Reward distribution

Consumer chains have the option of sharing their block rewards (inflation tokens) and fees with provider chain validators and delegators. In replicated security block rewards and fees are periodically sent from the consumer to the provider according to consumer chain parameters using an IBC transfer channel that gets created during consumer chain initialization.

Reward distribution on the provider is handled by the distribution module - validators and delegators receive a fraction of the consumer chain tokens as staking rewards. The distributed reward tokens are IBC tokens and therefore cannot be staked on the provider chain.

Sending and distributing rewards from consumer chains to provider chain is handled by the Reward Distribution sub-protocol.

Note

The ICS distribution system works by allowing consumer chains to send rewards to a module address on the provider called the ConsumerRewardsPool. There is a new transaction type called RegisterConsumerRewardDenom. This transaction allows consumer chains to register denoms to be used as consumer chain rewards on the provider. The cost to register a denom is configurable (ConsumerRewardDenomRegistrationFee chain param) and the full amount of this fee is transferred to the community pool of the provider chain. Only denoms registered through this transaction are then transferred from the ConsumerRewardsPool to the FeePoolAddress, to be distributed out to delegators and validators.

Instructions for adding a denom

The transaction must be carried out on the provider chain. Please use the ibc/* denom trace format.

tip

# reward denoms must be registered on the provider chain (gaia in this example)
gaiad tx provider register-consumer-reward-denom ibc/3C3D7B3BE4ECC85A0E5B52A3AEC3B7DFC2AA9CA47C37821E57020D6807043BE9 --from mykey

Parameters

tip

The following chain parameters dictate consumer chain distribution amount and frequency. They are set at consumer genesis and blocks_per_distribution_transmission, consumer_redistribution_fraction transfer_timeout_period must be provided in every ConsumerChainAddition proposal.

consumer_redistribution_fraction

The fraction of tokens allocated to the consumer redistribution address during distribution events. The fraction is a string representing a decimal number. For example "0.75" would represent 75%.

tip

Example:

With consumer_redistribution_fraction set to 0.75 the consumer chain would send 75% of its block rewards and accumulated fees to the consumer redistribution address, and the remaining 25% to the provider chain every n blocks where n == blocks_per_distribution_transmission.

blocks_per_distribution_transmission

The number of blocks between IBC token transfers from the consumer chain to the provider chain.

transfer_timeout_period

Timeout period for consumer chain reward distribution IBC packets.

distribution_transmission_channel

Provider chain IBC channel used for receiving consumer chain reward distribution token transfers. This is automatically set during the consumer-provider handshake procedure.

provider_fee_pool_addr_str

Provider chain fee pool address used for receiving consumer chain reward distribution token transfers. This is automatically set during the consumer-provider handshake procedure.