🎉 Introducing Workspaces in Calimero!
In Web3, decentralization involves spreading control, governance, and trust beyond a single authority. We're excited to announce a significant step in this direction with the introduction of Workspaces on our private chain. This aligns with our mission to empower users, communities, and businesses with the tools to fully own and control their data.
What Are Workspaces?
Previously, Calimero's private chain operated in a centralized manner, managed entirely by our central entity. Validators were run by Calimero, requiring users to place their trust in us that these validators were not malevolent. While this approach had advantages like enhanced privacy and compatibility with external blockchains, it did limit network control. With Workspaces, we aim to provide companies and similar entities the opportunity to establish private networks, validated exclusively by a select group of trusted entities. This model promotes a balanced, decentralized approach to network control, ensuring increased flexibility and security.
Workspaces are under Organizations. Organizations are the top-level groups handling billing for your workspaces. Each organization can manage one or more workspaces. In contrast to our earlier model, Workspaces bring in shared ownership and decentralization. Each Workspace has at least one validator which is validating transactions, and thus participates in running of the network (chain). These validators contribute tokens to access the network, and voting power is equally distributed.
Why Should You Be Excited - Key Highlights
The introduction of Workspaces brings several exciting changes to the Calimero private shard:
- Flexible Validator Management: You can freely adjust validators within workspaces while maintaining a constant total staked amount.
- Cross-Cluster Deployment: With Workspaces, validators can now be deployed across different clusters and cloud providers, offering greater flexibility.
- Enhanced Security: Each Workspace possesses its private keys, enhancing security. Key management systems are deployed in each Workspace.
- Collaboration Opportunities: You can invite users and collaborators to your workspaces, fostering collaboration within your network.
Types of Workspaces:
We offer two types of workspace to cater to diverse needs:
- Developer Workspace: Perfect for developmental purposes.
- Professional Workspace: Ideal for mainnet and testnet deployments.
How to Get Started with Workspaces
When creating a workspace, both the Organization and the Workspace have roles to play. The Organization will provide necessary details like its name and billing specifics. Organizations are billed directly, with the billed amount determined by the sum of the costs of the Workspaces within the Organization.
The Workspace, on the other hand, handles technical configurations, such as the number of nodes and hosting preferences. Each workspace has a master account name and a Top-Level Account (TLA) for identity and functionality within the system.
Our comprehensive documentation (don’t worry, we've made it easy-to-read) provides a step-by-step guide on setting up Workspaces on Calimero Console. Do give it a read!
Inviting collaborators to your organization and workspace
At Calimero, we know that in a decentralized system, the strength isn't just in the technology; it's in the community. That's why we've made it super easy for you to invite others to join your Organization and Workspace. This helps create a more connected and strong ecosystem.
You can invite people to your organization and also choose the specific workspaces you want them to be a part of. Once you send an invitation, they'll get a notification. Plus, you can decide what they can and can't do by giving them different levels of permission. Collaborators can either join your organization or create a new one if they need to manage their billing. It's all about making teamwork effortless!
You can also invite organizations to join your chain, expanding your network of collaborators.
We've also got a dashboard to help you easily manage your organization and workspaces.
For detailed instructions on inviting others and managing your organization and workspaces, check out our documentation. We're here to make things easy for you!
Technologies and Concepts
Here are some of the key concepts we work with in relation to workspaces:
- Treasury: An account that holds the majority of network native tokens. This is the source of tokens that are staked by validators.
- Mutli-sig: A multisig contract is a smart contract that has a list of keys that can sign the contract in order to approve a transaction from the contract. Treasury and Multi-sig contracts are combined into a single contract with both functionalities/responsibilities.
- Registrar: A special account that creates Top Level Accounts (TLAs) and all the registrar calls need to be called by the Treasury/Multi-sig account
- KMS (Key Management System): Implemented as a HashiCorp vault, the KMS securely stores private keys and enables transaction signing without exposing the keys.
Wrap Up
The introduction of Workspaces not only redefines ownership and participation but also addresses challenges in network operation, security, and data management. To start creating your own workspace and private network, head over to our comprehensive documentation to get started!