Incentives

The incentive structure of the protocol is in the design phase, we will now discuss the factors that will inform the reward scheme and slashing design.

Operating the Network

To design the optimal incentive structure for NFFL AVS, we must understand the costs of the NFFL nodes to run the protocol.

The NFFL nodes stake Ethereum by getting delegations from staked Ethereum holders. In addition to the stake run off-chain software, namely 1) rollup full nodes 2) NFFL nodes and 3) Aggregator node. As such, it's vital for the protocol to reward the Operators accordingly.

The calculation for the rewards for an Operator must be based on the signed Checkpoint Tasks. Once the challenge period passes for the Task, anyone can submit a ZK proof proving the message count and the participation rate of each Operator, collecting a reward in the process (i.e. triggering the payment system should also be incentivised).

Relaying Block Data to NEAR DA

Each participating network has a Relayer, that feeds the network blocks to NEAR DA as they're produced. As discussed in the Overview section, the Relayer role can be fulfilled by a decentralised network.

Independent of what the Relayer implementation looks like, the Relayer needs to pay $NEAR to submit blocks to NEAR DA. The rewards for the Relayer at the least need to compensate the Relayer's fee expenditure.

In this specific case, it should be a reasonable approach that each network incentivises their Relayers independently, as it's effectively an extra DA layer for the network - so it's directly beneficial for it. However, a mechanism for NFFL itself to reward Relayers could also be implemented.

Pushing Operator Set Updates to Networks

As discussed in Operator Set Tracking, every participating rollup network has a copy of the operator set. The operator set is kept to update with the operator set on Ethereum. There might be some synchronisation issues with the cross-chain interoperability. Theo minimise a difference in the operator set, the protocol should have an incentive mechanism.

Challenging a Checkpoint

All checkpoints published to Ethereum can be challenged. The protocol when instantiated will set a challenge period for the checkpoints, during which anyone can submit a fraud proof. The fraud proof would need to prove one of the faults described in the Faults section. Constructing fraud proof is potentially a costly process, therefore the challenger should be rewarded for submitting a valid fraud proof. Ideally, in case of a successful challenge, a fixed amount of rewards on Ethereum should be readily available to challengers to both cover transaction costs and make it profitable to scan for faults.