PolySwarm NCT Tokens

In a departure from previous Engine solutions, Engines no longer manage Ethereum Wallets themselves nor do they communicate with the blockchain. This greatly simplifies Engine Development, and lowers the barrier of Entry for those unfamiliar with the Ethereum Blockchain.

In your User Account or Team Account Settings, the Wallets tab is where you can view and manage your Engine's Wallet. The NCT balance is displayed for each Engine Wallet in your Account. This makes it easy to view and track balances as the Engine runs.

Mainnet

In the Mainnet communities, all tokens are added to an engine by performing a deposit of NCT to an Engine's Deposit Address. Engine owners will need to transfer NCT into the Deposit Address of their Engine's Wallet. The Deposit Address for an Engine can be viewed by going to the Wallets tab of your Account Settings.

PolySwarm is adding features to the PolySwarm UI to make the token transfers as painless as possible. Transfers into the Marketplace, from a user's external Wallet, will always be managed by the application that controls your external wallet. Transfers out of the Marketplace, back to user's external Wallets, will be managed in the PolySwarm UI once that feature is released. In the meantime, these transfers will be manual.

For now, please make sure you have purchased enough NCT for your Engine to operate. During the Verification process the PolySwarm Engines Team will provide guidance on how to deposit that NCT into your Engine's wallet.

PolySwarm will work with every Engine owner to facilitate this process and get everybody on Mainnet smoothly, without interruption.

For Engines owners that wish to participate in the Marketplace, but cannot own or use cryptocurrencies for legal reasons, please contact PolySwarm to discuss alternatives.

Computing NCT Requirements

Initial Deposit

The first question an Engine owner wants to know is how much NCT do they need to deposit into the Engine's Wallet to get started. This answer varies from Engine to Engine, but we will provide you some guidelines.

If you do not feel like doing calculations and want to wing it, then pick a number between 50,000 and 100,000 and deposit that amount of NCT. That should be enough to get you started. If you take that approach, you'll need to keep a close eye on your balance and be prepared to add more NCT if/when it gets low.

However, if you want to be more precise, see below.

An equation you can use to estimate the quantity of NCT for your initial deposit is as follows:

Estimated_Initial_Funding_Amount_in_NCT = (Number of Bounties per Day Asserted on) * (Average Bid per Assertion in NCT) * (Number of Days in Arbitration Period)

• Number of Bounties per Day Asserted on - the upper bound will be the total number of Bounties processed on Mainnet per day, but if your Engine only operates on a limited set of mimetypes, or has a low rate limit, you can use a smaller value for this parameter.

  • To get an approximation for the total number of Bounties on Mainnet per day, look at the Marketplace Stats page for the number of "Malicious Samples". Then double that number for a safe upper bound estimate.
• Average Bid per Assertion in NCT - right now, Mainnet is configured with a min_bid of 3700000000000000 WEI (0.0037 NCT) and a max_bid of 15000000000000000 WEI (0.015 NCT). If you use the NCT value of the max_bid in this equation, it will give you an upper bound. These values will change over time as the Marketplace grows.
• Number of Days in Arbitration period - use 14 days (2 weeks) for this parameter.

Maintaining a Sufficient Wallet Balance

Your Engine's Wallet balance can never go negative, but if it goes too low, you will no longer be able to participate in Bounties. So, it is important to be aware of the actions in the Marketplace that affect your Engine's Wallet balance or depend on your Engine's Wallet having a sufficient balance.

1. Assertions - When an Engine makes an Assertion having a Bid > 0 NCT, we deduct that Bid from the Engine's Wallet right away (on a few seconds delay). That Bid amount is moved into the pot for the Bounty. If an Engine makes a Bid and does not have enough NCT in its Wallet, that Engine's Assertion/Bid does not participate in the Bounty. It's as if the Assertion was made with a Bid of 0.
2. Arbitration - When Arbitration is run, any Engine that wins, gets their portion of the pot as a deposit to their Wallet. A key thing to keep in mind is that Arbitration is on a delay of weeks. So the Engine's Wallet needs to be large enough to fund all of its Bids for at least 2 weeks.
3. Deposit - When you perform a Deposit to your Deposit Address, those funds will be added to your Wallet Balance within a few seconds.
4. Withdrawal - When you perform a Withdrawal out of your Engine Wallet, those funds are removed from your Wallet Balance immediately.

Next Steps

With some NCT tokens ready to deposit into your Engine's wallet, the final step is to request Verification for your Engine.