During the last several months, we collected a lot of feedback from our customers and our supporter community regarding the masternode structure. We tried to optimize it to make it decentralized and sustainable as much as possible.

Node structure

A deliberate blockchain infrastructure needs to provide well-balanced participation from the industry and the consumer community.

The FoodChain will provide two masternode types:

Supernodes will be operated by supply chain companies and organizations. Their motivation is to participate in the network.

will be operated by supply chain companies and organizations. Their motivation is to participate in the network. Masternodes are operated by members of the consumer community. They are incentivized to operate their masternode.

For eligibility, transactions sent to the FoodChain will need to be validated by at least one supernode (besides masternodes).

Supernodes won’t be incentivized for their operation, they won’t fight for transactions with the masternodes.

Infrastructure

To focus its resources on its core activities, TE-FOOD decided to outsource masternode infrastructure management to its partner company, TriBlock Ltd.

TriBlock will provide its cloud infrastructure (a combination of own infrastructure, and rented infrastructure from hosting providers like AWS, Vultr, etc.) to the masternodes. There are multiple advantages of this cooperation:

Physical location of masternodes can be managed to have optimal regional coverage.

Masternode operators will not have any infrastructure cost.

TriBlock will also provide a Simple Onboarding solution for masternode operators which don’t have the expertise in installing, configuring, and managing a masternode server. They will be able to set up their node with just a few clicks, avoiding the technical hurdles.

Using the infrastructure provided by TriBlock is not mandatory, nodes can use their own VPS as well.

Scaling up masternode numbers

Our goal is to enable everybody to start a FoodChain masternode, and let the market processes set the level of decentralization.

We plan to extend the current 9 community masternodes in several rounds, according to the Masternode Ranking which we use since the start of masternode registration.

In the first round, we plan to onboard 100 masternodes during September, 2019.

Reward structure

During the recent months, we reiterated the conditions of the financial settlement.

In the future, the basis of the masternode rewards will be operations, and not blockchain transactions.

Operations are based on real life events, while blockchain transactions might contain multiple operations.

The validation reward will be bid based. Masternodes will have a general setting where they can set the CAL rate they ask for validating one transaction.

We set a suggested rate, which is 15 CALs for 1 operation.

The price of 1 CAL will be set to $0,00001.

As blockchain transactions can contain multiple operations, sometimes validating one transaction gives one CAL, sometimes more.

After each settlement period (monthly) the CAL amounts of masternodes will be bought and paid in ETH on the actual day’s exchange rate.

Update:

New condition:

In order to enforce the contracted conditions, a special sceduling of the payment will be implemented:

80% of the payment for your node will be paid during the next month of the actual service period.

20% of the payment will be under retention until the end of the contracted period.

This means each month you will 80% of the masternode rewards you are entitled to, while the cumulated 20% will be paid in one transfer when your contracted period finished.

As you are not required to send your TFD licences to a smart contract during your contracted period, this condition is necessary to avoid non-performance.

Distribution of transactions

TE-FOOD is still young, and farm-to-table food traceability is an immature market. As the adoption grows, so will the rewards grow. Despite TE-FOOD is amongst the most used blockchains, at the start probably there will be more masternodes fighting for the transactions.

This is why a transaction distribution mechanism will be implemented. The rules will prefer masternodes, which

reputation is higher (the date of the masternode registration is earlier), possess more TFD licence tokens, offer better CAL rate / transaction, contract for a longer time, maintain more masternodes.

The importance of the condition is descending from 1 to 5.

Each day, the system will generate a Masternode Preference Scoring (MPS) along these conditions, and distribute the transactions according these rules.

The transactions are distributed amongst tiers using these ratios

Steel (60 000 TFD) — 11%

Platinum (120 000 TFD) — 22%

Titanium (350 000 TFD) — 67%

Please note that these percentages are valid only if there are similar number of masternodes at each tier. If the number of masternodes are different the system will change the percentages to keep the basic rule (Platinums receive 2x the transactions of Steels, Titaniums receive 3x the transactions of Platinums).

2. Within tiers, the transactions are distributed amongst masternodes using these ratios

The Best 20% of nodes according to the daily MPS — 30%

The Medium 50% of nodes according to the daily MPS — 50%

The Lowest 30% of nodes according to the daily MPS — 20%

Here you can see the ratios how all transactions are distributed: