Gladius Development Update #6 (03/15)

Good afternoon! Welcome to our sixth bi-weekly development update! Every other Thursday at 4PM EST we will be posting an overview of the progress we’ve made over the last two weeks.

During the last sprint we focused on:

Gladius Beta Program
Node Manager
Web Portal

Gladius Beta Program

Over the past two weeks we’ve been hard at work preparing documentation, repositories, and getting other resources ready for the launch of the beta program later this month. Today, we would like to give our supporters a chance to apply for the first official Gladius Beta Pool.

At the beginning of the beta Gladius will run one official pool. This means that no other pools will be listed in the public marketplace. We’ve decided to limit enrollment for the initial launch in order to contain any major issues that are presented within the first couple of weeks. We will allow 240 nodes to become members of the first official Gladius pool to represent 3 centuriae in the Gladius Legion!

In subsequent updates we will be creating more official pools that will let in more and more nodes and eventually open enrollment up for all nodes and pool managers.

It is essential to remember that this is a Beta program not a one time release. The beta will last until product launch meaning that even if you aren’t selected to be in the first official pool, you will still be able to join the Gladius Legion during the beta period! As mentioned in the previous Development Update, participants in the beta will be compensated a small amount of GLA as a reward for helping improve the software. Beta users will be compensated regardless of when they participate so if you aren’t in the first pool do not worry! Check out the official beta page for more information.

Submit your application here to have a chance at becoming a part of the first official Gladius Pool.

Node Manager

This sprint we focused on separating our code into different modules to make it more developer and open source friendly. This allows users to run the node manager in the command line, with a UI, or even create their own custom UI by connecting to our REST API.

In addition we also created four new smart contracts. We had originally planned to keep all user data (encrypted) inside each pool contract but have since decided a better approach would be to have every node and client deploy their own smart contract. This allow individuals to have more control over their own data and who see’s it.

We’ve worked extensively this sprint on getting the node manager ready for the beta. We will continue to code, test, and write documentation in order to make downloading, using, and contributing to the Node Manager as simple as possible.
Web Portal

The web portal is a site where websites seeking protection can go and sign up to be protected by the Gladius Network. We are proud to say that it is finally UI complete! This sprint we’ve been working very closely with Kyokan to integrate the backend with our smart contracts and API. In the beginning of the beta Gladius will be the only “client” seeking CDN/DDoS protection. Therefore, we will be releasing the web portal sometime later in the beta once we start adding more beta clients such as some of our partners listed on our site.
General Beta Disclaimer

The beta is a period where people interested in helping us develop this product can test, critique, and contribute to this open source project. Creating the worlds best decentralized CDN and DDoS protection network takes time and we want to make sure we nail it. During the beta expect bugs, crashes, and for things to break. DO NOT expect to be able to quit your job and run Gladius on all of your computers and retire early. This is BETA software and the more crashes, bugs, and failures we overcome now, the more polished the final product will be. We hope you as a community will stand along side us and help us create an amazing product. Thank you Gladius Legion!

Gladius MEDIUM: https://medium.com/@gladiusio/gladius-development-update-6-03-15-1ad8e2ce223a