Introducing the TF (Chain) Admin Portal – for farmers and grid users!

Last week, we shared an update on What’s new in TF Grid 3.0.1 – and the path to mainnet! There’s been a lot of exciting progress by the team, and we wanted to share with you some more specifics where we can – starting with the admin portal!

What is the admin portal?

One of the requests from farmers and grid users was a to have a simpler user experience. The admin portal (aka TF Chain UI) is a response to that feedback, a graphical user interface for farmers and grid users on top of the TF Chain.

The admin portal is the starting point for anyone to start working with the TF Grid. For Farmers in particular they now have a much simpler way to create a farming identity and then connect their infrastructure to the ThreeFold Grid 3.0. It is a one stop shop to start a farm. Beyond that, it’s a way for any TF Grid user to create their account on the TF Chain, get a Twin, and get started (testing for now) on the TF Grid 3.0 devnet or testnet.

Find links to get started at the bottom!

What does the admin portal do?

The admin portal is a place for TF Grid users to:

Create an account on the TF Chain and a digital twin to start smart contracting on TF Chain (allowing you to also link to your IP address for added security).

Screenshot 2021-11-25 at 09.08.29

Operate a bridge between Stellar and TF Chain on Parity Substrate (deposit TFT from Stellar, or return unused TFT to the Stellar chain, the bridge is active in both directions)

Screen Shot 2021-11-25 at 3.39.08 PM

Screen Shot 2021-11-25 at 3.46.51 PM

For farmers: create and manage your farm(s), provide IPv4 addresses available for your farm(s), attach a Stellar wallet for TFT payouts, and a link to download the bootloader for testnet and devnet (mainnet is on its way).

Screenshot 2021-11-25 at 09.12.28

The portal also links to the new capacity explorer, which we’ll share more about early next week.

Screenshot 2021-11-25 at 09.16.37

How is this an improvement over the old process?

Previously, all of these tools existed, but not always in the same place or with a clear and easy-to-use UX/UI. We’ve tested this portal with people of all technical levels, and the response has been great! We believe the portal is a huge step forward for anyone using or managing the ThreeFold Grid.

More improvements will come in the next versions. As an example, we’re planning for you to be able to see the connected nodes linked to your farm with their status, earned tokens, etc.

Get started

The portal is currently available on devnet and testnet. You can also find information on the portal in our library here. Please note, you’ll need to install the Polkadot{.js} extension and create or import an account in order to get started.

4 Likes

Great post! Thank you.

I read and tried it, and it works fine for a twin and a farm. Indeed, it is user friendly.

At first, the farm did not work while the twin did. But then I reinstalled the wallet on polkadot.js and all worked good.

**

Does it come with a 'one TFT try out"? If so, it might be an interesting marketing campaign to invite people to try out the TF Grid. The “1 TFT gets you…” chart in this link is very catchy and sums up nicely what the token can do: https://library.threefold.me/info/manual/#/threefold__threefold_token

image

We could even have a system/program where farmers can give access of (up to) one TFT worth on their farm/server to users, and then, if/when users like the experience, they could rent more space (this time with spendable TFT).

Thus, it would create a link between the farmers and the users, as well as give an incentive for users to discover the platform, and, yes, potential cultivating revenue for farmers! Also, it would not be free TFT that they can spend elsewhere, but available storage and compute units shared by the farmers. Thus, it would not lead to abuse for monetary gain and could help spread the word that Threefold is the new Internet.

I presume, some farmers without actual cultivating revenue would not mind sharing some space in the hope of getting new buyer(s). There could also be a setting where after a given period of time, the allowed TFT goes back to the main TFT pool of the farmer if a said user has not used it all. Farmers could also set the maximum of TFT-equivalent space on their farm they are willing to share for this project. It’s just an idea but I thought it might be fun to share.

Once again, thanks for the post.

2 Likes

Hi there, thanks for the reply, the positive feedback, and the great idea!

I’m happy to hear the experience was easy. Re: the farm not working the first time, is it something that should be clarified in the manual?

And re: the idea, I really love it. Will have to speak with a few people internally on a few different points, so please give me some time. But I will report back here!

Great! Happy to read this.

About the farm not working the first time, it might be that I just rushed the process on my side and was not patient enough for the page to load or something like that. I am not sure if it’s really a bug on the admin portal side. Maybe we’ll have a clearer idea of the situation if others report such situations.

But indeed maybe you could add that if it doesn’t work the first time, it might help to reinstall the wallet (basically, remove the account and then re-enter the seed phrase, that’s what I did and it worked).

It’s amazing to see how Threefold is growing. Thanks again for the wonderful post.

2 Likes

Just wanted to say I haven’t forgotten about your idea! :pray: It may be some time, but will keep you updated. Thank you again!

2 Likes