Today is the day many node owners have been waiting for! The debate over referrals often rages heavily in the Node Owner channels in Discord, and people have been eager to express their viewpoints.

To catch up, here is the basic breakdown of the proposal.

For starters, here is a chart that shows the per-point rewards for a variety of cases:

• The blue line represents per-point GALA with NO referral structure
• The red line represents per-point GALA with one-time node referral rewards only
• The yellow line represents the per-point GALA with ongoing referral rewards only
• The green line represents the per-point GALA with both one-time node referral rewards and ongoing rewards

Obviously, it is very clear that the per-point rewards are highest with no referral rewards — this is obvious and anyone capable of doing basic math can see that.

HOWEVER, it is also very important to note that a significant % of users and nodes that have been purchased have come via referrals. In specific markets, the expansion of the network has been basically entirely dependent on the referral structure. The removal of this, in part or in its entirety, could potentially jeopardize that network growth, which is in the long-term best interests of the ecosystem.

Initially, it was clear that the referral structure was very broken — in the earliest days 1000 points were rewarded for referring a node purchase. This was obviously extremely heavily weighted towards rewards as can be seen with this graph.

In interest of creating a forum for these discussions, we will be hosting an AMA at 11am Pacific time today. Jason “BitBender” Brink and Derek “Doc” Jarvis will be in attendance.

So, without further delay, the first component of the node governance vote will go live tonight. The question will be:

Question: If every six hours results in one point in the daily distribution, how much should each subsequent six hours of stable connectivity be worth?

• 0 points — You get nothing extra for providing more services (Maximum points in any 24 period for one node: 1 point)
• .5 points — You get something, but not as much as you received for the initial six hours of uptime (Maximum points in any 24 period for one node: 2.5 points)
• 1 point — Six hours is six hours and a node operator should be rewarded for each six hours they are supporting the network. (Maximum points in any 24 period for one node: 4 points)
• 1.5 points — Node operators should be incentivized to continue providing stable connections beyond the initial minimum. (Maximum points in any 24 period for one node: 5.5 points)

Note: Any changes determined by this series of governance votes will take effect when the next full version is released by the end of January.