Hi aliencoder, this is a huge thread. I’m a beginner dev who just started learning Flutter with the hopes of contributing to s y r i u s in the future.
There is a lot going on in this thread, with each area deserving a lot of thought. I have many questions, but I will restrain from bombarding you all at once.
The first question I have is: What is a Sentinel?
There is a recurring theme in your thoughts about incentivization. It seems that a portion of the minted ZNN and QSR is being dispensed by the Sentinel contract every day without tangible network contribution.
This is a peculiar situation. Either there is an intended purpose for a Sentinel yet to come, or those emissions could be used elsewhere more effectively.
An idea that seems cool to me (though I have no scope on the realities of the implementation) would be to have Sentinels as full nodes. Because of the incentive, it would be reasonable to target higher-end hardware. This could allow end users to run ‘light’ nodes as access points.
Economically, this could make sense as the price of ZNN and QSR rises against BTC and fiat, it becomes progressively more lucrative to run a Sentinel, causing more to come online to meet the demand.
Additionally, one could devise a system where the Sentinels keep each other honest and punish dishonest nodes.
From a layman’s perspective, this seems like it could work, but I’m sure there are probably some glaring flaws here.
I’m eager to read your views on this and your general thoughts on Sentinels as well.