Proposal Started - May 31st 2024
Proposal Released - June 5th 2024
A proposal to modify the founder rewards to remove over-rewarding of inactive founders.
Why is this necessary? What is the rationale?
In order to properly explain the need for this reward modification, one must take a look back. Back to the creation of the Qortal Project. In those days Qortal was merely a concept, a concept with a few years of coding behind it in order to make it a reality, but still just a concept. No one could have predicted exactly what would play out over the time post-release, and no one knew how any of the planned ideas for the project would fare given the test of time.
The concept of founder rewards was relatively straightforward. Founder rewards were meant to provide incentive for the founder accounts to be minting (as Founder accounts were essential to early security of the Qortal Minting consensus mechanism), and providing the extra security they do by way of the ‘effectiveMintingLevel’ assigned to accounts that have the ‘founder flag’. This was crucial at the start of the project, moreso than it is today.
Founder accounts were NOT merely ‘gifts’ to those that contributed something that was required in order to reach project launch as intended, they were a crucial security consideration for the early-day Qortal consensus. Remember, Qortal has a consensus mechanism unlike any other chain, and as such every precaution needed to be made in order to ensure the consensus would function as required, and keep everything as secure and functional as it could be.
Founder accounts mint with an ‘effectiveMintingLevel’ of 10, meaning they are given a ‘pretend’ level in regard to block signing only. Without this essential addition in the early days, there would have been potential concerns regarding nefarious intent and attempting to leverage what is called a ‘51% attack’. This attack could cause issues, and as such was important to prevent.
Founder rewards were given to those who provided something that was essential to the project’s successful Genesis. These people provided any piece of the puzzle to allow the project’s launch to take place.
The founders were also believed to be those who would continue to put great effort toward the project in one way or another, which was expected of them. Therefore the founder rewards were planned to run ‘until the highest minting tier had minters’. The ‘extra’ that was meant to go toward whatever tier didn’t have minters, would instead go to the founders. This is how it was planned, and this is how it has been.
Unfortunately, many of the founders over the nearly 4 years since Genesis, have not come through with their continued efforts. Some have fallen silent, and in a few extreme cases, some have actively damaged the project in one way or another. (No further information will be given in regard to these negative founder actions, as that is not the intent of this proposal.)
As the founder reward concept has not played out in the fashion it was intended to, a modification therein makes sense. The concept of Qortal rewards overall is to reward those who CONTRIBUTE to the project. Founders are included in this, and as such, with the multitude of now inactive founders (who are only minting and doing nothing else of value to the project), logic dictates that the over-rewarding of those founders should end.
Over-rewarding of any one group is not acceptable to the project ethos, and must be dealt with upon being realized. In this case, the issue has been realized for a while, and plenty of time was given for that realization to effect change in the behavior of those involved. Unfortunately, none of the inactive founders have subsequently made themselves active. Now, there is no reason to allow the additional rewards to continue.
Over-Rewards Shouldn’t Exist on Qortal
As mentioned above, the concept of Qortal is to reward those who CONTRIBUTE to the project in a meaningful fashion. The first stage was minting. Minting was also gamed, and as such is targeted with a proposal being released along with this one, that will solve that problem. The time has come for all over-rewarding on Qortal to cease.
A Simple Change With Big Results
This proposal is for a relatively straightforward modification to the rewards that come from the ‘minting tiers without minters’, which are currently given to the Founder accounts by the Qortal Minting Consensus Mechanism. Simply put, instead of those rewards going to the founder accounts, they will be distributed to the two ‘most important groups’ on Qortal, providing necessary services to the network.
By doing this, those who are contributing actual effort toward important needs of the platform will be the ones that obtain the ‘extra’ from the empty minting tiers. With this modification alone a large over-rewarding issue will be resolved. No more will those founders who are not contributing toward the project actively, be given extra reward for nothing. This is essential to leveling the playing field of Qortal completely.
Becoming a Mintership Group Admin
Becoming a mintership group admin will be possible for anyone with the will to contribute and stay active on the Qortal Network. Those who wish to become one of the mintership admins (and be given the opportunity to assist in approval of minting accounts on the network), can simply make this intent known (in any way that exists on Qortal that is not ephemeral) and the existing mintership group admins will be able to ‘vote them in’ by way of 40%+ group_approval.
Just like the current dev-group admins, the mintership group admins will approve or deny new mintership group admins. This allows for the group’s continued growth and diversity in a fashion that cannot be manipulated by those with ill intent.
To become a mintership admin, one must first become part of the mintership group. This may take place by a typical invitation given by any existing admin. Invitations to the group overall, will not be controlled in any additional actions.
Once invited to the overall group, becoming an admin takes place by way of 40+% group_approval of the existing admins. This is exactly how the dev-admins work, and has been a proven method of accomplishing this task. Having this layer of protection over the ability to become an admin in the most important groups, is essential.
The initial Mintership Group
The initial group chosen to be the first mintership-enabled group, will be determined based upon commentary and discussion. However, based upon discussion of those involved in creation of the related proposals, it seems logical for the existing ‘responsorbility’ group to be chosen.
Rationale is that this group has been created specifically for vetting of new minters, and communication between existing sponsorship-level accounts. None of those invited to this group knew that this subsequent proposal would modify their rewards, nor were they forced to join the group, or given incentive to join in any way, other than that which would assist in providing a more legitimate base group of minters.
