Elevating Antelope Infrastructure

The Antelope blockchain family distinguishes itself through its unique transaction processing methods. This innovation brings challenges in managing a strong infrastructure to handle numerous unsuccessful HTTP requests and speculative transactions. This situation underscores the need for reliable and efficient firewall and proxy server solutions to maintain the network’s health and accessibility.

The Challenge at Hand

Antelope blockchains operate under a unique model where users are not charged for transactions that fail. While this model encourages active participation and experimentation within the ecosystem, it has also led to increased load on HTTP-level traffic, creating a bottleneck that can affect all network participants.

Introducing Antelope Firewall

In response to these challenges, Animus Labs has developed Antelope Firewall, a solution designed to serve as a ratelimiter, firewall, and load balancer specifically for Antelope blockchains. This tool is not just an addition to the network’s infrastructure but a fundamental enhancement aimed at ensuring the smooth operation of RPC servers and, by extension, the entire blockchain ecosystem.

Key Features

At the core of Antelope Firewall are its advanced filter and rate limit systems. These allow node providers to sift through incoming traffic and identify requests that are likely to fail, thus preventing unnecessary load on the servers. By introspecting requests to be proxied, antelope-firewall can block or granularly rate limit problematic IPs, authorizers, and even specific smart contracts, ensuring that potentially successful transactions are prioritized.

Configurable Prometheus Exporter

Understanding the importance of observability in maintaining a healthy network, Antelope Firewall includes a configurable Prometheus exporter. This feature allows node operators to monitor and analyze traffic, providing insights into the types of requests being processed and identifying potential sources of abuse or inefficiency.

Health Checks

Antelope Firewall performs health checks on nodes to detect any that are lagging or otherwise incapable of processing requests correctly. This ensures that only functional nodes are included in the routing system, minimizing the risk of failed transactions.

High Performance with Rust

Rust’s advantages, including the absence of a garbage collector and stringent compile-time checks, ensure that antelope-firewall can handle high loads with predictable performance.

SSL Traffic Handling

Antelope Firewall is designed to operate behind a proxy when handling HTTPS requests. This decision ensures that the system remains focused on its core functionalities without the added complexity of unwrapping SSL traffic.

Why This Matters

The blockchain industry is steadily moving towards lower costs and faster transaction times. This evolution necessitates infrastructure that can support the resultant high load without compromising on performance or security.

Final Notes

This product development was made possible with support from the EOS Network Foundation. Their funding has been essential in bringing this project to life.

Try Antelope Firewall today
https://github.com/animuslabs/antelope-firewall

Join us for feedback and troubleshooting

Antelope Firewall Telegram

Introduction

AlienAvatars.io is an Alien Worlds Community project that introduces customizable NFT avatars. Users can combine Avatar Part NFTs to create unique Avatar Templates with varying rarities. When Alien Worlds community members mint avatars from these templates the template designers earn TLM. This project adds creativity and customization to the Alien Worlds ecosystem by integrating Trillium and Alien Worlds Tool NFT gating. We previously wrote a blog post here: https://boidcom.medium.com/introducing-alien-worlds-community-avatar-maker-b900d61e2f96. The project will be going live on Wax Mainnet June 21st but if you visit https://alienavatars.io today you will see it running on Wax Testnet.

Getting Started

At the most basic level there are three major steps to participate in Alien Avatars.

Purchase and Open Part Pack NFTs to receive a random assortment of Avatar Part NFTs https://alienavatars.io/packs.

Assemble your Part NFTs into a unique Avatar Template. You can pick a custom name as well as. https://alienavatars.io/design

Alien Worlds community members can discover your template creation to mint their own on the avatars page https://alienavatars.io/avatars. As the designer of the template you earn TLM when others mint from it.

FAQ

What is an Avatar Part Pack NFT?

Avatar Part Packs are NFTs that can be exchanged for TLM and traded on external markets like AtomicHub. Packs can be opened to reveal Avatar Part NFTs. Common Part Packs contain random lower rarity cards while the Rare Part Packs contain a small number of cards that are guaranteed to be of higher rarities. Read the details about each pack on the packs page https://alienavatars.io/packs.

What is an Avatar Part NFT?

Avatar Part NFTs represent one of the 6 pieces needed to create an Avatar Template. Part NFTs also have a rarity rating that ranges from Common to Mythical. The rarity rating determines how often the part is found in packs. Parts also have a name, most parts are part of a ‘set’ with up to 6 matching parts sharing the same name. How many matching part sets can you collect?

What is an Avatar Template?

Avatar Templates can be created on the design page https://alienavatars.io/design by combining 6 Avatar Part NFTs together plus approving the template creation fee. Once an Avatar Template is created anyone holding AW Tool NFTs can use TLM to mint an NFT from the template. When minting from a template 25% of the mint cost goes to the original designer of the template. When you create an Avatar Template you get to pick a custom name for the template and you also have the opportunity to mint the first avatar from that template.

What is the Avatar Template Rarity Score?

Avatar Templates have a rarity score which is determined by the average rarity rating of the Avatar Part NFTs used to create the avatar. The rarity score of the template determines the starting mint price of avatars from that template as well as the maximum number of NFTs that can be minted from that template. Higher rarity templates start at a higher value and a lower maximum supply.

When I create an Avatar Template do I get the first mint?

No. However you’ll have the ability to pre-mint avatars from the template before anyone else.

How does the avatar minting price change?

The avatar minting price is subject to change based on demand and the rarity score of the Avatar Template. After each mint, the value increases by 10% if the previous mint occurred within the last 24 hours. There is no cap, allowing it to rise indefinitely. However, if no mint occurs for 24 hours, a decay process starts, decreasing each day, with the decay rate ranging from 5–1% depending on the rarity score. The decay continues until the value reaches the starting mint price for that rarity.

I’m missing some Avatar Part NFTs needed to build my Avatar Template. How can I get the missing parts?

The easiest way to get specific part NFTs is to purchase them directly on secondary markets. If you can’t find them on secondary markets then you can purchase and open Avatar Part Packs and hope to find the part you are looking for.

Overview

The Alien Worlds Community Avatar Maker is being built on the WAX blockchain. It offers a unique platform for creating, sharing, and earning from custom avatar designs. The platform is being developed by the team behind Boid and the EOSPowerUp service. The product is based on the Boid Avatar Creator on the EOS blockchain.

Creating Avatars

Users can exchange Trilium for NFT Packs containing Body Part NFTs with various rarity ratings. Opening a pack reveals the Body Part NFTs inside, which can then be combined to create personalized avatar NFT templates.

Designing and Sharing Avatar Templates

By combining Body Part NFTs, users can create avatar templates, name them, and share them with others. When other users mint avatars using a template, the designer earns a 25% cut of the minting cost. The template’s rarity, determined by averaging the rarities of the parts used, affects the maximum supply cap and mint cost.

Staking AW NFTs

Alien Worlds Community Avatar Maker incorporates a staking mechanic, requiring users to stake and lock Alien Worlds Tool NFTs with a matching rarity in order to mint or design an avatar of the corresponding rarity. This feature extends the utility of Alien Worlds NFTs.

Getting Started

Users can connect to the Alien Worlds Avatar Maker platform using Anchor or Wax Cloud Wallet. Transactions are conducted using the native TLM token on the WAX blockchain.

Conclusion

To explore the design and mint functionality, visit avatar.boid.com, which is deployed on EOS today. The Alien World Avatar NFTs project will offer a unique and engaging platform for users to create, share, and earn from their custom avatar designs, while also adding value to AW NFTs through its staking mechanic.