Relay@Home is a project designed to make the deployment of blockchain relay nodes in the ARK Ecosystem more accessible to network operators and community members. The costs of operating these nodes is typically less than what it would cost to run on a traditional remote virtual private server(VPS). The project provides community members the opportunity to operate their own blockchain node at their home with simple operating instructions and support. New ARK Bridgechains can use Relay@home to build a strong community while also improving the security and stability of the network.
What is a Relay Node?
In Delegated Proof of Stake(DPoS) blockchains, the active delegate forging nodes are responsible for participating in consensus, adding transactions to the shared ledger and forging new tokens. An additional node called a Relay is responsible for providing network redundancy, maintaining full copies of the ledger and serving as access points for client applications. Maintaining a large number of Relay nodes is important for network stability, performance, and decentralization. It is important that nodes on the network have diversification in the cloud service providers, physical location, and owners/operators. Relay nodes do not require the same performance levels of a forging node however they still must provide adequate processing capability, memory, and internet bandwidth.
The Relay@Home hardware/software is not designed to be a total replacement for dedicated private servers with commercial internet connections. Typically a residential internet connection will have lower reliability and may be more susceptible to outages. This program is designed to build on top of a core network of dedicated commercial servers.
Supported Blockchains
We currently support the ARK Mainnet, Compendia, and our own Radians blockchain.
Please contact us if you are interested in us supporting your ARK bridgechain network.
Features
We offer two versions of hardware. The basic version is optimized for cost however this does not impact Relay Node operation. The basic version uses standard SD card memory. We have done extensive memory speed tests and have selected one of the fastest SD card memory available. The main issue with SD cards is that they can be prone to failures after repeated write cycles or corruption from power failures. To mitigate the potential for SD card failure we provide a backup card.
The Pro version replaces the SD card with a USB3 SSD. This memory type has features to improve long term reliability. The Pro version also overclocks the CPU by 23%. With the increased memory speed/quality we are able to include a logging utility to track the performance of the CPU and relay operation. The statistics are accessed via a graphical web based dashboard.
| Feature | Relay@Home | Relay@Home Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Raspberry Pi 4 Quad Core Cortex-A72 | Raspberry Pi 4 Quad Core Cortex-A72 |
| CPU Clock Speed | 1.5 GHz | 1.85 GHz |
| RAM | 4 GB | 4 GB |
| External Memory | 64 GB SD Card | 120 GB SSD |
| Graphical Dashboard Monitor | NO | YES |
How to Order
Relay@Home kits are available for order through our our custom Ark core powered eccomerce site. Payment is currently available by ARK or BIND tokens.