with genesis beacons.
Phase 2 - Provers
- Provers start solving coinbase puzzles (PoSW) to earn credits.
- The Aleo team kickstarts the bug bounty program for snarkOS and snarkVM.
Phase 3 - Validators
- Validators start producing blocks and earning rewards.
- Provers with 1 million Aleo credits will be able to become validators.
- The Aleo team will bootstrap the network for Phase 3 with AleoBFT.
Who will be available to take part in the testnet (or what can be done):
Developers can earn rewards for writing, deploying, and executing programs.
Hackers can earn bounties by identifying bugs in the protocol.
Provers can generate PoSW proofs and earn coinbase rewards.
Validators can participate in block production and consensus as part of AleoBFT and earn rewards from the protocol
What will be the rewards?
The promise is: 25 million Aleo credits will be allocated to the developer, tester, and validator community over the 3 stages of Testnet 3.
What conclusions can be drawn from the above information about the testnet.
First, it is announced that the testnet is incentivized, there is a total amount of rewards, the only thing is not clear how it will be distributed among all participants.
In the testnet will be able to participate people of different specializations, from developers to noders. Obviously, the developers and those who find bugs will be appreciated more, because it is more interesting to the project. But this is my guess.
The project has an original idea or specialization - a platform for the development of decentralized applications that uses zero-knowledge technology.
The project has raised $298 million from foundations, which is an impressive amount. The founders of the project and the team have experience working in large technology companies. You can check it all out at https://www.crunchbase.com/ or https://golden.com/.
Now, as for working with the community. The project has an Ambassador program. In discord, there are always AMAs, quizzes, and contests. Chats in discord are active. All this shows that the project pays attention to its followers.
Well, the most difficult thing is to determine the approximate possible earnings on this testnet. As I wrote, most likely it will not be able to do. But certain conclusions can still be made. The project has raised $ 298 million from investors. That says that it will not cost less. That is, it is obvious that Aleo is a candidate for capitalization of 1 billion dollars. The total number of coins according to tokenomics is 1 billion at the start. Then the number of coins will increase and in 15 years will reach 2 billion coins. There are 25 million Aleo credits allocated for this testnet. There are also statistics for the second testnet. There were 10,000 participants. Rewards for the second testnet were 125 Aleo credits (for all who participated and did not find any block), for active beta testers 500 Aleo credits and 31500 Aleo credits for those who launched a mining pool. As for costs, according to the guides, the testnet will require a server rental with the following settings (for Phase 2):
32 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, Ubuntu 20.04. Its cost as of today is $100-150 per month. The duration of the phase is 1-2 months.
Further I do not undertake to make calculations. I think everyone can do them for himself, because you have to make a lot of assumptions for them. It seems to me, this testnet should exactly cover its costs (server rent), that is, the risks are minimal.
Conclusions.
Testnets are not something that can bring in a lot of money. But there are exceptions, of course. Testnet Aleo is quite worthy of attention. It is incentivized. The project is promising with a good team and has good funding. So I see no reason not to take up this testnet, especially if you are a developer or have experience in nodes. In addition to material benefits, do not forget about the experience gained.
All testnet announcements can be found on Discord - http://discord.gg/GVC6xzJSzh
You can also follow the project on Twitter - https://twitter.com/AleoHQ
Website - https://www.aleo.org/
Thank you all for your attention. I wish you good luck in your work!