HIP 57: PoC Rewards Establishment Period

• Author(s): @Scottsigel, @starwatcher, @jthiller
• Start Date: 2022-03-16
• Category: Technical
• Original HIP PR: PoC Rewards Establishment Period #375
• Tracking Issue: HIP 57: PoC Rewards Establishment Period #376 (this)
• Status: In Discussion

Summary

In order to combat PoC rewards gaming, the process of ‘spoofing’ or ‘gaming’ a Hotspot to earn disproportionate rewards must be economically unsound. Among a range of solutions, the existing denylist and HIP-40 offer a means to remove Hotspots that don’t provide legitimate coverage. However, there is sufficient time after onboarding a Hotspot where it remains economically viable to spoof a location and game PoC rewards before a Hotspot in question can be confidently identified and added to a denylist.

If approved, this proposal would introduce a Hotspot ‘establishment period’ such that the network can better learn about a Hotspot’s deployment immediately following a location assertion. This period would be defined initially as 15 days and 10 successful witnesses, as set by a chain variable. A Hotspot’s PoC rewards and witnesses of its beacons would be throttled to 10% of what would be its normal earnings until both of these conditions are met. Data rewards would be unaffected. As the network improves its ability to understand a Hotspot’s location or as reliance on denylists are reduced, these chain variables could be adjusted.

Rendered View

https://github.com/helium/HIP/blob/main/0057-poc-rewards-establishment-period.md