All of the members of this group were (at least at one point) or are (still currently) active at least in Q-Chat, and have communicated in this group with others to assist in verifying and keeping track of legitimate new minters. This means that this group was not created with any pre-existing knowledge of this modification, and none of the members of the group knew these proposals would take place.
Since this group was created for, and still is doing the job that is proposed for mintership groups, it is logical that this group should be the first mintership group to exist.
Members of the group will assist in determining which among them should be chosen to be an initial mintership admin. The determination of both who, and how many mintership admins should exist initially, and making this happen, will come down to this group and the existing developer group admins, as well as from commentary on this proposal by others in the community.
If the existing responsorbility group is not able to be utilized directly, the members of the group will be invited to the newly created group. Upon determination of whom within the group should become an admin, and/or whom outside the group should be invited to become one, the final details will be created and implemented as decided by comment and continued communication with the community and dev and responsorbility groups.
This proposal will modify the ‘extra’ rewards that currently go to the Founder accounts. The 'extra' are rewards that would go to level 9-10 minting tier.
The 5% currently dedicated to founder accounts will remain the same (until a subsequent proposal after this one gets implemented, which will modify this, and make founder accounts exactly the same as any other account at a certain point to be determined.)
The ‘extra’ rewards from empty tiers will be given instead to the ‘mintership group admins’ and ‘dev-group admins’. The split for the rewards given will be displayed below.
All requirements listed above must be met prior to implementation.
The distribution of the ‘extra’ percentage rewards will be distributed to the mintership group admins, and dev-group admins as follows: (subject to changes based on commentary and discussion within the community).
50% will be distributed to the dev-group admins. 50% will be distributed to the mintership group admins. The ‘extra’ at the time of the proposal, is 29% (from level 9-10 tier).
The potential for a further split based on recent group_approval transactions made by the various individual admins is being considered as well, and will be finalized based on communication with development group and verification of the requirements to implement this proposal. An example payout is below.
If this subsequent division is able to take place, proposed division will be as follows:
75% of the total provided to each group’s admins, will be given to those that were within the signers of the most recent 100 group_approval transactions. The remaining 25% will then be paid out to all admins, including those active. This will give the active signers the majority.
The 75% is 75% of the total. The total is 50% of the 29% total block reward. These rewards are in addition to minting rewards, and do NOT require minting in order to be rewarded. This allows for members of the groups to be minters or not.
This proposal is as described above, meant to remove the over-rewarding of the founders that are no longer active in contribution to Qortal. This means that if the founders wish to continue receiving any type of additional reward, they should become active in either development, or mintership admins. This activity can be easily traced via on-chain group_approval transactions for further detailing in reward distribution, as described above.
Removing over-rewarding is essential to the future of the platform, and must be done. This proposal is extremely important to the future.
As the project evolves, there will be more and more proposals that further dial in on concerns and resolve those that affect the future of the project. The need for correction of issues created by decisions at project Genesis is obvious, and this proposal is one to ensure such correction takes place. With this and the two other proposals currently active, Qortal should see a significant overall improvement in many areas, especially the ‘balance’ of the markets on the Trade Portal. Such balance is also essential to the future of the project, and the value of the coin becoming more realistic and able to be seen to its ultimate outcome.
This proposal is not complex in theory, but the development of it may prove to be more difficult than expected. If this takes place modifications will be made in order to ensure the concepts are followed closely, and the end result is what is intended.
The membership of the two groups that will be receiving these additional rewards, must take place in a FAIR fashion. This means that the decisions involved in managing and creating the initial group’s users, etc, must be done with a mind only for fair outcome. This means that there can be no discrimination for those wishing to join the group based on language, or anything outside of their ability and willingness to assist in accomplishing the goals of the groups.
Given the potential difficulty for users to understand the above percentage splits and payout details, a few examples will be provided below to provide clarity.
Example:
The ‘extra’ rewards that were previously given to founder accounts, are currently that which would otherwise be given to the level 9+10 minters. This is currently 29% of the total Qortal block reward.
Let’s break down what the payout structure of this proposal would look like based on the above.
◦ 3.50 QORT per block – current block reward.
◦ 1000 blocks – current batch payout number.
◦ 3500 QORT – total QORT paid out in 1000 blocks.
◦ 29% of 3500 is (3500*.29) = 1015 QORT ‘extra’ to payout total.
◦ 1015 QORT with 50/50% split = 507.5 QORT to each group’s admins.
◦ 507.5 QORT to dev-admins, and 507.5 QORT to mintership admins.
◦ let’s say there are 32 starting mintership admins...
◦ of these 32, 25 of them were active in the last 100 group_approvals.
◦ Leaving 7 that were not active in the last 100 group_approvals.
◦ 75% of the 507.5 QORT will be distributed evenly to the 25 active signers.
◦ 25% of the 507.5 QORT will be distributed evenly to ALL mintership admins.
◦ 380.625 distributed to 25 = 15.225 QORT to each active signer.
◦ 126.875 distributed to 32 = 3.96484375 QORT to ALL mintership admins.
◦ 19.18984375 QORT for each ACTIVE admin, and 3.96484375 to non-active admins.
This means that as long as the details above for active and non-active admins remains the same, every 1000 blocks the admins will receive 19.18984375 and 3.96484375 QORT respectively.
The SAME concept will apply to dev-group admins. Same concept with same split percentages.