Bot Synergy: Node Status Bot + Farmerbot
Table of Contents
Introduction
Hi farmers of the ThreeFold Grid!
Since the release of the Farmerbot we often have farmers facing some dilemma: should I or should I not use the Farmerbot to save on eletricity bills but risk losing some farming rewards if issues arise?
Being a farmer myself with 7 nodes at a given location, I used the Farmerbot in the past, but at some point I stopped using it. Why? Because some nodes were not being woken up within the 30 minutes time frame and I only learned about this at the end of the minting period, when I received my (diminished) farming rewards.
Seeing the price of TFT pumping at 40 cents one day, I thought: OK let’s do without the Farmerbot because, well those TFT will most likely be the currency of the future, if we listen to Sam Altman’s take on this, and I want to farm as much TFT as possible before minting stops on Stellar!
But one thing changed my mind lately and I thought I’d share it with you. @scott recently made some updates to the Node Status bot, and coupled with the Farmerbot, I think there is no longer a situation where farmers must decide to use or not to use the Farmerbot. It’s not an all or nothing at all situation anymore. There is some compromise possible. Let’s see about that.
Pros and Cons of the Farmerbot
An advantage of the Farmerbot is that you can save on electricity bill since your nodes are not running at all time.
A disadvantage of the Farmerbot is that nodes need to be frequently woken up and within that distribution, at some point a node can miss a wake-up call within the 30 minutes time frame and this can lead to loss of farming rewards.
But do not despair. There is a compromise possible now.
New Update to the Minting Rule
Things have changed lately as ThreeFold listened to the farmers community. This is why we passed a GEP that allows a node to have a “free” 30 minute wake-up call miss per month:
Minting will be slashed for 1 month if the node cannot wake up within 30-minutes twice within the same minting period
In short, for a node to lose farming rewards for a given minting period, a node needs to fail 2 different 30 minute wake-up calls. This allows farmers some leeway: a node can miss one of those 30 minutes wake-up window, and at this point the farmer can decide to remove that node from the Farmerbot list, ensuring that the node has complete uptime for the remaining part of the minting period.
But how can a Farmer know if their nodes miss a 30 minute wake-up window? Well, you might have guessed it, but here come the savior of the minting period: the updated Node Status bot.
Node Status Bot Update
If you’re a farmer of the ThreeFold community, you know that @scott is a regular lifesaver in the Telegram Farmers chat. Well, he did it again.
Scott recently shared an updated version of the Node Status bot: now the bot sends you a warning when a node fails to wake up within the 30 minutes window.
Here’s an example of such warning:
In practice, this means that now a farmer can run all their nodes on the Farmerbot, and when they get a warning from the Node Status bot, they can decide to remove the specific node of the Farmerbot schedule.
Not only this, but you can also run the command /violations to see if your nodes have any violations in the current minting period!
Here’s an example of that command:
How to Remove a Node from the Farmerbot
To remove a node from the Farmerbot routine, simply remove the node ID in the config.yml file and restart the bot. If you’ve followed the docs on this or set a systemd service, the command is simply:
systemctl restart farmerbot
In Brief
Here’s how I work with the Farmerbot and the Node Status bot:
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I deploy the Farmerbot for all the nodes within my farm
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If I get a warning from the Node Status bot concerning the 30 minutes rule, I remove the specific node from the Farmerbot routine
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Next minting period, I can add back the problematic nodes on the Farmerbot routine and check if it happens again
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Of course, farmers should try and understand what happened to their nodes to miss the wake-up call.
Last minting period, I started with 7 nodes on the Farmerbot but received 2 minting violation notices from 2 different nodes. At this point, I removed those 2 nodes from the Farmerbot and after this, I didn’t receive any violation warnings. This means that I could save on electricity bills for 5 out of 7 nodes. That’s what we call a compromise.
We can easily come up with a mathematical equation concerning this process:
Node Status bot + Farmerbot = Happy Farming
References
You can read the docs on the Farmerbot here.
You can learn how to deploy your own Node Status bot here.
You can try the Node Status bot here.
