Ways to participate

There are four ways to participate in SQD Network. Workers and delegators supply the network and earn SQD rewards. Revenue Pool participants receive plSQD receipt tokens for SQD deposited into a Portal Pool and may accrue its listed reward token. Portal operators consume the network, locking SQD for query capacity rather than rewards. A Portal that serves only your own RPC data locks nothing.

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How the roles fit together

Portal is the hinge. Workers feed it data, and the other roles commit tokens on one side or the other. Throughout, solid arrows are the data path and dotted arrows are token commitments.

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Supply side

Workers and delegators supply the network. Only the operator runs anything: a delegator backs a node someone else operates.

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Demand side

Revenue Pools and Portal operators fund query capacity rather than earning worker rewards. Two of the four roles never operate infrastructure. Delegators and pool participants commit tokens behind systems other people run, which is why their returns depend on someone else’s performance.

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Run a worker

Workers store a slice of the archival data and answer queries against it. The node needs a public IP, two open ports, and consistent uptime. A worker that stops responding is temporarily excluded from new chunk assignments. You need 100,000 SQD in your wallet or a vesting contract, plus Arbitrum ETH for gas. One wallet can register several workers if it holds enough tokens. Registering locks the bond in the smart contract. Deregistering does not release it right away: withdrawal takes about 14 days (100,000 Ethereum blocks) plus the time until the end of the current epoch, the same wait delegators face.

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Delegate SQD

Delegation needs no hardware and no maintenance. You choose a worker, lock tokens behind it, and receive a share of what it earns. Your return depends on that worker’s performance, so the choice of worker determines the outcome. Tokens commit for roughly 14 days plus the remainder of the current epoch, and cannot be withdrawn during that window.

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Join a Revenue Pool

Revenue Pools, called Portal Pools in the Network App, let you supply SQD to a Portal operator without running the Portal yourself. The pool locks your SQD to give the operator query capacity. Portal users pay the operator for data access; the operator funds the pool’s rewards, which participants share. Choose a pool based on its reward token and displayed rate. When deposits reach the pool’s target, the pool locks the SQD with the Network and becomes active. You receive plSQD as a receipt for your deposit. Rewards then accumulate automatically; you can claim them or request an exit in the Network App. If a pool does not reach its target before the deadline, it never activates and you can withdraw your SQD. After activation, rewards can pause if the reward balance runs out, the stake falls below the required minimum, or the operator turns the rate off. Exit requests wait in a queue, so there is no fixed withdrawal time. Returns are not guaranteed; check the pool’s current status and terms before joining.

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Run a Portal

Portal is the query interface. Running your own removes the dependency on an SQD-hosted endpoint. Whether you need tokens depends on the topology. A Portal that reads finalized history from SQD Network locks at least 1,000,000 SQD, and also needs Arbitrum and Ethereum L1 RPC endpoints plus a registered peer ID. That locked SQD becomes per-epoch compute units, and requests are throttled if queries consume them faster than they regenerate. A real-time-only Portal serves recent blocks from your own RPC through HotblocksDB. It never reads from SQD Network, so it locks no SQD and none of the token requirements apply.

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Before you commit