## **RNP-006: Solana Upgrade and Emission Schedule** --- | RNP # | Title | Category | Author | Created | Status | | ----- | ------------------------------------ | -------- | ------ | ---------- | --------------------- | | 006 | Solana Upgrade and Emission Schedule | Core | | 11-02-2023 | Approved + Roadmap| --- ## Overview This document outlines the transition process from RNDR to RENDER tokens, the Burn Mint Equilibrium (BME) model, and the associated emissions and rewards structure on the Render Network. The following Render Network Proposal (RNP) is in support of the implementation of [RNP-001](https://github.com/rendernetwork/RNPs/blob/main/RNP-001.md) and [RNP-002](https://github.com/rendernetwork/RNPs/blob/main/RNP-002.md). The Render Network (the “Network”) will undergo an upgrade with the adoption of ‘RENDER’, a Solana-based SPL token implementing the Burn Mint Equilibrium (“BME”) described below. ## Category This is a Core Proposal within the Technical subcategory. ## Motivation The new Solana-based token helps the network support a wider range of applications and services leveraging the low cost, high throughput transaction infrastructure of the Solana blockchain. This Proposal lays out the proposed features of the upgrade process to the Solana blockchain. ## Stakeholders This proposal impacts all members of the Render Network community. ## Implementation ### **Upgrading** The following upgrade assistant—located at [upgrade.rendernetwork.com](http://upgrade.rendernetwork.com)—exists to enable the permissionless upgrade of RNDR tokens to RENDER tokens. This upgrade assistant is live, and upon approval of RNP-006, the community will formally approve and adopt the launch and upgrade to the RENDER token. Token holders can upgrade RNDR to RENDER whenever they would like. The Render Foundation has allocated up to 1.14 million RNDR in grants over the first year of emissions to subsidize user transfer fees on Ethereum associated with the upgrade. The upgrade assistant program will be in effect for three months, and will pay for gas fees for one transfer per Render wallet. After three months, holders will have to pay their own gas fees to migrate RNDR tokens to the Solana blockchain. With its broad circulation and liquidity, there is an ongoing role for the RNDR token, at least in the short to mid term, while its relative total supply and liquidity exceeds that of RENDER. We expect that RNDR holders will migrate to RENDER, as there are certain incentives to upgrading. For instance: - Reimbursement of gas fees for using the upgrade assistant - RENDER incentives to those who upgrade, weighted in favour of early adopters as listed in the table below. - Liquidity rewards are available for RENDER token holders. ### **Gas and Upgrade Fees** In order to incentivize upgrading to RENDER, The Render Network Foundation will cover the price of one (1) upgrade from the Ethereum network to the Solana network. Beyond this initial upgrade, and after three months, users will have to pay for fees on their own. Each RNDR wallet, captured as of November 15, 2023, will be eligible for one (1) costless transaction to upgrade their RNDR token to RENDER. Wallets migrating with recent transfers off of exchanges can also be eligible. More information regarding unique fee reimbursements will be provided soon. ### **RENDER and BME Emissions** Emissions on the Network will be in the form of RENDER tokens. RENDER paid to the Network by artists and Compute Clients (or their third-party providers) will be burned by the Network after deducting a 5% transaction fee. For a transitional period, artists and Compute Clients will continue to be able to pay the Network in RNDR instead of RENDER, and this RNDR will also be burned by the Network. As a result, the token supply of the Network should be viewed, in the aggregate, as the sum of all RENDER tokens (see section “Initial Emissions Splits” below) and those RNDR tokens that have not yet been upgraded (see section “Upgrading” above). ### **Rewards** Token holders who upgrade to the RENDER token will be grouped in increments. Future protocol benefits and rewards will be graduated based on these groups. **Total Cumulative Tokens Upgrading** | **From** | **To** | **Points** | | ----------- | ----------- | ---------- | | 1 | 39,999,999 | 5 | | 40,000,000 | 79,999,999 | 4 | | 80,000,000 | 139,999,999 | 3 | | 140,000,00 | 179,999,999 | 2 | | 180,000,000 | 229,999,999 | 1 | | 230,000,000 | onwards | 0 | For each RNDR token upgraded at a given time, a specific allocation of points will be distributed to the address holder. No points are allocated for tokens migrated after the 229,999,999th token. In monthly intervals RENDER tokens will be distributed pro rata, based on the points allocated to a wallet as a proportion of total points allocated to date. _Example:_ If 10,000,000 RNDR have been upgraded in month one, a wallet holder of 100,000 RENDER will receive 100,000 x 5 points = 500,000 points. 