A Different Approach to Blockchain Governance Frameworks: The BotChain Token Vault

The blockchain ecosystem is littered with projects that focused primarily on token sales, rather than the future network adoption, usage, and governance. While a sale can be a good mechanism to get your platform off the ground, and undoubtedly requires team resources, it should be a major flag when projects aren’t yet exploring and making progress on the network side.

At BotChain, we’ve been focused on driving network adoption as the earliest concepts were built. For instance, we’ve signed a network of AI and bot developers who have committed to using the BotChain identity standard for their public-facing products. Together those partners reach more than 400 million end users.

On governance, it’s never too early to invest in designing the structure. With good governance in place, we laid the groundwork for building and growing the network. At BotChain, we’re taking a different approach than we’ve seen from other projects.

Instead of creating a foundation and allocating tokens to the foundation to manually fuel network governance, we are building some of the governance elements directly into the network protocol. We still have a Governance board that acts as the guiding light in setting high level directions, but some of the early stage components that organize and incentivize human activity have been built directly into the protocol level.

One of the key elements to this agile governance framework is the Token Vault. The Token Vault works hand in hand with the Governance and the Curation Council contracts. These are smart contracts that will be deployed to the Ethereum mainnet and will play key roles in the development and growth of the BotChain network.

On a high level, the best way to think about the Token Vault is as a multisignature contract designed to store tokens related to the incentivization of useful actions within the system. For all transactions where the network charges a fee at the protocol level, the balance is deposited in the vault. Conversely, for all actions where work is done by members of the network, rewards are emitted from the vault. The functions that determine the frequency and rate of all fees and rewards are voted on by the Governance Council and will be a part of the Governance contract.

In order to build a valuable network, there needs to be a specific linkage between user behavior and the resulting effects of the user behavior on the overall value of the network. Having early adopter incentives to bootstrap user activity is fundamental to the adoption of the network. These network incentives would be funded via the Token Vault. As part of the initial token allocation for BotChain, 6,000,000 tokens will be granted into the Token Vault to bootstrap network growth and facilitate long term network governance.

BotChain will incentivize early bot and autonomous agent developers who register with BotChain.

The Curation Council is responsible for vetting the authenticity of registrations when they are initially submitted, as well as participating in the active maintenance of the registry. They are rewarded with tokens from the Token Vault for the actions that they take in curating and maintaining the network. Learn how to become a Curation Council Member here.

The sustained growth of the BotChain network is dependent on creating applications that enrich and create value for end users. Building network incentives that reward the creation of new experiences, the addition of new ecosystem data, or the curation of existing data that helps grow the network is critical to the long term success of the network. The Token Vault will fund these network growth incentives.

The long term role of the Token Vault is to be adaptable and fine tuned to fit the needs of the network over time. As activity and tokens flow through the network, the presence of the Token Vault provides the ability for the network to reward people who are using and contributing to the network. Over time it ensures that there is less social inertia in development and contribution to the network. It also empowers these active participants to make cohesive decisions that enhance the value of the network.

You can read more about the BotChain network in our whitepaper.

And, you can apply for the BotChain Curation Council on our Developer Site.