Test Grid Phase 2 Update

Many members of our community have been anxiously awaiting an update on our plans for Test Grid Phase 2 — and we’re excited to share them with you!

Testing of our First GPU Test Grid

Phase 1 concluded successfully at the end of January, with nearly 100 nodes running AI inference jobs tirelessly. This phase yielded extensive feedback, with over 300 tickets filed on Discord, covering bug reports, issues, and improvement suggestions. Rather than closing the job markets after Phase 1, our dedicated testers continued running jobs, providing ongoing feedback to the team. You can read the full report on Phase 1 testing here.

Preparations for Phase 2

The Nosana team recognized substantial improvements necessary for Phase 2, which required careful planning to meet community and tester expectations. Over the past eight weeks, our development team processed Phase 1 feedback, resulting in significant updates to node functionality, including robust network enhancements, GPU setup flexibility, and automated onboarding processes.

Adapting to Network Challenges

Near the end of our development phase, we encountered a significant challenge. The Solana network experienced congestion, which impacted areas of our project that are in the production stage, especially our staking program and the Test Grid. This led to numerous transaction failures within our ongoing Phase 1 test group due to the high volume on the Solana mainnet network.

We faced a choice: wait for the Solana 1.18 upgrade scheduled for mid-April or proactively adapt our node functionality to attempt to bypass these congestion issues. We opted for the latter, and we are confident it was the right choice.

Phase 2 Focus: Expanding AI Project Integration

In Phase 1, to simulate a real testing environment, we deliberately created AI jobs that replicate the types of AI jobs our future clients will use. This isolated environment, with specific types of jobs, allowed the team to closely monitor performance and establish early benchmarks. For Phase 2, our focus has shifted towards expanding the variety of AI jobs needed by our future clients.

Over the same eight weeks, our developers have worked to revamp the Nosana job format to streamline the integration of AI projects and models into our network. We opened the registrations for AI projects to join the Test Grid and we’ve seen a fantastic response. Our team has been assisting several projects with their Phase 2 onboarding, promising a more diverse set of AI inference jobs — created by accepted projects and developers.

There's much more happening behind the scenes than meets the eye. We'll soon be sharing more details about the extensive work our developers have been doing.

Nodes Acceptance & Waitlist

Over 1000 nodes have been accepted for Phase 2, ten times more than Phase 1, but this only represents a portion of all applications. We are working on accommodating more GPU models that our community members have and wish to use.

Additionally, a small number of successful registrants had issues with their GPU models not being accurately recorded. Registrants experiencing problems with GPU model recording will receive further instructions to secure their spot on the waitlist.

What’s next?

Glad you asked! As mentioned earlier, Phase 2 focuses on two key areas: extensively testing the enhanced Node V2 and expanding the variety of AI jobs. To ensure the new node's functionality and capacity before onboarding major AI projects, we'll conduct a phased testing approach in April.

Initial Testing of Node V2:

Already in progress, with a select group of Phase 1 testers trying out the new node in a special market created for this purpose. This preliminary test runs through the second week of April.

Load Testing of Node V2:

On April 15th, we’ll start expanding testing to include all Phase 1 testers, ensuring the node’s functions and capacity are optimal, including the adjustments made to overcome Solana’s congestion issues. This intensive testing phase is essential before we bring over 1000 new nodes onto the grid and will last about two weeks.

Onboarding:

The date that everyone is waiting for — assuming the initial tests with a smaller sample size go well— we will begin onboarding on approximately April 29th. With over 1000 nodes accepted, the development team tackled this head-on, and now, our onboarding process has been fully automated. If you’re registered and accepted for Phase 2, starting your node will automatically grant you the requisite access token and place you into the correct market, ready to run jobs.

Before introducing real-world AI projects, we want to ensure our grid is ready, targeting the first project onboarding for May 15th. This gives us ample time to identify and fix any lingering issues with the node before these projects begin providing inference jobs to the grid.

Questions?

As always, our team is active on Discord and ready to help with any questions you might have. Feel free to reach out there, and we'll do our best to give you thorough answers.