Space Race 2 begins! Slingshot rules explained

To participate in the Slingshot competition, you must store real, valuable, and usable data to the Filecoin network. You must also build an application or UI that uses that data in a meaningful way (whether reading it directly from Filecoin or from a data cache stored elsewhere, like IPFS). There are many ways to store data to Filecoin and build these applications and UIs. You can read more about these paths in the Developer Guide section below.

The so-called “ real, valuable and usable data ” refers to:
Application data. You can build an end-user facing application that stores application and user data to Filecoin. The application UI is able to retrieve relevant data as needed.

Data Collection : You can store data from a curated list of data collections maintained by the Slingshot admin team and create corresponding UIs to utilize/access this data.

Slingshot Leaderboards :

https://slingshot.filecoin.io This website is the source of truth for the entire Slingshot competition. It includes information about the overall competition purpose, rules, events and programming, registration forms, and leaderboards. The leaderboard maintains the total size of the reward pool based on the collective efforts of Slingshot participants. It also provides a list of participants, their eligibility status, and potential rewards.

Slingshot repo :

https://github.com/filecoin-project/slingshot You can submit PRs including details of your project in the Slingshot leaderboard in the repo. Community approvers will leave feedback directly in the submitted PR.

Slack: We are now using Slack channels in these Filecoin project Slack workspaces to provide announcements for Slingshot and to help debug any issues. If you are participating in this competition, please make sure you join these channels.

#fil-testnet-announce — Major announcements about testnets and major software releases
#slingshot-announcements — Major announcements about the Slingshot program
#slingshot — Debugging help and community conversation throughout the race

Slack : Join the Filecoin Slack workspace and the following channels:
#fil-testnet-announce
#slingshot-announcements
#slingshot

Start your project : Decide what data you want to store on Filecoin, what application or UI you will build to interact with that data, and what technology stack you want to use (see the Developer Guide section for more information). Once you successfully negotiate your first storage deal with the Filecoin network, the Filecoin address you used to negotiate that storage deal will automatically appear on the leaderboard. However, your project is not yet eligible for rewards.

Registration to participate : There are two steps to register:

1. Submit a registration form with information about your team:

https://slingshot.filecoin.io/register

Submit a PR to the filecoin-project/slingshot GitHub repo with information about your project, app/UI URL, etc. The repo agreement contains templates and submission instructions.

2. Pass community review : The Slingshot community review team will review your project details in the filecoin project/Slingshot GitHub repo to ensure that you are eligible to participate in the competition. They will leave feedback for your team in your PR. If your application is accepted, the review team will merge the PR, update the leaderboard with only your project information (no personal information), and mark your project as "reviewed" on the leaderboard. If your application is not accepted immediately, the review team will ask you to provide more information, which you can provide by updating your PR.

Comply with Contest Rules : If you have completed the previous steps and you comply with the Contest Rules throughout the Contest, you will be eligible to receive rewards. These rules are checked automatically by the Slingshot Leaderboard software, or in some cases manually by Slingshot community reviewers. If you are eligible to receive rewards, the leaderboard will mark your project as "Eligible". Please note that if an eligible project fails to comply with the Contest Rules on an ongoing basis, it may not receive rewards throughout the Contest period.

Throughout the competition, participants should expect to improve their applications/UIs and grow data storage on Filecoin. The Slingshot leaderboard will be the source of truth throughout the competition, so keep an eye on that leaderboard to make sure your project is represented appropriately there.

Leaderboard Listings : To appear on the Slingshot leaderboard, you must submit at least one successful transaction to the Filecoin network.
To be listed as “reviewed” on the leaderboard, you must submit a registration form on the Slingshot website, submit a PR to the filecoin project/Slingshot GitHub repo, and pass community review.
NOTE: Appearing on the leaderboard does not mean you are eligible for rewards.

Reward Eligibility : In order to be eligible for any Slingshot rewards and be listed as "Eligible" on the leaderboard, you must meet the following requirements. These requirements are checked automatically by the Slingshot leaderboard, or manually by a team of community judges throughout the contest.
1. You must store real, valuable, and usable data to the Filecoin network. This can be application data or a data collection (from a list maintained by the Slingshot team). The data collection list can be found on the Slingshot repo.
2. You must build your app in a meaningful way. You must submit this app or UI as part of the competition and it must work.
3. Your project must pass the community review to confirm that your project is legal. Throughout the competition, if a team is reviewed and does not continue to abide by the competition rules, it will be disqualified.
4. You must sign a storage agreement with at least 3 miners on the SR2 network.
5. You must store each CID so that it can be retrieved from the Filecoin network. We will test CID retrieval regularly throughout the competition.
6. You must attend the Slingshot Showcase.
7. You may store up to 10 copies of the same data segment on the network. Storing more than 10 copies will be considered playing with the game.

