Classifications

Classifications represent the lifecycle stages of a subnet node in the Hypertensor network. Each classification defines what a node is permitted to do or what must be accomplished to graduate—whether it's participating in consensus, earning emissions, or validating others. Nodes progress through these classifications over time, as each classification has a minimum length of epochs, and some classifications have goals that must be accomplished to graduate.

Each classification stage acts as a filter or checkpoint to prevent 66% takeovers, spam, sybil attacks, and gives subnets the ability to design ways to validate nodes are performing tasks and responsibilities before they can receive incentives (other than just assuming they are a node just because they are registered and submitting data on-chain), etc.

When a subnet is in the registration period, all nodes that activate are automatically placed in the Validator class.

Registered

Trigger: Registration (extrinsic: register_subnet_node )

Subnet nodes that register in an active subnet will be registered as a Registered classified node. Registered nodes are staked participants and are not included in the consensus; therefore, they do not receive emissions.

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Idle

Trigger: Activation (extrinsic: activate_subnet_node )

After the registration period, the subnet node can activate itself on its start_block in addition to the grace epochs into the Idle classification. The subnet validator node is locked in this classification for several epochs, which is unique to each subnet based on the QueueClassificationEpochs.

If the subnet is full and the subnet has no node removal policy in place, the node removal policy didn't remove anyone, or the subnet is paused, calling activate_subnet_node will place the node back into the queue.

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Included

Trigger: Automatic

Nodes are upgraded to Included once they are in the Idle class for the IdleClassificationEpochs.

Included-classified subnet nodes are required to be included in consensus; otherwise, they will increase their node penalties (and can be removed if they surpass the maximum allowable penalties the subnet sets). For each epoch included in the consensus, penalties will be decreased by one.

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Validator

Trigger: Automatic

Nodes are upgraded to Validator once they are in the Included class, and consecutively included in the in-consensus scoring data for the length of IncludedClassificationEpochs, and have no penalties.

Validator classified nodes can:

• Be elected subnet validator node

• Attest consensus data

• Receive emissions