The issue at hand:
It has been four months since Proposal #1 was approved in which it was decided to increase the number of slots for validators and how to encourage them.
The measure was effective as there are no more slots available and the demand for validator positions is high.
According to the criteria that governed Proposal #1:
- Sustainable using funds of Community Pool,
- fair to the pre-genesis validators who took on a higher risk by supporting the zone prior to its launch, and
- decentralization by Shapeshift limiting the participation of its employees.
We propose to continue with the same parameters about the quantity and requirements to obtain the tokens definitively.
These are some of the arguments of Proposal #1, which we want to extend, and which we think are still valid today:
Clearly the zone must add validators over time in order to improve its security. However, there is potentially room for discussion around the amount of TICK to be distributed to each new validator.
Additionally, concerns have been raised that some validators could commit to supporting the network, and then simply disappear with their new tokens. This is certainly possible – although it’s worth noting that in those cases the “free riders” would need to delegate their TICK to existing validators (and therefore support the network’s security) in order to profit from their holdings.
The formal proposal:
If this vote passes, the following will apply to the next 20 onboarded validators:
1.) New validators who are not ShapeShift employees will be incentivised at the rate of 5,000 TICK.
2.) ShapeShift employees serving as new validators will receive 1,000 TICK, the number of such validators not to exceed 10 under this proposal.
3.) New validators will be funded 1 TICK for their initial account creation, and then delegated the appropriate amount (4,999 for non-ShapeShift validators; 999 for ShapeShift validators) . After six months, the TICK will be undelegated, and the actual TICK tokens (4,999 for non-ShapeShift validators; 999 for ShapeShift validators) will be sent to the account that was used to create and self-fund the validator initially.
Voting Stage
The next stage in the governance process is the voting stage, which lasts 2 days. Votes will be a simple "Yes" or "No" on the proposal. Only staked tokens are eligible to be used for governance voting. The amount of voting power is measured in terms of stake. The number of TICK a person or group has determined how much influence their vote will have on the outcome of a proposal. Voters can change their vote until the closing period.
Tallying Stage
After one week the proposal voting will end and the following condition will be taken into consideration to determine if it passes or not:
Quorum: more than 40% of the total staked tokens at the end of the voting period need to have voted.
Threshold: More than 50% or a majority of the tokens that participated in the vote, have voted "Yes."
If any of these conditions are not met, the deposit associated with the denied proposal will not be refunded. These funds will be burned.
Once a parameter change or software upgrade proposal is voted on and passes all conditions it will need to be integrated into a new version of the Microtick network software by validators while the previous working version continues to run. This is signalling that a switch will occur. Once more than 2⁄3 of the validators download this new version and signal they are ready to make the switch the rest of the network will be expected to do the same.