Showcase : We are organizing a Slingshot Showcase to highlight the work that all Slingshot players have done over the course of the competition.
1. The top 100 eligible participants on the leaderboard will record a project demo for the Slingshot showcase.
2. In addition, the top 10 eligible participants on the leaderboard will be invited to give a live demo of their projects at a live showcase event.
3. We will announce the specific criteria for these showcases and presentations at the end of Week 2 of the competition.

Disqualification: Your team may be disqualified at any time if you are ineligible for rewards, violate the contest rules, or are caught gaming the contest in any way. You may not copy other projects. The leaderboard results will be final shortly after the contest ends. The Slingshot admin team will aggregate all data from the leaderboard and community judges to determine the final qualifiers and final contest winners at the end of the contest.

We reserve the right to amend the competition rules as necessary to ensure healthy competition.

Slingshot community reviewers are members of the Filecoin community who have demonstrated that they are heavily invested in the long-term health of the Filecoin network. Community reviewers come from different stakeholder communities - some storage miners, some developer tool builders, some application developers, investors, and more. When we finalize the community review panel, we will publish it on the Slingshot website!

Community reviewers will review submitted PRs from multiple perspectives. Some of the criteria they will review include:
1. Does the project follow the Filecoin Project Code of Conduct?
2. Does this project store real and usable data?
3. How does the project plan to organize and store data? What are the data size and dataset details?
4. Does this project seem achievable?
5. Does the user interface already exist and are the basic functions operational? (Must be listed as "Reviewed" on the leaderboard)

If your project is accepted, the reviewers will merge your PR, update the leaderboard with your project information, and mark your project as "Reviewed". If your project is not immediately accepted, the reviewers will provide feedback in the PR on the changes they would like to see reconsidered.

SR2 Slingshot builds on the collaborative and competitive dynamics of SR1. Slingshot distributes a prize pool among all participants. The size of the prize pool is determined by the total amount of data stored on the network. The prize pool is divided among participants proportionally based on the amount of data stored on the network by their project or application.

Slingshot is divided into two phases :
Phase 1: The initial phase of the onboarding competition will begin on September 23, 2020. The goal of this phase is to onboard the first PiB of real data onto the Filecoin network!
Phase 2: Scale Phase 2 will begin after Phase 1 is complete. The goal of this phase is to increase the amount of data uploaded to the Filecoin network from 1PiB to 10PiB. We will determine the exact timing of Phase 2 after Phase 1 is complete.
We may add more prize pools or adjust the stages as needed depending on the pace of the tournament!

Current Reward Pool :

Below is an example to demonstrate how rewards are distributed at the end of a game.
There are four contestants in the competition:
A stored 5TiB of data, passed the community review stage, and was listed as "Qualified" on the leaderboard.
B stored 5.5TiB of application data, passed the community review stage, and was listed as qualified on the leaderboard.
C stores 5 TiB of application data, but did not pass the community review stage and was not reviewed or eligible for the leaderboard.
D stored 0.5TiB of data and passed the community review. However, D stored all of its data on 1 miner (instead of 3 or more), so did not meet all reward eligibility requirements. D is listed as audited, but does not meet the leaderboard requirements.

In this case, C and D are not eligible to receive rewards in the Slingshot competition. This is because C did not pass the community review stage and D only stored the data for 6 months instead of the required 1 year. Therefore, only A and B's storage will count towards the competition rewards.

Between A and B, the collective storage is 5+5.5=10.5TiB of eligible storage. This will unlock the lowest level 10,000 FIL reward pool.

Since A and B are the only eligible winners, they split the reward pool proportionally:
Total data size = 5 + 5.5 TiB = 10.5 TiB
A's share in the reward pool = (5/10.5) * 10000 FIL = ~4762 FIL
B's share in the reward pool = (5.5/10.5) * 10000 FIL = ~5238 FIL
Both C and D are not eligible for rewards and will receive 0 FIL.
NOTE: Any rewards earned will vest linearly over a six-month period from mainnet launch.

Note: While we do not expect it, rewards may be restructured, delayed, or canceled if, at the sole discretion of Protocol Labs or the Filecoin Foundation, legal or regulatory issues prevent the delivery of any portion of the reward.