Timekeeping
Timekeeping is an essential component of securing the protocol. Without at least one timekeeper online there would be no block production. While it is possible to run a farmer or operator node with timekeeping activated, the ideal is that a high-spec, dedicated machine is used to mitigate processing loads altering the quality of the work they do.
Having a good number of timekeepers distributed geographically is our goal to foster a healthy network. Our hope is that our dedicated community run a number in addition to those being run by the team to ensure resilience and decentralization of the protocol.
There is no explicit economic incentive to running a timekeeper, however, independent timekeeping contributes to stable block production, which benefits every participant of the network.
You can read more about timekeeping in the Proof-of-Time section of Autonomys Academy.
Hardware Requirements
Being a timekeeper has high hardware requirements to ensure that a user with a stronger machine is not able to consistently beat every other timekeeper on the network. All timekeepers are in a race with each other to generate their proofs and we need a grid of equally provisioned F1 cars rather than a mix of classes with varying power.
Note that these specs are our starting point and are subject to change as we discover the exact characteristics required to be a good timekeeper.
| Hardware | Specs |
|---|---|
| CPU | 4 core+ with as high a frequency as possible. An overclocked Intel 14900k is the ideal. Note that only 1 core will be occupied with timekeeping. |
| RAM | 8GB+ |
| Storage | 100GB SSD |
Command Line Parameters
There are two new CLI options on the node visible with --help:
--timekeeper- to become a timekeeper.--timekeeper-cpu-cores- to specify which cores timekeeper should use rather than random cores.