📌 Background
As a follow-up to Proposal #22 Comments, it's time to address the long-term sustainability of the RingDAO Treasury.
Currently, all expenses — including Collator staking incentives, KTON staking incentives and other proposal expenses — are fully funded by the Treasury. Meanwhile, no new RING issuance is planned. Without adjustment, the Treasury will face increasing pressure and may be unable to support future ecosystem growth.
Both staking incentive programs have been running at current incentive level for around 6 years. During the early inflationary phase, this was necessary to bootstrap participation. However, now that RING has entered a deflationary phase, with no further issuance and a fixed Treasury reserve, such high levels of incentives are no longer justified and must be adapted.
🎯 Proposal: Halve Both Incentives
| Category | Current Annual Incentive | Proposed (Halved) | Rationale |
|---|
| Collator Staking | 40M RING / year | 20M RING / year | Collators provide liveness, not security; current reward is excessive |
| KTON Staking | 40M RING / year | 20M RING / year | High fixed rewards, unsustainable at current Treasury levels |
- The current Collator staking APY is over 12%, with under 340M RING staked — well above the level required to maintain a healthy set.
- KTON staking also consumes a fixed 40M RING annually, regardless of participation.
✅ Why This Change Is Necessary
- 🔒 Sustainability: Halving both incentives brings emissions down from 80M to 40M RING annually.
- 🔁 Efficiency: Collators play a liveness role; we should match incentive to real cost.
- 🌱 Flexibility: Reducing long-term emissions frees Treasury funds for ecosystem growth, and real user adoption.
Next Step
If this on-chain proposal passes, we will proceed with a formal whitelist runtime upgrade, subject to technical committee review.
This runtime proposal will be submitted via Substrate referenda whitelist origin, meaning it will not require another RingDAO vote. Once the runtime upgrade is completed, the changes outlined in this proposal will become effective on Darwinia Chain.
References
https://github.com/orgs/ringecosystem/discussions/26
