Decentralized by design · Staked by commitment

Run a node. Earn SHRD.

ShardKeep is only as decentralized as its operators. Three tiers, real stake, transparent rewards, and slashing for anyone who betrays uptime. Pick the node you can commit to and join the network.

Apply to run a node Compare tiers

Sentry

Lightweight. Laptop-class. Performs verification tasks. Best-effort uptime. The entry point.

Bastion

The workhorse. Holds encrypted shards. Answers WSS challenges. 99% uptime required.

Warden

Network coordinator. Issues session tokens, routes retrieval. 99.5% uptime required. Admin-vetted.

Uptime commitment scales with role. Wardens run the network; Bastions run storage; Sentries run at home. The bond matches the responsibility.

Entry point

Sentry

A Sentry is the smallest node on the ShardKeep network — runs in your browser or on any PC you leave on. Sentries earn SHRD by executing verification tasks: the Warden layer assigns tasks during each heartbeat, the Sentry challenges a target Bastion over WSS, and the result is reported back at the next heartbeat. Score = completion rate × uptime.

Bond
10,000 SHRD
~$10 at target peg
Reward floor
100 SHRD/epoch
Minimum when actively participating
Reward ceiling
2,000 SHRD/epoch
Epoch = 14 days; 26 per year
Uptime
Best-effort
Lightweight participation
Performance floor
0.50
Score below = zero reward
Exit notice
48 hours
Bond 100% returned
Recommended hw
Any modern PC
Or the browser extension

What you do

  • Send heartbeats every ~30 seconds; receive verification tasks assigned by Wardens in the response.
  • Challenge a target Bastion over WSS to prove it's holding the shard it claims to.
  • Report the challenge outcome at the next heartbeat; RewardEngine scores your completion rate at epoch end.

Ideal for

  • Users who believe in the network and want a stake.
  • Developers who want a local node to test client integrations against.
  • Community members who want to earn SHRD without datacenter costs.
The workhorse

Bastion

Bastions are the backbone of the network. Each one stores encrypted shard fragments on behalf of users across the world. A Bastion doesn't know whose shards it holds, what's inside them, or how to reassemble them. It just stores ciphertext and earns SHRD per shard, per epoch.

Bond
100,000 SHRD
~$100 at target peg
Reward floor
2,000 SHRD/epoch
Minimum when actively serving
Reward ceiling
20,000 SHRD/epoch
Excess flows to Project Bank
Uptime required
99%
Rolling, per epoch
Scoring
Pass rate × uptime
WSS challenge results per block
Exit notice
14 days
Shards redistributed first
Recommended hw
2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM · 100 GB SSD
Home server or small VPS

What you do

  • Store opaque ciphertext blobs (you never see plaintext or user metadata).
  • Respond to retrieval requests routed through Wardens.
  • Answer WSS challenges issued throughout the 30-minute block — your pass rate drives your reward share.
  • Emit heartbeats so the protocol knows you're alive; survive a chaos-engineered network as nodes come and go.

Ideal for

  • Homelab operators who already run 24/7 hardware.
  • Small VPS providers looking to monetize spare capacity.
  • Privacy-minded hosts who want to be paid for being useful without being trusted.
Limited seats · Admin-vetted

Warden

Wardens coordinate the network. They route retrieval requests to the right Bastions, validate heartbeats, issue session JWTs after wallet auth, and assign verification tasks to Sentries. The most capital-intensive tier — seats are limited and admin-vetted.

Bond
500,000 SHRD
~$500 at target peg
Reward floor
10,000 SHRD/epoch
Minimum when actively serving
Reward ceiling
100,000 SHRD/epoch
Excess flows to Project Bank
Uptime required
99.5%
Strictest tier — coordinator SLA
Approval
Admin-vetted
DevNet first, then MainNet
Exit notice
28 days
Coordination responsibility transferred
Recommended hw
4 vCPU · 8 GB RAM · redundant net
Two-datacenter failover recommended

What you do

  • Accept wallet-signed auth challenges and issue short-lived session JWTs.
  • Route retrieval requests across the Bastion network with geographic diversity constraints.
  • Issue verification tasks to Sentries; aggregate WSS challenge results into block scores.
  • Coordinate shard re-balancing when Bastions come and go.

