Your Role in the Network
Hosting a node should not be thought of in the same terms as mining or other passive earning opportunities within the crypto space. On the Sentinel dVPN network, you are a vendor in a marketplace, and your node is a digital shopfront where your goods (bandwidth) are sold.
Hard Requirements
Hosting a Sentinel dVPN Node requires very little in the way of computing resources, hands-on oversight, or technical skill.
Sentinel Docs recommends some degree of familiarity with Linux. Virtually any hardware can be used, but for optimal performance you should follow the recommendations in the setup guide.
Getting the Most Out of Your Node
Like any open marketplace, simply showing up does not guarantee you customers or earnings. To maximize your reach with dVPN app users and overall revenue, you should:
- Provide quality service: Ultimately, a node's success depends on how well it can facilitate internet browsing, especially for multiple peers.
- Cater to supply and demand: For example, if your node is one of five hundred existing WireGuard data center nodes based in the United States, chances are you'll see less traffic.
- Meet the criteria for inclusion in subscription plans: Though some dVPNs make the entire Sentinel Node network available to their users, the selection available within most applications depends on on-chain subscription plans curated by the developers.
- Build up a brand/professional reputation for your operation: This is going the extra mile, but even giving your nodes similar provider-based monikers can attract a loyal subscriber base and repeat business.
While none of these points are necessarily mandatory for participation in the network, the fact is that you'll only get as much out of running nodes as you decide to put into it.
Subscription Plans
When it comes to dVPN applications, the marketplace freedom goes both ways. While you have the right to spin up a node and sell your product on the blockchain, dVPNs concurrently have the right to choose which nodes are available to their to users.
Thus, as we touched upon in the last section, you may have to meet certain service quality, pricing, or geographical criteria in order to appear in some apps.
The Chain as "Law"
Anything you can do with Sentinel is by definition permissible to do. Blockchains and distributed peer-to-peer networks are designed to be autonomous and self-contained, meaning there is no central authority policing behavior based on arbitrary off-chain criteria.
However the project, the node network, and subscription plan whitelisting are still driven by a particular ethos. The quest to find and remove vulnerabilities in the system is also a ongoing process. If you exploit these structural gaps and spin up nodes which deviate from the spirit of the rules in order to obtain an advantage within the marketplace, all the power to you—in fact, the network needs as much stress-testing as possible. Just don't be surprised if those gaps are discovered and removed!
Staying Involved
As we mentioned before, hosting dVPN Nodes doesn't require much in the way of sustained attention or hands-on maintenance; however, chain upgrades, new versions of the node software, and governance proposals do necessitate occasional backend tweaks.
We recommend joining the node host community on Telegram, the project's Discord server, or r/SentinelP2P; and following a Sentinel news resource like the official X account or P2P Newswire in order to stay on top of any urgent developments which may affect your node.
Return to the Main Page, or click the button below to continue to the next module.