Forta Proposal 2 (FP-2) Forta Bot Staking and Developer Grants

The Forta Governance Council is seeking community feedback and approval of this “FP-2” proposal through a Snapshot Vote relating to detection bot staking and related matters. FP-2 proposes the following actions that should reduce the opportunity for spamming or abusing the Forta Network with low-value or malicious bots, as well as enable and incentivize the creation of Forta bots that are valuable to the community, including:

  1. support detection bot staking in the Forta App
  2. require a minimum 100 FORT stake for all detection bots to be executed on the Forta network as a security mechanism
  3. develop and implement a slashing policy for malicious bots
  4. initiate a 100,000 FORT community grants program for Forta bot developers through Gitcoin grants

The 4 actions proposed in FP-2 are described in more detail below under the corresponding numbered heading. Voting on FP-2 will be determined by a majority approval vote of FORT token holders on Snapshot beginning on July 26th, 2022 and ending on July 29th, 2022 (exact times to be announced through official Forta channels).

1. Bot Staking Support in the Forta App

Approximately three weeks following the approval of this proposal, the Forta App will release support to deposit and withdraw Forta detection bot stakes interacting with the Forta staking contract already deployed on Polygon (withdrawals will be subject to the waiting period enforced in the Forta staking smart contract). Using this feature in the Forta App, community members will more easily be able to view, deposit, and withdraw FORT token stakes on any bot.

2. Minimum Bot Stake Requirement

Approximately six weeks following the approval of this proposal, the Forta Council will approve and execute a transaction to update the Forta smart contract to set the minimum stake required for any detection bot to execute on the Forta network to 100 FORT. This will be done to protect the network from spam and malicious bots.

3. Slashing Policy

Approximately six weeks following the approval of this proposal, in order to enforce security related to bot and node staking, slashing policies will be published by the Forta Foundation with the approval of the Forta Council. Support will simultaneously be added in the Forta App for community members to submit slash proposals for fraudulent bots or malicious bots or malicious scan nodes. Slash proposals will trigger a hold on stake withdrawals (note that withdrawals are also subject to a waiting period which is controlled by a protocol parameter and currently is set to 10 days). Slash proposals will be reviewed by the Forta Council or other delegated body according to the policies that will be approved by the Forta Council and published on the forta.org web site. If the subject (bot or scan node) is slashed, staked tokens will be slashed and the slash proposal creator will receive a percentage of the slash amount according to the published policy.

All staking and slashing activity will be public record on the Polygon network, enabled and enforced by the Forta smart contracts which have already been deployed.

4. Bot Developer Community Grants

In order to reward developers of detection bots that are especially useful to the Forta community, the Forta Foundation will initiate a grant matching program through Gitcoin Grants as part of Gitcoin Grant Round 15 (expected to be Sept. 2022). This will be in addition to other grants and payments from protocols that are available to bot developers and which are already promoted on the Forta Grants Marketplace.

The Forta Foundation will become a matching partner with Gitcoin for Forta bot developers (see examples of current Gitcoin matching partners here). Via Gitcoin grants, any Forta bot developer will be able to apply for a grant during Gitcoin Grant Round 15. Forta community members, or anyone in the web3 community, will then be able to review the grant proposals and selectively contribute to the bot developers for their individual contributions.

The Forta Foundation will designate 100,000 FORT which will be available for grant matching to Forta bot developers during the Gitcoin Grant Round 15. The grant matching will be distributed according to the Gitcoin quadratic funding match algorithm.

Depending on the participation and success of this first community grants process, the Forta community may submit Forta proposals in the future to continue the community grants process and designate matching funds in later Gitcoin Grant Rounds.

11 Likes

Can you provide more detail on #2 Minimum Bot Staking Requirement?
Is the 100 FORT stake per bot or per publisher?

Very much in favor of this. Opening up a Gitcoin Grants program will hopefully bring some new developers and also potentially allow some of the bot devs who are working for public good on Forta obtain retroactive rewards. Also agree that adding bot staking can help increase network efficiency and security. That could also be a first step towards allowing delegated staking on bots, would love to see that too, as it could create a path to on-going rewards to the devs for highly value bots.

2 Likes

Yes, the 100 FORT would be per bot. Any other details you’d need to be cleared out?

Hey guys! How about the bots that were developed for the contests, should the participants stake on them?

I fully support this proposal. Gitcoin grants and minimum staking requirements for bots are great ideas, as is introducing slashing policies.

If the subject (bot or scan node) is slashed, staked tokens will be slashed and the slash proposal creator will receive a percentage of the slash amount according to the published policy.

And what will happen to the other part of the slash amount? Will it be burned or will it go to the community treasury?

To assist the transition, the Forte Foundation may choose to stake on some bots temporarily.

yes, it will go back to treasury.

Where can I find the published slashing policy?

It hasn’t been published yet - It will be published in 6 weeks.