Incentive the validators' availability

This is a suggested scheme to incentive the validators’ availability with sBCH.

The validators are shuffled in epochs, so sBCH should be delivered in epochs time frames. An epoch is roughly two weeks.

According to the validators’ performance, different amounts of sBCH will be rewarded to all the validators:

  1. 4 sBCH reward: No block interval is longer than 3 minutes and no validator is absent for more than 4 hours during the epoch.
  2. 3 sBCH reward: No block interval is longer than 3 minutes and no validator is slashed for off-line during the epoch.
  3. 2 sBCH reward: No block interval is longer than 3 minutes.

A validator is “absent for more than 4 hours” when it fails to be the proposer (miner) of any block for more than 4 hours.

The reward are divided equally by the all the validators who are not absent for more than 4 hours during the epoch.

If none of the validators is absent for more than 4 hours but at least one of the smartBCH block interval is longer than 3 minutes because of the validators’ internet connections are not stable, then no reward goes to the validators.

There are about 26 epochs in a year. This scheme needs about 100 sBCH reward for a year. We have got enough commitment on such a reward.

If a block’s interval is longer than 3 minutes, then what does this mean? Well, it means that during this interval, 2/3 of the active validators are not online. This is multi-point failure and unlikely to happen.

The rewards of each PoS epoch will be published here.