Ensuring a Long and Healthy Life for Rewards on Mainnet
We recently discussed our efforts to ensure mainnet protocol economics are setting the Autonomys Network up for success both in the short-term at launch and in the long-term so that the project’s lifespan is considered decades and further into the future. There is an accompanying blog post which gets deeper into the details and links the technical resources that back this up including a video from BlockScience. One of the outcomes of this process is that we identified that there is a big difference between our testnet emissions and those we will be launching mainnet with.
What
As I’m sure you are aware, our Gemini 3 incentivized testnet reward pool has been growing at 0.1% of total token supply per week since it started back in September 2023. This is the testnet equivalent of our mainnet emission rate. As we have looked at the results of the modeling and simulations that have been run in collaboration with BlockScience, it has become clear that our launch emissions should be closer to 0.05% of supply per week - half the current rate. This measure allows us to prolong the lifetime of the protocol issuance over the 4 decade mark. Remember that this is the emissions we set at launch and that the actual amount of ATC earned per block will be subject to our dynamic issuance mechanism and will decay over time. You can read about dynamic issuance on Gemini 3h here and check out the real graphs we have for mainnet in the blog post linked above.
As we close in on our mainnet launch we will be aligning testnet reward emissions with mainnet reward emissions.
Why
We have not taken this decision lightly and want to make sure that we are setting realistic expectations for mainnet within our farmer community on what mainnet earnings will look like at launch.
When
The testnet reward accrual rate will be adjusted to 0.05% per week next Wednesday on the 10th July 2024. There is no action for anyone to take here - just continue farming to share in the total reward pool which will be calculated when we end the incentivized testnet. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end but we’d like to stress that we have not yet set a firm date it will be over. If you want to see a high-level overview of what we need to achieve before the Subspace Foundation launches mainnet, you can check out the walkthrough here.
There are other exciting ways to provide incentivized contributions with the upcoming Stake Wars 2 initiative which we hope many farmers will participate in as operators and nominators. The initiative has a healthy 0.3% of total token supply allocated. Read more here.
The reward pool should divide two part. Pool 1 for before 10th July 2024. Pool 2 for after 10th July 2024. If not, the new policy would signifcantly reduce the reward farmed before 10th July 2024.
An update to confirm that the Gemini 3 incentivized testnet reward pool growth switched from 0.1% per week to 0.05% per week as planned on Wednesday 10th July (2024-07-10). The exception to this is the 6 days during phase 2 of the Mini Space Race back in February.
Please note that rewards are not partitioned by the network they accrued on. This, our last incentivized testnet, has been run across three networks. It started on Gemini 3f, ran through Gemini 3g and is planned to end on Gemini 3h as detailed in the roadmap we recently published.
During these three networks, the reward pool has been growing continuously. As per the rewards clarification provided previously, a participant’s share of that reward pool will be calculated against the block and vote rewards earned across all incentivized block ranges of these networks together. The value will be proportional to the total number of block and vote rewards earned by all farmers in those incentivized block ranges.
Thank you! It’s clear for me. I want to report something interesting. I have 950T SSD and get 75 TSSC every day. If the testnet ended at 2024-07-10. I would get X ATC. If the testnet ended at 2024-08-31. I would get X-64K ATC. If the testnet ended at 2024-09-30. I would get X-94K ATC. I feel like I’ve been robbed!
In a strict sense those can’t both be true at the same time.
A farmer F that farmed 1000 rewards on 3f should get twice the share of a farmer H that farmed 1000 rewards on 3h after 2024-07-10.
At least if the 0.1% reward accrual rate that was promised to early adopters holds true.
Scenario 1:
Farmer F farmed 1 week during a period when accrual was 0.1% per week. If farmer F had 1% of the netspace Farmer F receives 0.001% of mainnet tokens.
Farmer H farmed 1 week during a period when accrual was 0.05% per week. If farmer H had 1% of the netspace Farmer H receives 0.0005% of mainnet tokens.
Scenario 2:
If, on the other hand, the total of the rewards are considered then both farmer F and farmer H have the same amount of rewards, 1000 rewards in 2 weeks. Total accrual during the period is 0.1% and 0.05%, so 0.15%. As rewards are based on the total number of rewards during the combined period both Farmer F and Farmer H receive 0.00075% of mainnet tokens.
Could you please clarify which of the two scenarios would apply?
Thank you!
My understanding is that scenario 2 is reasonable and was promised before, because the previous promise was about the total amount of tokens per week, not the total incentives for the entire test network.
According to the official announcement, it is 0.1% of the total weekly amount. My understanding is that the exchange ratio should be calculated on a weekly basis. For example:
3F test gets a total of 220000 * 7 = 1540000 rewards in one week, and the exchange ratio should be (1B * 0.1%)/1540000 = 0.65, that is, one block reward converted into ATC is 0.65 Token.
3G test gets a total of 160000 * 7 = 1120000 rewards in one week, and the exchange ratio should be (1B * 0.1%)/1120000 = 0.89, that is, one block reward converted into ATC is 0.89 Token.
Your rewards number seems to be off as well, there is 1 block every 6s, 14,400 block per day and 100,800 blocks/week. That is 1,008,000 individual reward events per week.
I can clarify that while the rewards are not partitioned by network (and never have been), the reward pool will be partitioned by reward pool growth rate. This closely aligns with our goal to set expectations of mainnet reward emissions in the final phase of the testnet.
The result is that as of the first block produced after 2024-07-10 00:00UTC which is block 2,321,859, a new pool was begun subject to all of the same rules as previously stated but which grows at a rate of 0.05% of total supply per week. It is planned that this reward pool will run until the end block of the incentivized testnet is announced.
This also means that the initial reward pool growth ended on block 2,321,858. Note that incentivized testnet participant’s shares of these two independent pools are subject to the same calculations we provided back in October 2023 apart from the rate of growth.
Can I understand it this way:
Before block 2,321,858, the exchange rate of 1 ATC test token (which is around 10 blocks) to mainnet tokens is approximately 1 to 8.
After block 2,321,858, the exchange rate to mainnet tokens is approximately 1 to 4?
Not really. The calculation is based on the size of the reward pool and the amount of block and vote rewards you earned compared to the total earned. Using ATC instead of rewards is going to be complicated due to dynamic issuance.
I understand that rewards are allocated based on blocks rather than ATC test tokens. I’m just speaking approximately. Is there any issue with my logical understanding? That is, before block 2,321,858, the exchange rate is approximately 1 to 8, and after that, it is approximately 1 to 4. The rate before 2,321,858 will not be diluted by the later rate.
Maybe it’s a bug, maybe the 3f code is not good enough in terms of randomness. Now the 3h code generates more tssc tokens every day than the designed 14,400. Most of the time, there are about 16,000 tssc tokens every day, which is about 11% more than the tokens.