500,000 points divided by 50 million total points x 95,071 RENDER = 950.71 RENDER paid to that wallet at the end of month one. In month two, when more RNDR have been upgraded, the total points allocated will be higher and this wallet will receive a smaller proportion, and so on. This will go on for 12 months. **_Note for clarity:_** the Foundation will upgrade RNDR to RENDER in order to fund upgrade incentives until the BME model is launched, and will opt out of incentives. ### **Initial Emissions Splits** Once the BME model has been deployed, the initial application of emissions will be as follows: ![](./RNP-006/image1.png) 1. A total of 9,126,804 RENDER tokens will be minted on the Network, representing the full first year Emissions referenced in RNP-001. 2. This equates to 760,567 RENDER per month. Under RNP-003, 50% (380,284 RENDER) goes to the Network and 50% goes to the Render Foundation. 3. Node operators start with an allocation of 50% of monthly Network Emissions (190,142 RENDER tokens). 4. For the first 3 months, the remaining 190,141 monthly Network Emissions will be allocated to a Liquidity rewards pool. Thereafter, for the next 6 months this will be split so that 50% of this remainder (95,707 RENDER) will be allocated to the Liquidity rewards pool and 50% (95,707 RENDER) towards an Artists’ rewards pool. After that (9 months from BME deployment) all remaining Emissions will be distributed to the Artists rewards pool. 5. A maximum of 1.14M RNDR tokens (25% of year 1 Foundation emissions) are allocated in year 1 for Compute Client onboarding incentives. A minimum of 300K tokens from the Foundation are allocated as onboarding incentives for new consumer GPU Render nodes via the io.net Compute Client. 6. A maximum of 1.14M RNDR tokens (25% of year 1 Foundation emissions) are allocated in year 1 for points-based incentives. The BME model will go live in the next few weeks, with a final date to be communicated within relevant social channels. Voting yes on this proposal will mean recognition of this split as the canonical emissions schedule for the RENDER token and the RENDER holding community. In addition, voting yes will also confirm the desire to repay any amounts due to OTOY Inc. under the 4.5M RNDR loan facility as set forth in RNP-004. ### Compute Client Rewards Mechanism **Qualifying Nodes** Onboarded Nodes that meet a minimum threshold of performance and bandwidth will qualify for rewards in a given Epoch. To qualify the Nodes, GPUs need to: 1. Be on the approved list of GPU models in section 6 below, 2. Have onboarded via [www.renderfoundation.com/waitlist/](http://www.renderfoundation.com/waitlist/) which specifically includes providing the Render Network with a valid Solana wallet for Reward deposit, 3. Be live on a Compute Client within the cohort, for example having successfully installed io.net's client and connected it, and for io.net having correctly identified yourself as a Render Network Node, and 4. Operate with an average download bandwidth speed of greater than 100Mbps per second and upload speed of greater than 75Mbps. Please note all 4 requirements need to be met for a Node to qualify for rewards. **Rewards Pool** A total of 1,140,852 RENDER has been reserved for allocation as Compute Client Rewards. For November and December 2023, rewards will be exclusively earned by Nodes available on io.net, thereafter all Qualifying Nodes will be eligible to participate. The initial Epochs and Reward pools will be as follows: - 00:00 GMT Monday, November 201 - 23:59 Thursday, November 30 - **100K RENDER** - 00:00 GMT Friday, December 1 -23:59 Sunday December 31 - **200K RENDER** From 1/1/24, Compute Client rewards will continue on monthly Epochs until 10/31/24. The Reward Pool for these monthly Epochs will be calculated as the total remaining Rewards divided by the number of months left up to 10/31/24. By way of example, should 840,852 Rewards remain unallocated as of 1/1/24, the January Rewards pool would be 840,852 divided by 10, for a total of 84,085.2 RENDER. Note, to avoid edge cases, the available rewards per Epoch will be the lower of the above Rewards, and the product of the number of Qualified Nodes available during the Epoch and 75 RENDER. By way of example if there are 1,000 qualified nodes in the November Epoch, the Rewards pool would be limited to 75,000 RENDER. For the initial November and December Epoch's, io.net may request that any unallocated rewards for an epoch be applied to run paid test jobs on io.net to further test and improve the joint offering. **Factors for Reward Calculation:** For a given node *i*, the score is calculated over the following epochs and with the following set of tokens: - A (Quantity of Compute - FE): USD earned running Node - B (Bandwidth - BW): Data upload and download capability of the node, in Mbps. - C (GPU Model - GM): Score indicating GPU\'s performance level. - D (Uptime - UT): Ratio of active time to total possible active time in Epoch. **Weight Assignments** Specified