Summary

The Spammening was a collaborative effort between Amforc and Parity Technologies. It happened in various phases, culminating in the public spammening stress test which resulted in the Polkadot ecosystem obtaining very solid TPS benchmarks on a live network.

You can see a recap of the main event of the spammening here.

Prior to the main event of the spammening, other stress tests were carried out on the Polkadot and Kusama relay chains. You can see evidence of the spammening over on Subscan:

Polkadot

Kusama

Funds for carrying out the spammening were approved under Polkadot referendum #1169 and Kusama referendum #456. It should be noted that Amforc received no compensation for their time involvement in this project. This referendum fixes that and rewards Amforc for their time, efforts, initiative, planning, coordination, and execution. Amforcs' scope was primarily focused on the relay chain spammening.

The amount proposed in this referendum is the same size as a previous ecosystem agent tip proposed under referendum 135, which was approved via OpenGov.

Details

The Amforc team carried out the following tasks as part of their efforts:

Structure and concept for relay chain Spammening
Proposal preparation
Fee mechanism research and testing
Script for distribution, transactions, and collection of funds (their own implementation because the Python library was too slow)
Coordination with other stakeholders (a lot of back and forth because at the beginning, some people from parity and eco were against it)
Multiple test runs, on Westend and coordination with Parity. Each run on Westend, Kusamas and Polkadot required the setup of their own dedicated 18 RPC nodes.
Identified various problems: RPC nodes are not capable of handling the publication of many txs at once; while the relay chain didn't halt completely, Amforc was basically able to disrupt all parachains since they were unusable (meaning block time went up really fast); fee increase mechanism doesn't trigger as defined in spec
Back and forth with parity due to the found issues and multiple runs, so that they can troubleshoot

Closing Thoughts

The Polkadot DAO should reward ecosystem agents whose initiatives bring value to the Polkadot ecosystem. It is clear that Amforc’s involvement in kickstarting and participating in the spammening was extremely valuable for the ecosystem.

I personally am looking forward to the next iteration of the spammening on Polkadot. P.S. wen Elastic Scaling?

The Spammening was a special event involving Amforc and Parity Technologies to test how well the Polkadot network can handle many transactions.
This event included different phases and a big public test that showed strong performance of the Polkadot ecosystem.
Before the main test, Amforc did other smaller tests on the Polkadot and Kusama networks.
Amforc worked hard without getting paid during this project and is now asking for 45,000 USDT as a reward for their efforts.
They helped design the structure of the event, prepared proposals, and coordinated with others to run the tests.
Some problems were found during the tests, including issues with the network's ability to handle many transactions at the same time.
The project showed the importance of rewarding those who help improve the Polkadot ecosystem.

The Spammening Reward for Amforc

Summary

Details

Closing Thoughts