XIW Token Model — Token Ranked Registry
In the past year or so, Token-Curated Registries (or TCRs for short) have been adopted as models by numerous blockchain projects. Although the functional mechanisms driving TCRs vary widely, their output is largely consistent — a combination of whitelists and blacklists containing items that are designated by a community of voters. There have been many implementations of TCRs, but they have gravitated towards a standardized format.
Our team is using the building blocks of the standardized TCR format to create a cryptosystem that allows users to rank/prioritize items in a registry, similar to Reddit users having the ability to upvote/downvote in order to control the visibility of a post. Within the XiWATT platform, the registry consists of renewable energy project proposals (i.e. “Sector” proposals) and XIW token holders can change the rank of each Sector’s proposal by challenging (down-voting) or staking (up-voting).
Renewable energy projects are complex beasts and require expert due diligence — it would not make financial or logistical sense to allow the community or layman to assess the feasibility of the proposals on the platform. As a result, each Sector proposal will be required to undergo a due diligence process implemented by XiWATT before being listed on the registry.
The goal of this cryptosystem is to grant XIW token holders the ability to influence which Sectors get opened for funding. It will also allow energy developers to gauge investor interest in their proposed Sector and incentivize them to promote their project to garner community support.
The following is an overview of the “Sector Triage” cryptosystem.
The Sector Triage
The Sector Triage is a cryptosystem that allows users to rank Sector proposals on the platform.
To receive placement in the Sector Triage, a Sector proposal is submitted to the platform by an Applicant (usually an energy developer) and the viability of the proposed PPA (i.e. Power Purchase Agreement) is assessed by XiWATT. If the proposal passes due diligence, the Sector proposal is added to the Sector Triage at the beginning of every Cycle Period along with the required minimum XIW token deposit. This deposit constitutes part of the Sector proposal’s Deposit Pool and its magnitude determines the initial position or “rank” of the proposal in the Ranking Phase of the triage.
Once the tokens have been deposited, depending on a variety of factors outlined in the next section of the document, the applicant may retrieve none, some, or all of their initial deposit.
Upon entering the Sector Triage, there are 2 ways any given proposal can be removed:
- The proposal’s Deposit Pool reaches zero by way of mechanisms outlined in the next section of the document. In this case, the Applicant does not regain any of their deposited XIW tokens.
- The proposal passes the Sector Triage by finishing in the winning ranks at the conclusion of the Cycle Period. The Applicant then receives some or all of their tokens back, depending on factors outlined in the next section of the document.
The XiWATT platform allows its users to affect the position (or “rank”) of the proposal through challenges, staking, and voting mechanisms, all of which act to add or subtract XIW tokens to and from the Deposit Pool, while incentivizing user participation.
Challenges, Staking, and Voting
Reducing Rank — Challenges and Voting
At any point during a Sector proposal’s Ranking Phase, a XIW token holder can issue a challenge by wagering their XIW tokens in an effort to reduce the overall number of XIW tokens in a Sector proposal’s Deposit Pool, thereby decreasing the proposal’s chances at passing triage. A challenge initiates a Voting Period, during which any XIW token holders can vote in favor or against the challenge.
Partial-Lock Commit-reveal (PLCR) methodology will be used to conduct the voting and votes will be weighted according to a user’s XIW balance.
If at the end of the Voting Period, the total vote count is against the challenge, the Challenger’s wager is forfeited and the balance is distributed between the Sector proposal’s Deposit Pool and the winning-side of voters in accordance with the Payout Quotient parameter.
On the other hand, if vote counts are weighted in favor of the challenge, an amount of tokens equal to the balance of the Challenger’s wager is subtracted from the Sector proposal’s deposit pool. A portion of this amount (calculated via the Payout Quotient parameter) is appropriated by the Challenger, while the other portion is distributed between the winning-side of the voters in proportion to their vote contribution.
Note that voters will always retain their XIW tokens, regardless of the outcome of the challenge. Applicants and Challengers may lose their deposit from losing the vote, while voters only stand to gain from participation, albeit to a much smaller degree than the Challengers.
Increasing Rank — Staking
Users can stake their XIW tokens into a proposal’s Deposit Pool, thereby adding to its size in an attempt to increase the proposal’s rank. The benefits for this are twofold insofar as the Staker is not only influencing the outcome of the Sector Triage, but also stands to gain extra XIW tokens should the proposal succeed in passing triage.
