Idena hard fork announcement: Staking rewards, reporting, security improvements

Dear Idena community,

We plan to release a new version of the Idena node on May 12, 2022

This will be a hard fork that includes the following changes.

1. Flip reporting improvement

A user will be excluded from the qualification committee for a flip at the long session if this user does not choose any option ‘Both relevant’ or ‘Report’ for the flip.

Motivation

The current behavior of the protocol assumes that if a user neither reports nor approves a flip at the long session, their answer is considered as approving this flip by default. This kind of biased voting leads to the fact that most bad flips are not reported.

After the fork is accepted, this behavior will be changed. If a user does not choose any option (Both relevant or Report) for the flip, they are excluded from the qualification committee for this flip. Thus, we exclude “non-reporting” identities from the qualification committees and allow “reporters” to abstain from the flips which they consider as “bad” flips but they run out of reports.

We expect that these changes in the protocol will improve flip reporting significantly and increase the Idena network security.

2. Voting discrimination (IIP-3)

According to the IIP-3 we introduce the discrimination of identities who undelegated their mining status and identities with Newbie status.

The discrimination period wil be counted as follows:

• For undelegated identities: 2 epochs plus the remaining period of the epoch in which the undelegation transaction took place
• For identities with Newbie status till they get Verified status

Changes will affect the following aspects:

• Oracle voting: discriminated identities can take part in oracle votings in order to receive rewards from prize pools. Their vote won’t influence the outcome of an oracle voting, but if they are in consensus with the oracle’s decision (or just participated in a poll) they will still be rewarded as a regular identity
• Consensus mechanics: the votes of discriminated identities that were included in the block committee will not be counted as well
• Voting for the forks: the votes of discriminated identities will not be counted in the votings for hard forks

As for the current behavior, we have made the following changes:

• An undelegated identity can not delegate to a different pool address during the discrimination period, it can only delegate back to the previous pool address
• An undelegated identity can not become a pool during the discrimination period

Motivation

• Preventing pools from attacking hard forks by undelegating their identities and voting in a coordinated manner
• Preventing pools from attacking hard forks by running outdated node versions to get the block creation process stuck
• Preventing pools from manipulating oracle votings

3. Quadratic Staking (IIP-4)

1. The structure of the validation rewards fund will be changed (see https://docs.idena.io/docs/iip/iip-4#quadratic-staking-rewards-funding);
2. Instead of validation rewards paid for identity’s age there will be staking rewards paid proportionally to identity’s stake to the power of 0.9. To estimate your rewards please use the Staking calculator https://www.idena.io/staking
3. Transaction of stake replenishment (replenishStake) will be added
4. Protection of stake burning depending on identity’s age will be added (see https://docs.idena.io/docs/iip/iip-4#validation-failure-stake-protection)
5. The amount of staked coins will not affect the voting power of the identity

Please read the full text of IIP-4: Quadratic staking here: https://docs.idena.io/docs/iip/iip-4

Motivation

Quadratic Staking is to make Idena coin more attractive for investors and reduce inflation by locking coins in stakes. Quadratic Staking will also make an older identity more valuable and will incentivize people to not terminate their identities. The proposed changes will also improve security of the protocol by encouraging identities to increase their stakes.

4. Protection of identities with Human status

1. Identity with Human status will get Suspended even if its Total score drops below 75%.
2. If an identity with Human status and age > 10 solves less than 32 flips on the last 10 short sessions, the Total score will take into account the last 11 or more validations so the cumulative number of counted flips is 32 or higher.

Motivation

These changes will assure the safety of identity with Human in some rare cases when a user gets too few flips on the short session across a series of validations.

5. Oracle voting termination improvement

Results of an Oracle voting will be saved forever in the blockchain state. The Oracle Voting termination will only clean up the voting data.

Motivation

This change will assure accessibility of the Oracle voting results for other smart contracts after Oracle voting termination.

6. Online mining status for pools

Mining status for non validated pools owners will not be disabled after validation if there are some validated identities included into the pool.

Motivation

This change will reduce spikes in the number of online mining nodes after each validation.

How the hard fork will be activated

1. The new node version will support both the current blockchain protocol and the upcoming protocol changes.

2. By running the new version of the node you vote for the upcoming protocol changes. By running the previous version of the node you vote against the protocol changes. To publish your vote you need to keep your Idena node online with the activated mining status during the hard fork voting period.

3. The hard fork voting period starts on May 17 at 8 am UTC. The hard fork will be activated once the voting criteria is met. Otherwise, the hard fork update will be blocked on May 24.

4. The hard fork update will be activated only when the following voting criteria is met:

• more than 80% of online mining nodes support the upcoming changes

Delegated addresses are not counted. Pool owners are counted once.