Ben Putley: A Manifesto on Validators and the Future of Alkimi

At Alkimi, we’ve played a key role in defining decentralised advertising, how it operates and how it should be adopted. The key to decentralisation is the network of validators notarising every transaction on-chain providing transparency, auditability and fair value to buyers and sellers of digital ads in the Alkimi marketplace.

The journey to this point has been incredible. We’ve gone through a meticulous development process to create a stable network supported by our validators. Through this process, we’ve iterated the onboarding, piloting, and optimisation of performance. Alkimi has created the framework for a performant and scalable ad exchange. Thank you for coming on this ride with us.

Over the last 8 months we’ve been opening the network. This was crucial to support the onboarding of more supply and demand for the exchange. This is a testament to the hard work we’ve put into connecting with industry leaders and fundamentally changing the ad space for the better.

Today, I want to talk about Delegated Validators. This is a service to simplify the process of running multiple validators, or for those that lack the technical know-how, or don’t have the time required.

Delegated Validators help support the service level agreements of the multinational brands and media owners that have defined the uptime, latency and handling of personally identifiable information. By enabling the community to provide the necessary bandwidth, Delegated Validators support large holders to operate within the network in a meaningful way.

Importantly, there is no requirement to choose a delegated service or a defined number of delegated validators required to run the network. We understand that many of our holders will run their own validators, and we support that. To streamline the process, there will be two separate waitlists for delegated and standard validators due to different onboarding requirements. You will be assigned a waitlist number once you have chosen your service type. The service type will not affect where you stand on the queue but making a choice is an essential step before you are given a waitlist number. This is designed in this way to separate the NFT minting and the waitlist process. Any user can interact directly with the smart contract to provide collateral and mint an NFT. However, you will need to go on to Alkimi Labs (you should be registered and KYC’d) and select a service type in order to be assigned a waitlist number.

Alkimi is the first and only decentralised ad exchange ready to service clients at this level. We are in a unique position to shape the industry’s future, just as we have shaped its past. And we couldn’t have done it without our incredible community.

Every day, I am blown away by what we, as the Alkimi team — including you, and our community — are achieving. Together, we are rewriting the rules of the game and setting new standards for what’s possible.

Thank you for your continued support. The future is bright, and we are just getting started. Let’s change the industry together.

If you want to be a part of Alkimi’s journey or if you are interested in learning more about us, you can check out our socials and join us on Discord & Telegram!