Reward Programs

Nodes are the backbone of any blockchain, since they are the ones creating and storing the blocks, among other things. It is therefore critical that as many nodes as possible are active in the network at all times.

Beyond the direct block rewards (Fees and Inflation) that nodes obtain for producing blocks, Symbol provides a series of special Reward Programs aimed at further encouraging users to create and maintain nodes.

Each of these programs rewards a different aspect of the network:

  • Voting Node Program: For nodes supporting Finalization, Symbol’s fork resolution mechanism.

  • More programs might be added in the future.

In most cases, node owners wishing to benefit from these programs must explicitly enroll to them. The descriptions below contain guides explaining how to enroll to each program.

Voting Node Program

Symbol provides fast response times even when network disconnections isolate some of the nodes. When connectivity is restored any conflicts which might have arisen (network forks) are resolved by the Finalization process. This process requires some nodes to periodically vote on which branches are valid according to their records. Blocks deemed invalid are then rolled back.

This program aims at ensuring that enough voting nodes are always present in the network so fork resolution is conducted reliably.

Requirements

Voting nodes are regular nodes meeting the following additional requirements:

Parameter

Requirement

Bonded Deposit

At least 3 million symbol.xym must be stacked on the node.

Voting keys

The node must signal its interest in becoming a voting node by registering its VotingKeyLinkTransaction.

Rewards

5% of all block harvesting rewards is set aside for voting nodes. After each finalization round these rewards are evenly distributed among all nodes that participated in that round (and paid on a daily basis). There is no explicit enrollment required for this program.

Note

If you created your node using Symbol Bootstrap, follow this guide to enable voting.

Otherwise, follow this guide to enable voting manually.

See the complete Terms & Conditions.