Last week, we launched our incentivized testnet called Playing for Keeps — a chance to learn to stake and win KEEP by contributing to the community.

Anyone can join Play for Keeps, stake on the testnet, contribute to the community and start earning rewards from 100–100,000 KEEP.

What’s KEEP? The KEEP token is a work token. KEEP can be thought of like a taxi medallion, where ownership gives you an opportunity to stake and make money, though it does not guarantee financial return without your own labor. Here’s how the KEEP token works.

How do you Play for Keeps? Show us that you’re a good staker and community member both on-chain and on Discord, and you will earn KEEP tokens. Each month, a panel of community judges will recognize contributions that are eligible to receive KEEP. From translations to widgets to guides, there’s no contribution too small, as long as it supports the network. The main place we are gathering for Playing for Keeps to stake and learn from each other is our Keep Discord channel.

Playing for Keeps will run during 2020 as we pass milestones such as the mainnet launch rollout and the start of the KEEP public stakedrop on June 8.

• Ongoing — Playing for Keeps
• April 27 — Mainnet Launch
• June 8 — Stakedrop start

In fact, a major part of the initial stage of Playing for Keeps is the buildup to our stakedrop, which lets ETH holders earn KEEP by proving their ability to secure the Keep network. The Keep network uses the amount of KEEP staked by a user to power the random beacon, choosing random nodes to join new keeps, or small off-chain data containers. As nodes operate keeps, they earn fees for providing secure, private computation to the Ethereum network. Here’s how to set up a Keep network node.

What are you doing in 2020?

Now when you’re asked what you’re doing this year, you can answer: “Bringing BTC to Ethereum.” The first app built atop the Keep network is tBTC. As a community, we can make tBTC the first permissionless Bitcoin sidechain in production. Anyone will be able to deposit their BTC to take full advantage of Ethereum, and anyone with the capital and know-how will be able to earn fees staking and support the bridge.

A key way tBTC ensures trustlessness is by addressing counterparty risk. It uses a system of “signers’ groups” that allows tBTC to process transactions without a trusted middleman. For more on Keep’s role on tBTC, read here.

Normally, tBTC signers need to stake both KEEP and ETH. But the stakedrop allows people with no KEEP to act as signers using only their ETH, with the corresponding KEEP tokens earned over time. Of course, anyone who wins KEEP during Playing for Keeps can then stake those KEEP on the mainnet and also continue to earn more KEEP during the stakedrop by staking ETH.

Join the stakedrop on June 8th, 2020

Playing for Keeps involves learning to stake. Anyone who stakes up to 4 weeks on Ropsten, Ethereum’s testnet, will be eligible for an award. Here are explanations on how to set up a Keep network node and how the KEEP token works.

Community judges will also weigh in each month on the contributions they believe add most value to the network. We will be letting you know more about our judges as the game goes on. For now, we have some of our ideas to get you started:

• Documentation “for humans”. Help more people stake!
• Bug & security reports
• Improvements to the Keep client & contracts and the tBTC system
• Translations of documentation and websites
• Extensions to the Keep token dashboard
• Staking guides for different kinds of hardware
• a tBTC deposit explorer
• a tBTC liquidation auction dApp
• tBTC on Tornado Cash
• tBTC on DEXs, especially newer DEXs like Loopring
• a tBTC deposit widget based on tbtc.js, simplifying integration for new devs

On the translations side we‘d like to see:

• The actual i18n code done on tbtc.network and keep.network
• We’d like to see Russian, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, and Cantonese.

We also have specific terms and conditions for Playing for Keeps. But the best way to get involved is to join the Keep Discord channel and sign up for the June 8 stakedrop.

Let’s Play for Keeps!