Voting Weight Decay

[rotilho]

Feature: Voting Weight Decay

Summary

Implement a voting weight decay mechanism in Atto, where the voting weight of each account balance decreases by 2% for each month since the last transaction, up to a maximum decay of 100%.

Motivation

The purpose of voting weight decay is to encourage active participation in the Atto network and ensure that voting power reflects the most engaged users. This feature aims to prevent dormant accounts from having undue influence on the consensus process.

Implementation Details

1. Decay Calculation:

   • Each account's voting weight will decrease by 2% for every month since the last transaction.
   • The decay is linear, with a maximum decay of 100%, meaning an account that has not transacted for 50 months will have its voting weight reduced to zero.

2. Decay Reversal:

   • If an account conducts a transaction, the voting weight decay will reset, and the account will regain its full voting weight.
   • If an account changes representatives, decayed voting weight should be deducted from the previous representative, and 100% of the voting weight should be assigned to the new representative.

3. Transparency and Monitoring:

   • https://github.com/attocash/commons shall include decay calculation.

Example Scenario

• Account A holds 1000 attos and initially has full voting weight.
• If Account A does not perform any transactions for 6 months:
  • After 1 month: Voting weight = 1000 * (100 - 2 * 1)% = 980 attos
  • After 2 months: Voting weight = 1000 * (100 - 2 * 2)% ≈ 960 attos
  • ...
  • After 6 months: Voting weight = 1000 * (100 - 2 * 6)% ≈ 880 attos
• If Account A performs a transaction in the 7th month, the voting weight will reset to 1000 attos.

Benefits

• Encourages regular participation and activity within the Atto network.
• Ensures voting power is more accurately distributed among active users.
• Reduces the risk of dormant accounts disproportionately influencing the network consensus.

Potential Drawbacks

• Users with long-term holdings might find the decay mechanism unfavorable if they do not frequently transact.