Nosana: The Solana Platform Providing Decentralized CI/CD Tooling

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As app development expands, the industry demands DevOps tools with enhanced reliability and security.

Introducing Nosana, a Solana dApp providing CI/CD tooling to streamline software development in a truly decentralized manner.

Using Nosana, community members can lease their CPUs and earn passive income allowing developers to build and manage apps on the Nosana network. By leveraging crowdsourced compute power, Nosana empowers developers with a decentralized network that always stays on.

Let’s dive deeper into Nosana, exploring its CI/CD tooling stack –the systems that support it– and the vibrant ecosystem of open-source enthusiasts Nosana is cultivating.

What is Nosana?

Nosana is a CI/CD (Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery) dApp, enabling developers to execute fully automated pipelines and ship and maintain code.

Under the hood, Nosana leverages decentralized physical infrastructure (DePin), allowing community members to set up nodes and lease their CPU power to the Nosnana network. In exchange, node operators receive NOS rewards (Nosana’s native token).

Nosana is currently in private beta but plans to launch on mainnet in the near future.

What’s CI/CD?

CI/CD, which stands for continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment, is a workflow that aims to reduce the number of software bugs and user errors in certain stages of the development pipeline.

Here’s a breakdown of each term:

Continuous Integration (CI) – Continuous Integration (CI) refers to the practice of frequently integrating code changes from multiple developers into a shared repository. CI allows developers to collaborate more efficiently and resolve any conflicts or errors early in the development process.

Continuous Delivery (CD) – Continuous Delivery (CD) focuses on automating the process of delivering software to the staging environment. (CD) allows you to test your code in a production-like environment, and catch bugs early.

Continuous Deployment (CD) – Continuous Deployment (CD) takes the concept of Continuous Delivery further by automating the release of software changes directly to production. CD allows you to deploy your code as soon as it is ready.

CI/CD tools automate various tasks associated with version control systems such as Git, empowering developers to effectively test & track changes made to their code and collaborate more seamlessly.

What’s a CI/CD pipeline?

CI/CD workflows are organized within pipelines. A pipeline is a set of tasks executed to build, test, and deploy an application. Pipelines take place within Containers which are instances that provide replicable, isolated environments to run pipelines. Users who want to replicate a container for another app can save templates of containers known as images.

Here’s what the process of a typical CI/CD pipeline looks like:

Commit – The commit stage involves submitting new code changes to the version control system, such as Git. When a developer pushes a commit to the repository, it triggers the CI/CD pipeline.
Build – During the build stage, the pipeline compiles the code and performs any necessary tasks to prepare it for testing, ensuring it is in a deployable state.
Test – In the test stage, the pipeline executes automated tests to verify that the code functions as intended, checking for potential issues or bugs.
Staging – The staging stage represents the second automated stage in the pipeline. It involves creating a replica of the production environment known as the staging environment. The staging environment ensures that the application operates in a similar setup as the production environment, allowing for thorough testing and validation.
Deployment – The deployment stage handles the release of your code to the end users. Deployment involves various methods, such as rolling deployments to a set of servers, publishing to app stores, or following traditional release procedures.
Monitor – The monitoring stage in the pipeline focuses on continuously observing the software’s performance and behavior. Monitoring helps to ensure that the application functions as expected by alerting developers if it detects any issues.

Nosana ecosystem

When Nosna officially goes live, users can access the network using Nosna’s native $NOS token and NFT (the Nosana Burner Phone).

$NOS Token

$NOS, Nosana’s native token, which has a total supply of 100,000,000, powers the network in a couple of ways:

CI/CD pipelines – With NOS, users can run containerized pipelines on a “pay as you go” basis.
Node Rewards – Nosana rewards node operators with NOS tokens.
Staking – Nosana distributes 2% of the platform’s fees to NOS holders who stake their tokens.

Nosana Burner Phone NFT

The “Burner Phones” serve as Nosana’s official NFT collection. However, they transcend typical NFTs; they function as the key to operating a node on the mainnet.

Individual Burner Phones also hold special boosts, which are special abilities that enhance platform abilities for the holder.

Currently, there are 3 boosts, which include:

Priority Queue – This boost allows nodes to skip places in the Nodes Queue.
Discount – This boost allows you to pay less $NOS fees for posting a new job.
Extra Tickets – This boost gives you more tickets in all future raffles that use the ticket system.

