IOST Nodes — Contribution Reward System
Introduction to the Contribution Reward System
The objective of the Contribution Reward System is to incentivize all Nodes to contribute towards building and developing the ecosystem, as well as allowing Nodes that do not receive a large share of votes to still earn a larger amount of rewards for significant contributions to the IOST ecosystem.
The following document lays out the mechanism and process for IOST Nodes. We hope you can review this proposal and give us your feedback and any suggestions.
Reward Pool Overview
The Ecosystem Reward Pool is provided by IOST from the Ecosystem Fund equaling 2% of the total circulation, or 420M IOST.
50% of the Ecosystem Reward Pool is distributed based on share of votes received. The other 50% is issued according to the Contribution Reward System which is explained in this document.
This 420M IOST Ecosystem Reward Pool is combined with the 420M IOST Token Issuance Reward Pool to create the total Nodes Reward Pool of 840M. So, for the total Nodes Reward Pool of 840M, 25% is based on block production, 50% based on share of votes received and 25% based on contribution rating.
Contribution Assessment Method
Nodes submit their contribution report each quarter, detailing the contributions they have made to the ecosystem for that period and what contribution category is most relevant. These contribution reports are then assessed and ranked for each category from the most valuable contribution to the least. Based on these rankings, Nodes are split into Reward Tiers and then issued rewards.
Contribution Categories
Nodes can submit reports for 1 of the 6 categories. The chosen category for each Node should be the most relevant one. If there are contributions made outside of this category, they should still be submitted as they will count towards the final ranking. E.g 2 Dapp developers launch Dapps of equal value, but if one of the Dapps also create content to promote it, this Node will rank higher.
The reward categories are as follows:
- Content creation and promotion
- Dapps
- Integrations (wallets, exchanges, explorers etc)
- Events / meetups / hackathons
- Community building
- Others
Contribution Assessment per Category
Each contribution report is assessed based on the following criteria for each category.
1. Content Creation and Promotion
Creating awareness and education about IOST to crypto and mainstream audiences is one of IOST’s most important objective in order to grow and attract more users and developers. Quality of content is important, but even more so is the number of people this content reaches. Quality content produced should be placed where it can get a lot of exposure outside of the IOST community and shared via social, news and community channels.
- quality of content (accuracy, production quality)
- views / clicks / impressions / shares
- Enjoyability / watchability
2. Dapps
- Value to ecosystem (e.g is it an interesting, useful novel Dapp, or a clone of an existing Dapp already on IOST)
- Daily active users (DAU)
- Daily transactions volume
3. Integrations (wallets, exchanges, explorers etc)
- Value to ecosystem (is it an interesting, useful novel integration, or a clone of an existing already)
- Downloads / Visits
- Daily active users (DAU)
- Token volume
4. Events / meetups / hackathons
- Quality of event (content, topic, speakers etc)
- Number of attendees
- Press / News coverage
5. Communities
- Community activity (what have they done)
- Growth of members
- Social media activity
- IOST community support and engagement
6. Others
- Onboarding
- Referral support
- Other contributions that do not belong to category 1 to 5
Contribution Assessment Submission Format
Contribution reports should be submitted in document format (Word Doc or Google Docs etc) to the relevant email contact for your region.
Each contribution activity should be specified in a numbered list with a clear description and addressing each assessment criteria. As much supporting and verifiable documentation should be included for each activity. Any activity which is not verifiable will not be included in the Node’s ranking.
Contribution activities should only cover the time period for each report (3 months). E.g a Dapp’s DAU should only report the increase during this 3 month period. For Q1 submissions, this period starts from ERC-20 election date (Jan 15th).
Contribution Tier Rewards
Nodes in each tier receive the same amount of reward regardless of category. The 210M Reward Pool based on contribution is divided between tiers in the following way:
Each Node receives an equal share of their tiers rewards:
Node Reward = Total Tier Reward / Number of Nodes in Tier.
An example based on 100 Nodes is below. Note, in this example and based on current token price, a Node who ranks in the top 20% for any of the categories below will earn roughly 50,000 USD from their contribution reward alone, and even those in the top 40% will earn 25,000 USD for their effort.
Independent Assessment and Fairness
The assessment and rankings will be jointly done by the IOST Foundation in partnership with ICAC. Nodes can query a ranking decision with the Foundation and ICAC, if they feel that their ranking is not reflective of their contributions to the ecosystem. As rankings are relative, Nodes need to be aware that they are ranked according to how much they have contributed, compared to the other Nodes in the ecosystem.
The Foundation is open to dialogue on how the Contribution Rewards System can be improved. Areas of the reward system open for suggestions from Nodes:
- Frequency of submission, assessment and payout (currently quarterly)
- Category types
- Assessment criteria per category
- Reward share per tier
- Number of tiers (currently 5)
- How to decentralize the process in the future
- Percentage of reward pool based on votes versus contribution (currently 50% / 50%)
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