weights for each factor: - Weight for A (FE): W_A = 0.25 - Weight for B (BW): W_B = 0.35 - Weight for C (GM): W_C = 0.20 - Weight for D (UT): W_D = 0.20 **Formula** The formula for calculating the reward for a node *i* is: ![](./RNP-007/addendum/image1.png) **Share of Compute Work Completed** This will be calculated as a ratio of the total amount earned running the node compared to the earnings by all nodes over the given epoch. The formula for calculating A~i~ is given by: ![](./RNP-007/addendum/image2.png) where r~i~ is the calculated reward for node i, and r~j~ represents the set of all calculated rewards. The term r~i~ / max(r~j~) is a normalization step. It scales the individual reward r~i~ based on the range of all calculated rewards. The numerator r~i~ is the relative position within the range of rewards, and the denominator max(r~j~) is the maximum reward among all nodes and normalizes this position to a scale of 0 to 1. Multiplying this normalized value by 0.9 and adding 0.1 shifts the range to start from 0.1 instead of 0, providing a floor value. A~i~ therefore spans the range \[0.1, 1\]. This choice of normalization allows A~i~ to represent the relative standing of a node's reward within the overall distribution, making the metric comparable. **Bandwidth Scoring System** The following bands will be used to classify Nodes: ![](./RNP-007/addendum/image4.jpg) Should a node, on average during the epoch, exceed both the minimum download and upload requirements for a tier, it will achieve classification within that tier. Tier Score Low speed 0.2 Medium speed 0.4 High speed 0.6 Ultra high speed 0.8 **GPU Model Scoring System** | GPU Model | Performance Class | Score | |:-------------------:|:-----------------:|:-----:| | NVIDIA RTX 4090 | High-End | 1.0 | | NVIDIA RTX 4080 | High-End | 0.9 | | NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti | Mid-Range | 0.8 | | NVIDIA RTX 4070 | Mid-Range | 0.8 | | NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti | Entry-Level | 0.7 | | NVIDIA RTX 4060 | Entry-Level | 0.7 | | NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti | High-End | 0.9 | | NVIDIA RTX 3090 | High-End | 0.9 | | NVIDIA RTX 3080 Ti | High-End | 0.8 | | NVIDIA RTX 3080-12G | High-End | 0.8 | | NVIDIA RTX 3080 | High-End | 0.8 | | NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti | Mid-Range | 0.7 | | NVIDIA RTX 3070 | Mid-Range | 0.7 | | NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti | Entry-Level | 0.6 | | NVIDIA RTX 3060 | Entry-Level | 0.6 | | NVIDIA RTX 3060M | Entry-Level | 0.6 | | NVIDIA RTX 3050 | Entry-Level | 0.5 | **Uptime** Uptime will be measured as the ratio of active time to total possible active time in Epoch. This will factor in partial periods, so a Node joining half way through the Epoch and achieving 100% uptime, would be scored at 50% uptime for the Epoch. **Example Scenario** - Network Size (n): 1,500 nodes. - Total Reward Pool for the epoch (November): 100,000 RENDER tokens. - Total earnings in USD for the epoch (November): \$125k - Maximum reward among all nodes max(r~j~): \$2,500 - Weights: W_A = 0.25, W_B = 0.35, W_C = 0.20, W_D = 0.20. **Node i Characteristics** - A (FE): \$100 earned by the node - B (Bandwidth): Medium speed (score 0.4). - C (GPU Model): Entry level RTX 3060 GPU (score 0.6). - D (Uptime): 95% (score 0.95). **Reward Calculation for Node** Share of compute work A~i~ = 0.1 + 0.9 × (100) / (2500) = 0.136 ![](./RNP-007/addendum/image3.png) **Distribution and Communication** The Render Network will facilitate payments and will make best efforts to do so during the epoch following the current epoch. The Render Network will be responsible for communication, including how to qualify, Rewards earned, and Rewards support. **Compute Client Requirements** Compute Clients will integrate with the Render Network via its APIs. Compute Clients will provide second level Rewards support and are responsible for all technical support. ### **Conclusion** The upgrade to an SPL token like RENDER promises to help the Network support a wider range of applications and services leveraging the low cost, high throughput transaction infrastructure of the Solana blockchain alongside simplified payment gateways. The chain upgrade to an SPL token should reduce the barriers to deploying important functions, like real time payments and automated emissions in the Burn Mint Equilibrium (BME). As part of an expanding network ecosystem, the SPL token can simplify microtransactions for new forms of AI / ML computing, tokenized GPU streaming, large scale NFT minting, and finally, the transition of network data on-chain - enabling deeper levels of provenance and authentication for media produced on the Render Network. The SPL token fits within the upgrade of the Network from specialized 3D rendering tasks to a broader range of interconnected computing workloads supporting the demands of a new age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Spatial Computing.