Two factors decide the Staker’s and applicant’s payout:
- How many tokens they staked or initially deposited
- The amount of time that their tokens have remained in the Deposit Pool
Payouts for Stakers and Applicant occurs when/if a proposal passes Sector Triage. The exact payouts for the Stakers and Applicant is described below with a mathematical model:
- Let x = Staker X
- Let n = Total # of Stakers
- AT= Amount of Time Spent in Triage (Max One Cycle Period Length)
- Initial Deposit = Amount of tokens deposited by the Applicant
- StakeTime = Amount of time the tokens were staked for by Staker
- StakedTokens= Amount of tokens staked by Staker
- TotalST= Total amount of staked Tokens from all Stakers
- TotalDepositPool = Amount of tokens in deposit pool after impact of challenges
- RemainingSTP= Amount of tokens attributed to Stakers after impact of challenges. In most cases, this number will be the same as TotalST
- DPT = TotalDepositPool — RemainingSTP
Explanation of the payouts:
- The payout for Stakers consists of two parts: 1) A proportional amount of the remaining Deposit Pool attributed to Stakers based on the tokens staked, and 2) A portion of the remaining Deposit Pool attributed to the initial Applicant based on a time and size weighted function.
- The payout for Applicant is a portion of the remaining deposit pool attributed to the initial Applicant based on a time and size weighted function where the maximum value for time is one cycle period length.
Staked tokens can be withdrawn from a proposal’s Deposit Pool at any time during the triage, as long as that proposal is not being actively challenged. Once a challenge has been made, Stakers are unable to withdraw their tokens until the challenge either passes or loses and the amount they recover depends on the size and outcome of the challenge.
As demonstrated above, staking creates opportunities for sizable rewards. However, users who stake their tokens assume the risk of losing them if a challenge against the proposal is issued and is consequently voted to pass.
When a challenge is successful, an amount of XIW equivalent to that of the Challenger’s wager is removed from the proposal’s Deposit Pool. Stakers and applicants share the loss in proportion to their contribution to the Deposit Pool (i.e. if an Applicant has contributed 90% of the total XIW in the Deposit Pool, 90% of the tokens lost via a successful challenge will be withdrawn from their share of the Deposit Pool, while the rest will be withdrawn from the Staker’s share).
Parameters and Governance
All numeric parameters of the Sector Triage are flexible — the propose, challenge and voting process described above can be used to change the parameters by the XIW token holders. The parameters are:
- Minimum Deposit — The minimum number of XIW Tokens needed to submit a sector proposal to the XiWATT platform.
- Maximum Deposit — The maximum number of XIW tokens that can be deposited by the Applicant.
- Cycle Period Length — The amount of time that one round lasts, whereby at the end of each round the winning proposals move on.
- Vote-Commit Period Length — The amount of time that a challenge will remain open for voting from XIW token holders.
- Vote-Reveal Period Length — The amount of time during which votes cast can be revealed for a particular challenge.
- Payout Quotient — The ratio of XIW tokens that get awarded to a Challenger or Applicant, depending on whether a challenge failed or succeeded. A lower ratio represents a higher reward for voters, whereas a higher ratio represents a higher reward for the Challenger/Applicant.
- Minimum Challenge Amount — Minimum amount of XIW tokens that need to be deposited by a Challenger in order to challenge a proposal. Measured against the Deposit Pool in terms of percentage.
- Number of Winners — Maximum amount of proposals that can pass Sector Triage at the end of every Cycle Period Length. Value must be between [1–3]
XiWATT will define the initial parameter values as such:
- Minimum Deposit : 1000
- Maximum Deposit : 5000
- Cycle Period Length: 30 days
- Vote-Commit Period Length : 48 Hours
- Vote-Reveal Period Length : 48 Hours
- Payout Quotient : .5 (split evenly between the voters and depositors)
- Minimum Challenge Amount : 5%
- # of Winners : 1
We would like to acknowledge the pioneers who have helped develop the concept of TCRs into the complex yet viable idea it is today. We encourage you to learn more about it in this comprehensive article and join us in our official Telegram group for insightful discussion.
More details about the functionality of the XIW Token Model will be released with the next update of the XiWATT whitepaper.
