The TrustChain has been launched in 2018. Collecting three years of experience, we re-thinked our processes to improve the token economics of the TrustChain.
Summary
- TONE will be the network fuel for making and validating transactions on the TrustChain. The former token rental model (Iridium nodes) will be discontinued.
- The fees of TrustChain are based on operations, not blockchain transactions (one blockchain transaction might contain multiple business operations).
- Customers (or implementation partners) need to buy TONE tokens from the open market for the processing and storage of their business operations on the TrustChain.
- The cost per operations is fiat based for stability and plannability.
- 50% of TONE tokens used to send operations to the TrustChain will be rewarded to masternodes for securing the network.
- Anybody will be able to start a masternode. There won’t be masternode tiers.
- The distribution of operations among masternodes will be based on the number of staked TONE tokens in the masternode (more tokens -> more operations for the masternode).
- Only a specific number of masternodes with the most tokens staked will become Active masternodes (which receive operations) for a specific day.
- Industry maintained Supernodes continue to be an important part of the TrustChain, but Supernodes are not part of the incentive model.
- TE-FOOD will allocate tokens from the reserves for ecosystem engagement and incentivization.
TONE token
TONE is a pre-mined, non-inflationary token, with a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens. TONE will act as the network fuel for making and validating transactions on the TrustChain blockchain.
TONE is used to
- publishing data to the TrustChain
- providing Masternodes to validate transactions
- using value added services
- staking (planned)
Fueling the ecosystem
The TrustChain calculates fees in operations, not in blockchain transactions. An operation is a business transaction (e.g. dispatching a transport), and usually one blockchain transaction contains several operations.
Customers (or implementation partners) need to buy TONE tokens in the open market to fuel their operations on the TrustChain. The token buy transactions will be performed by the customers or the implementation partners, not by TE-FOOD itself.
The only place customers or implementation partners can buy TONE tokens for their transactions is from the open market (TE-FOOD itself can not sell TONE tokens for fiat money).
Operations are based on real life events (e.g. registering a physical asset’s identifier and associated data). On the technical side, an operation may represent a certain amount of data to be registered and stored on the TrustChain.
The cost to register and store data on the TrustChain might depend on the size of the data and the use case (the business logic of an operation).
To guarantee the stable cost of operations to satisfy customers, the fee for publishing business operations data needs to be fiat currency based. The planned average fee of an operation is 0,00025 USD.
Sharing of blockchain revenues
The TONE tokens which were used to fuel operations are allocated to the two pools below:
- 50% is allocated to the Expiration pool
- 50% is allocated to the Masternode pool.
The Expiration pool represents expired licence tokens. Tokens in this pool will be regularly sent to a blackhole address.
Update: Please note that this allocation had changed in a later update.
Click here to read it.
The Masternode pool represents the incentive masternodes which validate the transactions, thus secure the network. TONE tokens in the Masternode pool are distributed quarterly. The TONE in the pool is shared according to each masternode’s share of the validated operations during the previous period.
Masternodes
Masternode tiers
Masternode tiers will be unified into one tier, as the project pivoted from the originally planned separated masternode tier services.
Masternode collateral
There is no minimum collateral (token allocation) set for masternodes.
Masternode application
Anyone will be able to apply for a masternode. You don’t need to have any technical knowledge, as the simple onboarding process enables you to run your masternode in the distributed technical environment of our partner, TriBlock without any cost.
One person will be eligible to operate one masternode.
Active and Backup masternodes
As the number of masternodes which the network needs is limited, only a certain number of the nodes are Active masternodes. A script which runs regularly, collects the number of tokens dedicated to your masternode, and creates a daily ranking. Those masternodes which have the largest number of tokens will be the Active masternodes for the given day. The rest of the masternodes will be Backup masternodes for the given day.
At the start, each day the first 100 masternodes will be Active masternodes. The number of Active masternodes is planned to change according to the number of operations on the network.
Distribution of operations
Operations in the ecosystem will be distributed for validation amongst the Active masternodes, using a simplified method.
The mechanism distributes the operations according to the share of TONE tokens associated to a masternode, compared to the TONE tokens associated to all masternodes. The more TONE tokens staked in association with a masternode, the more operations the node will validate.
Staking with delegation (future plan)
Our goal is to build a mechanism which enables TONE holders to help securing the network by fortifying a masternode with their tokens. This way, the staked tokens of that masternode grows, it receives more transactions, and the stakers who delegated their tokens will get their share from the masternode rewards of that masternode. The exact mechanisms are still in conceptual phase, and there are still several legal aspects to clarify, so this feature is still a plan for a later phase (probably in 2023).
Structure
TrustChain provides well-balanced participation from the industry and the consumer community.
The TrustChain provides two masternode types:
- Supernodes are operated by supply chain companies and organizations. Their motivation is to participate in the network.
- Masternodes are operated by members of the consumer community. They are incentivized to operate their masternode.
For eligibility, transactions sent to the TrustChain need to be validated by at least one supernode (besides masternodes). Currently, the TrustChain operates with seven supernodes, operated by various companies actively using the TrustChain.
Technical infrastructure
The technical operation of the Masternodes will continue without any modification.
Iridium nodes
Iridium nodes will be discontinued, as they were integral part of the previous, licence rental based token economics.
Utilization of reserve tokens
From the 1 billion TONE in existence, 431 276 315 is held in reserve wallets.
The planned distribution for reserve tokens is the following:
- A maximum of 25% of reserve tokens will be allocated to an Ecosystem Engagement Pool, to support programs aiming to disseminate, or promote TrustChain as a compelling traceability blockchain environment. The goal is to incentivize participants which provide value to make TrustChain well known.
- A maximum of 25% of reserve tokens will be allocated to the Ecosystem Incentive Pool, to support programs aiming to incentivize ecosystem utilization. The goal is to incentivize participants which provide value to the maintenance and growth of the ecosystem.
- 50% of reserve tokens will remain in the reserves for future use.
The two new pools are planned to utilize their tokens over the next 3–5 years, in case it benefits the ecosystem.
Schedule
Changes in this document are planned to be implemented from March 15. 2022. New applications for a masternode will be open in March as well.
Do you have questions? Join our Telegram group to discuss it with our community!
TE-FOOD is the world’s largest publicly accessible, farm-to-table fresh food traceability solution. Started in 2016, it serves 6000+ business customers, and handles 400,000 business transactions each day.
Website: www.te-food.com
Telegram group: https://t.me/tefood
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TE_FOOD
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TE_FOOD/
