Hello to the Secret community from SCRT Labs!
In the past year, as Secret Network has seen tremendous growth, and more and more new validators have joined the network, competition for delegators has substantially increased. With the Supernova upgrade, the network has already passed a vote to increase the number of validators to 70 from 50. Those new slots were almost instantly filled.
In addition, SCRT Labs have had many, many requests from individual validators asking for delegation, in many cases to sponsor activities benefitting the entire network. We’ve done our best to accommodate these requests, but our process needed to be improved.
Therefore, going forward and as a fresh start for 2022, we’ve decided to start fresh: Going forward, we will set up concrete criteria to help us choose how and to whom we delegate our treasury, with the goal of helping the network maximize its growth. In simple terms, we want to give validators ways to substantially increase their income, if they’re willing to help the network in meaningful ways.
How it works
The process is simple. A month before the end of a quarter we will publish an interest form for validators to fill out, in which they’d need to explain how they benefit the network and how much delegation they ask for. We will review these interest forms and allocate the delegation based on merit and concrete contributions to the network. In addition, delegations will, in part, become a secondary incentivization mechanism to go alongside our contributions from the accelerator pool.
The delegation interest form can be found here: https://forms.gle/gUThBp44b3yFVBTn9
Given that Q1 2022 is already underway, we have decided to let validators fill this form until the end of the month of January. We will start delegating and redelegating on a rolling basis, and the next interest form will be put online before Q3 (i.e. skipping Q2).
Please note that any delegations that SCRT Labs has given out until today may or may not change at our discretion. For that reason, we ask all validators to fill out this form as soon as possible. Furthermore, to keep the process clean, fair and organized, we ask not to request delegation on informal channels and that you stick to use of this interest form. Delegated funds will include currently staked SCRT Labs funds, as well as accelerator pool funds that have remained unstaked until today.
Finally, below is a partial list of categories and amounts we will delegate to validators based on their contributions. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and you can mention other activities in the interest form as well. One very important thing to remember is that different activities can be stacked (to an extent) – meaning, the more you contribute, the higher the delegation.
1MN+ SCRT delegation tier (unbounded)
Reserved for all validators who:
- build secret apps that gain traction (to be discussed on a case-by-case basis) or
- have acquired +250K SCRT, excluding rewards and grants
- provide liquidity to Secret Bridge (over $500K) and SecretSwap (over $500K) or other future applications
750K SCRT delegation tier
Reserved for all validators that are building and maintaining tooling that is critical to the network. Validators who have received grants to build tooling are not eligible for this category (unless the grant itself is explicitly split between a grant and a delegation).
500K SCRT delegation tier
Reserved for all validators that contribute to ecosystem tooling, smart contract development, standards like SNIP-20 and any other technical work that contributes to validator and developer adoption for the Secret Network.
250K SCRT delegation tier
Reserved for all validators that contribute to user and developer adoption and awareness initiatives of the Secret Network (including meet-ups, AMAs, create geographical awareness). This bucket does not require technical work from validators. Validators who lead Secret Network committees are also eligible for this category.
Other contributions that fall into this category are:
- Helping the network and SCRT Labs in particular with content creation (visual content, illustrations, videos)
- QA-ing products and providing on-going support
- Business development contributions: sourcing in leads for collaborations, especially around NFT, Gaming and DeFI
- Connecting SCRT Labs to funds and securing OTC deals
Services based delegation
Validators providing key services to the network will get enough delegation to account for their expenses + 20%-30% margin. This includes bridge operators and relayers.
Final note: If validators are slashed/don’t keep a constant uptime, we may remove all delegation. Validators receiving delegation should not have a higher-than-average fee. If they do, we may scale the numbers above to account for the extra fee.
Thank you to the entire Secret community, and especially validators, for your support of the network and Web3 privacy. 2022 promises to be an explosive year of growth for Secret Network, and we are proud to build at your side!
~ Guy Zyskind, CEO, SCRT Labs
Remember to fill out the delegation interest form:
Onwards and upwards!
To discuss Secret Network and Secret Apps, visit our community channels:
