Darwinia 2.0 Staking Mechanism Adjustments

Now that research is complete and community feedback is being taken into consideration, the new design of the staking mechanism is nearly finalized.

Why Make Adjustments?

Darwinia solo chain, to which the old staking mechanism belongs, will cease operation after the merge according to the Darwinia 2.0 merge detailed in the previous article. Darwinia solo chain uses Nominated Proof-Of-Stake consensus (NPoS) to produce blocks and determine the active set of validators, which are chosen depending on their total amount at stake.

After the merge, Darwinia 2.0 will exist only as a parachain protected by the shared security of the Polkadot Relay Chain, which will take over responsibility for block production and make Darwinia 2.0 validators redundant and unnecessary. Blocks on Darwinia 2.0 will instead be sequenced and transmitted to Relay Chain Validators by Collators, which do not rely on an independent method of consensus with value at stake, and therefore necessitates a change to the staking model.

Collators

The Darwinia 2.0 staking system’s most significant difference is that validators will start to drop off the network as collators join.

The NPoS consensus model employed by Darwinia solo chain is unnecessarily complex for use on a parachain. Based on their total stake in the network, collators will be chosen by Darwinia 2.0 to produce blocks and support block liveliness using a simplified Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus process.

Darwinia 2.0’s block production mechanism will be part of Polkadot’s Proof-of-Stake model, with parachain collators and relay chain validators. The parachain collators gather transactions and state transition proofs, then send blocks to validators on the relay chain for finalization. These will be checked by relay chain validators, who will then produce relay chain blocks.

Delegators

In the new DPoS system, delegators will replace nominators. Delegators are users who decide to delegate value at stake to a collator on the network.

Staking Rules

Almost all of the staking rules will remain the same, with the exception of these two:

  1. A delegator (an account) can delegate value at stake to only one collator. If the delegator is a collator, he may also select himself.
  2. Unlike before, bonding will no longer be required before staking, so the procedure will be completed in a single step.

The rules remain the same:

  1. Stakable value includes RING, KTON, and anything in DEPOSIT.
  2. Users will have the option to change their assigned collator instantly with no delays.
  3. Unstaked RING, KTON, or DEPOSITs will take 14 days to become redeemable, and will have to be manually claimed after the waiting period for available balance(s) to be updated. Deposits will enter a not-in-staking state.

Users are encouraged to commit to holding RING for a long time by making a Darwinia DEPOSIT. A DEPOSIT is the note created by this procedure if the user agrees to lock RING for 1 to 36 months in return for KTON. The DEPOSITs and KTON minted can be used to stake, although technically the operation does not belong to the staking model.

The DEPOSIT rules will remain mostly unchanged from the previous model:

· Staking users receive KTON as a reward for locking RING for 1–36 months.

· If users choose to unlock their DEPOSIT early, they will be charged three times as many KTON as they received.

· Mature deposits shall be manually withdrawn, and these RINGs will be added to your free balance.

Staking Reward

Since collators undertake a different responsibility, some parameters in the staking rewards model will be adjusted.

The Inflation Rate

The quantity of RING awarded as block rewards will not change; the inflation rate will stay the same as before.

As of 13/09/2022, the inflation rate is approximately 4.87%.

Reward Distribution

  1. Collators will share 20% of the block rewards. By comparison, on Darwinia 1.0, 50% of the block rewards were given to validators. This is the most significant modification to the staking model.
  2. From the 20% block rewards, collators will receive their commission fees first.
  3. Delegators will receive a portion of the leftover rewards after their assigned collator has received commission, and delegators receive rewards based on their share of power, which is determined by their percentage of the value backing their assigned collator.

How To Be A Collator

Anyone who submits a session key and commission fee rate can apply to be a collator. After the candidate has been chosen, proposed blocks will be signed using the session key. According to the backing they have received, the system will rank the active and waiting collators, and the top N will become the collators for the following session.

Once you have been chosen as a candidate for collator, you should be prepared with:

  • A machine that satisfies the prerequisites for collator activities.
  • An account to stake funds and collect rewards.
  • A synchronized and running full node on the machine.
  • Capacity to monitor and manage the machine 24/7 and the services it hosts.

Detailed information will be available soon in the Collator Guide.

What Should Validators Do?

Once Darwinia 2.0 is online, validators will cease operation automatically without further intervention.

If validators do not apply to become collators, then their machines and full nodes can be safely decommissioned. If a validator wants to apply to become a collator, they can keep their machine, but the full node software will need to be updated to the latest Darwinia 2.0 binary.

It is to be noted that collators have higher system requirements than validators, so the original validators’ machines may need to be upgraded before they can continue to be used for collators.

The exact time of Darwinia 2.0 launch has not yet been determined.

Upgrading To Darwinia 2.0 Through On-Chain Governance

The development of Darwinia 2.0 is in progress by the core team, but the final upgrade will be done through the on-chain governance on Darwinia 1.0. So the production launch of Darwinia 2.0 will be a community-wide effort.

The core team will submit a proposal to the referendum that will cover all of the upgrade’s components in addition to educating the community about it through this series of articles. All community members will then have the right to vote on the proposal in accordance with their personal expectations.

Related Reading

About Darwinia Network

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Darwinia is a cross-chain messaging infrastructure, which provides a light client-based, programmable, universal cross-chain messaging network for decentralized applications. Now, we’ve successfully used Darwinia’s light-client cross-chain messaging protocol(LCMP) to bridge cross-chain messages between substrate-based chains, and even between substrate-based chains and EVM chains, meanwhile, Darwinia provides developers with an SDK, so they can easily integrate cross-chain capabilities into their Dapps. This will have profound implications for cross-chain interoperability, and Darwinia as a cross-chain messaging infrastructure will facilitate the building of a hybrid cross-chain network.

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Darwinia NetworkPost author

Darwinia Network is a highly-secure programmable cross-chain messaging infrastructure for decentralized applications. Our light-client cross-chain messaging protocol (LCMP) supports arbitrary message passing between Substrate chains, and between Substrate and EVM chains, and SDK empower developers with the tools necessary to build the next generation of Web3 applications and seamless user experiences even when transacting across multiple chains or protocols.

Darwinia as a cross-chain messaging infrastructure will facilitate the building of a hybrid cross-chain network for Polkadot.

Follow us: linktr.ee/darwinianetwork

Darwinia Network is a programmable cross-chain messaging infrastructure for decentralized applications. Our light client-based cross-chain messaging protocol (LCMP) supports arbitrary message passing between Substrate and EVM chains, and SDK empowers developers with the tools necessary to build the next generation of Web3 applications, and create seamless user experiences, even when transacting across multiple chains.

Follow us: linktr.ee/darwinianetwork

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