Ideal for

  • Infrastructure operators with existing 24/7 hosting expertise.
  • Community leaders who want to invest serious capital in the protocol's health.
  • Commercial partners who will eventually offer white-label vaulting to their users.
Rewards

Epoch-based. Performance-weighted. Capped.

Every 14 days, the network runs a full reward epoch. Each node's share is computed as challenge pass rate × uptime factor within its tier's emission pool, then clamped to the per-node floor and ceiling.

Node Floor (min/epoch) Ceiling (max/epoch) Share of emission pool Annual pool (Year 1)
Sentry 100 SHRD 2,000 SHRD 15.0% 7.2 M SHRD
Bastion 2,000 SHRD 20,000 SHRD 25.0% 12.0 M SHRD
Warden 10,000 SHRD 100,000 SHRD 30.0% 14.4 M SHRD

Epoch mechanics

  • 14-day epochs running back-to-back (26 epochs/year).
  • Each epoch = 672 blocks of 30 minutes, each with up to 20 challenges.
  • Rewards enter a 14-day cooldown after the epoch ends — runs in parallel with the next epoch, not serially.

Emission curve

  • Total emission pool: 600 M SHRD, drawn at 8% annual rate in Year 1.
  • Halving every 65 epochs (~2.5 years) — emissions compound-decay over time.
  • Performance floor: score below 0.50 = zero reward for that epoch. Show up, or don't get paid.

Additional bond-holder staking yield (13.3% of emissions) accrues to all three tiers in proportion to bonded SHRD. See the tokenomics page for the full emission schedule.

Bonds & slashing

Capital at risk is the whole point.

A node without a bond is a promise; a bond is a fact. Operators back their commitment with staked SHRD. Bonds are returned in full on graceful exit. Slashing is a planned enforcement layer (schema and economics below) and will come online before MainNet.

Bond is collateral, not cost

Your bond is locked while you're active and returned on graceful exit. It is not consumed by operating — it is purely a skin-in-the-game signal. Staking yield (13.3% of emissions) accrues to all bond holders.

Graceful exit returns 100%

Announce your intent to exit — 28 days for Warden, 14 days for Bastion, 48 hours for Sentry — hand off shards, pass audit, and your bond returns in full. The protocol rewards orderly departures.

Slashing is capped (planned)

Each failure class has a published slash amount. Sentry slashes are capped at 25% of bond; Warden/Bastion have tiered slashing for data loss, SLA breaches, and collusion. No surprises. Schema is in place; enforcement ships before MainNet.

Data loss is the third rail

Losing shards is the single worst thing a Bastion can do. Combined with the K-of-N architecture, one failure is usually tolerable — but persistent data loss will slash hard and evict the node.

Planned slash schedule Planned · Pre-MainNet

OffenseSlash (Warden/Bastion)Sentry capDestination
Serving corrupt shard data100%25%Project Bank
Extended unannounced downtime (>72h)25%25%Project Bank
Failed heartbeat proofs (>50% in 30 days)10%10%Project Bank
Collusion attempt (anomaly detected)100%25%Project Bank

All slashed tokens flow to the Project Bank — nothing is burned. Status: bond_amount_shrd and slashed_total columns are already live in the shardkeep_node_stakes schema; the enforcement handlers ship before MainNet bonding opens.

Ready to participate?

Seats are limited.
DevNet is where it begins.

Every operator starts on DevNet. We onboard via Discord after a short conversation: what you want to run, where you'll run it, and how we can help you succeed. Bonds are paid in DevNet-SHRD for the trial period.

Open the application form Read operator docs