Due to an increasing number of validators joining the network, the e-Money treasury is currently delegating more than 42M NGM out of a total supply of 110M.

While we are happy to welcome new validators, the high number of NGM delegated has resulted in staking yields in the 17% range which seems unlikely to attract new delegators.

To address the above, the following changes will come into effect from November 2021 and onwards:

• Only validators with a minimum commission of 5% will be eligible for delegations. This is to avoid a "race to the bottom" on commissions.
• Only validators with an excess of 3000 NGM at stake through self delegation and 3rd parties will be eligible for delegations. This number is expected to increase over time.
• A scaling parameter is introduced that to adjust the delegation, initially by reducing them by 10%. Further reductions to be expected over time, starting with 10% the next 3 months.

As a result of the second change, validators will observe a reduction in the treasury delegation in the form of an undelegation. However, since this is applied across the entire validator set, it will not greatly affect the earned commission or voting power for each individual validator.

The treasury delegations are intended as a "Universal Basic Income" to help cover validator operating costs. As validators have different commission levels, delegations will be adjusted accordingly, so that high commission validators receive a smaller delegation than their lower commission peers.

Validators will also be rewarded for having skin in the game and taking a long term view of the project. As such self delegations are rewarded with a delegation bonus, calculated as the self-delegation multiplied with a constant (see below).

Finally, to incentivise outreach and promotion of their e-Money validator service, the treasury will also match the first 250000 NGM community delegations.

Adjustments to the delegations will be made around the start of each a month using the below algorithm.

The delegation algorithm uses the following variables when considering how much to allocate to a validator:

It uses the following constants:

The total delegation per validator is calculated as:

commissionAdjustment = medianCommission / validatorCommission
baseDelegation = Min(maximumBaselineDelegation, commissionAdjustment * medianDelegation)
selfDelegationBonus = Min(maximumBonusDelegation, selfDelegation * selfDelegationMultiplier)
communityDelegationBonus = Min(maximumCommunityDelegationBonus, communityDelegation)
totalDelegation = baseDelegation + selfDelegationBonus + communityDelegationBonus

Example data is available here: allocations.csv

Create a Pull Request that adds your validator to the validatorWhitelist in data/configuration.json.

Please provide information in the pull request on past experience in operating validator nodes and overall details on the setup.

Applications will be reviewed periodically and individually, but please note there are no guarantees of being accepted.