Previously, we’ve posted about—and made changes around—how we conduct Storage Node Operator payouts based on steadily increasing Ethereum transaction costs. For example, we’ve consolidated payments across Satellites to reduce the number of transactions, thereby lowering overall transaction costs. The current combination of high gas costs and high ETH value has even made consolidated payments cost prohibitive.
We’ve been exploring a solution for a withdrawal-based L2 solution, but we still have some work left to complete in order to implement it. In the past, we’ve discussed (What if Ethereum gas prices stay high?, Update for June payout, Update for August payout) the idea of having a minimum payout to ensure we don’t spend significantly more on Ethereum transaction costs than the actual monetary value we’re transmitting to Node Operators. The community has proposed similar ideas in response to the June payout update.
In light of the most recent increases in both the value of ETH and the transaction costs, we’ve decided to make the following changes to payouts for the month of December and all future payouts. We’re instituting a maximum limit for transaction fees in relation to the Node Operator payout. If the payout falls below this threshold, it will be rolled over to the following month. The transaction fee limit would be 25% of the payout, which would be calculated based on the average transaction fee from the previous 12 hours after starting our payout process. For example, if the average ETH transaction fee is the equivalent of $1.25, we’ll pay out all Storage Node Operators that have earned $5.00 and above.
For wallet addresses that have earned less than the threshold the USD value of an average transaction fee, the earned payout will be included the following month, as long as it meets the minimum threshold at the time payouts are sent. In the example above, all Node Operators that earn less than $5.00 would have their payouts rolled into their payout the following month.
As this is a new process, this new unsent balance is not yet represented in our dashboard, but we are making it a priority to add it.