Since 2022, Orbs has undergone a process of transition to community governance for major network decisions, including the introduction of Orbs Improvement Proposals (OIP), which is the official process for suggestions to improve the project.

Following the recent growth of the Orbs community and the addition of many new token holders, the Orbs team has submitted a new draft OIP with a proposal to utilize some of the ORBS token reserve pool to add additional rewards for new stake added during the remainder of 2023.

This draft OIP can be viewed here

In order to facilitate the start of the program (if approved), there will be no discussion period for this OIP and the voting period will be shortened to five days. The governance vote has been launched on Snapshot for the vote of the entire Orbs PoS Universe.

We look forward to another productive and substantive governance vote.

Draft: OIP-7: Utilize Long-Term Reserve Pool for Staking Promotion

Category: Governance, Project Resources

Description:

Over the past month, the Orbs community has seen significant growth, with a large number of new token holders. While this growth has been seen across a number of metrics, one way to solidify the long-term engagement of these new community members is to encourage them to take an active part in the work of securing and operating the Orbs Network's technology by offering additional staking rewards for new stake during the upcoming two months.  

Benefits:

The Orbs project is, at its root, community driven. The primary vehicle for community participation is by participating in the Orbs Network's Proof-of-Stake Universe.   

The proposed promotion would benefit the Orbs Network as a whole by increasing participation in the Orbs Proof-of-Stake Universe among new community participants, and thereby, among other things, improving the security of the network and its value proposition for potential customers, users and partners.   

Risks:

This use of reserve tokens would increase the total number of ORBS tokens in the circulating supply. However, in relation to the overall circulation, the number of required tokens is not large and would primarily be staked. 

Specification: If this proposal is accepted, any new tokens staked during November and December will be eligible to earn rewards at a rate that is higher than the current 8% maximum to Delegators. 

Any new tokens staked during the month of November will accrue rewards at triple the current rate (i.e., 30% APY). New tokens staked during the month of December 2023 will accrue rewards at double the current rate (i.e., 20% APY). These special staking rates will apply until end of day December 31, 203, after which rewards will revert back to the standard rate beginning January 1, 2024. To remain eligible, these newly-staked tokens must remain staked for the entire period through December 31, 2023.

At the end of the staking promotion period, the Orbs core team will calculate the special rewards due to each delegator and distribute them during the month of January 2024.

Note that existing stakers can participate by adding additional tokens to their existing stake. However, current tokens that are unstaked and then restaked during the promotion period will not be eligible for rewards. 

Responsible Parties: Orbs core team members will use on-chain analytics tools to track new stake and calculate the applicable rewards to each wallet. Rewards will be distributed during January 2024. 

Voting: Standard rules of the Orbs Snapshot.org space. However, in order to make it possible for the community to have the ability to approve and launch this campaign as soon as possible, the discussion period will be short (three days) and the vote itself will only last for four days. 

Conclusion: The community should, in light of the recent growth in the Orbs ecosystem, consider approving additional staking rewards in order to promote participation in the Orbs Proof-of-Stake Universe.