Phase two of our token portal rollout is live! 🐀 Starting today, badge holders will have first-class access to Ratspeak infrastructure across the network by enrolling in optional perks: - Increased offline message limits Without a cloud, there is no offline messaging. To solve that, the network uses "propagation nodes", which are the stack that enables messages to be delivered to users while they're offline through an encrypted store-and-forward concept. The issue is that propagation nodes can sometimes be unreliable, and even if reliable, often have strict limits to prevent abuse. Ratspeak already provides propagation nodes running on dedicated servers as a public good, however, starting today badge holders will receive a size limit bump for messages, from 2MB -> 10MB compared to regular network participants. - Priority offline message storage Typically, messages stored offline in a propagation node have a policy to evict messages under certain constraints, such as time or under heavy load/usage. For badge holders across all of our offline inbox infrastructure, messages stored have a relaxed eviction priority, so when typical standard messages are culled under heavy-load or certain network conditions, prioritized messages are the last ones to be replaced. Message storage time is also increased for badge holders, from 30 days -> 60 days*. *Limited to the badge-holder only propagation node. - Mailbox Alert System With mailbox alerts, badge holders can receive a friendly alert letting them know they have messages waiting for them. Typically these sync automatically, however it's useful under certain network conditions when auto-syncing may not be desirable. In addition to that, holders can check if they have messages waiting for them directly through the onchain portal section of the website. Accessing the content messages from the website or knowing the sender of the message are not accessible through the portal - our infrastructure has no technical capability to obtain that info due to the cryptographic nature of the protocol. In the near future, alerts will be expanded to consider things like e-mail notifications for convenience, onchain activity alerts, and other useful things - all opt-in of course. - Future Perks The above is the early utility perks for badge holders. As we move forward, we will continue to elevate these and evaluate what perks we can make possible without creating barriers-to-entry for the network. This will be an on-going effort, alongside our long term effort, which is constant exploration and R&D into network incentives and other areas where the token may play a more critical role in securing and growing the network.