The first mint consisted of 50 burner phones, which were awarded to stakers in Nosnana’s Staking & Rewards program’s mint pass lottery. Prospective node operators seeking a Nosana Burner Phone NFT currently have two methods to get one:

Staking NOS
Secondary Marketplaces

Staking NOS

Nosana mints a Burner Phone quarterly and to be eligible, you’ll need to stake&lock NOS. By locking your NOS for longer you’ll receive more token rewards and also have a higher chance of winning.

Secondary Marketplaces

To purchase a Burner Phone you can pick one up on the secondary market. You can find a Burner Phone on NFT on the following marketplaces, including:

MagicEden
Tensor Trade
Hadeswap

Integrations & feature updates

Nosana has introduced several updates to its platform over the past few months that improve Nosana’s functionality and security. These updates include:

Secrets Manager
Squads Protocol Integration (Multisig Flow)

Secrets Manager

The Secrets Manager is a feature that allows developers to store sensitive information such as database passwords, API keys, or other credentials required during development. After storing the secret you can grant nodes access to use these secrets throughout the pipeline without the need to hardcode them in your code or configuration files.

Squads Protocol Integration (Multisig Flow)

Squads protocol, the multisig standard on Solana, integrated with Nosana to introduce the Nosana Multisig Flow. With Nosana’s new Multisig Flow, developers can easily integrate multisig into their smart contract development workflow.

Multisig, which stands for multi-signature, is a technique that requires approval from multiple parties before executing a transaction or action. Multi-sig management for your Solana programs allows you to protect your program authority key by dividing it among multiple trusted parties. You can also secure your program upgrade process by making proposals and having your multisig signers vote on them, avoiding a single point of failure.

How to buy $NOS

To purchase $NOS, you’ll need an SPL wallet (i.e. Phantom or Solflare). Using your wallet you can purchase $NOS on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on the Solana network, including:

Jupiter (swap-aggregator)
Raydium
Orca

How to stake $NOS

$NOS holders can stake & lock their $NOS to receive more tokens. When users stake & lock $NOS their positions are represented as xNOS. The longer users lock their tokens the higher xNOS score they can receive. Additionally, locking $NOS for the max time of 365 days allows for a 4.0x boost in earnings (85% APY).

Your xNOS score also lets you qualify for quarterly Burner Phone NFT giveaways.

1. Visit https://app.nosana.io/stake, and connect your SPL wallet.

2. Select the amount of NOS you’d like to stake

3. Set your unstake period (max time: 365 days).

4. Click “Stake NOS.”

How to set up a pipeline with Nosana

To get started developing with Nosana you will need a GitHub account. You can also access Nosana using an SPL Wallet, like Phantom Wallet, but you will still need to connect a GitHub account to access your repos.

Getting started

1. Visit App.Nosana.io and connect your SPL Wallet or Github account (for this tutorial we’ll connect our Phantom Wallet).

2. Click account settings and select the Github icon (underneath your profile picture) to connect your Github account. You will be redirected to Github, where you will grant Nosana access to your Github account.

3. Click “Authorize Nosana Platform,” to give Nosana access to your account, and you will be redirected back to Nosana.

Import your repository

1. Click “Add Repository,” and you will be redirected to Github to install Nosana and grant it permission to access your repositories.

2. Click “Install & Authorize,” and you will be redirected back to Nosana to select the repository for your pipeline.

3. Select the repository for your pipeline, and click “Add selected” to continue.

Run your CI/CD pipeline

When you add your repository for the first time, Nosana will give you a list of templates you can use for your pipeline.

1. Select a template (for this tutorial we’ll use the blank template).

2. Click “Commit the changes” to import your template and begin running your pipeline.

Congratulations, you’ve successfully launched your first pipeline!

Conclusion

With the number of Solana developers growing ~32% from 2,178 developers in 2021 to 2,800 in 2022, decentralized infrastructure like Nosana is increasingly essential. Nosana holds the potential to become a cornerstone of the Web3 ecosystem, empowering developers worldwide to create and deliver software efficiently.

Through its CI/CD tooling stack and integration of blockchain technology, Nosana meets market standards for functionality while enhancing security and reliability. As Nosana continues to refine its features and expand its ecosystem, the future of Solana development appears promising.

Sources

July 14, 2023

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