Fee on Numeric Assets

Development Counterparty
3

Here’s a formal CIP draft. I kindly ask to add it to the github repo as CIP 29.

CIP: 29
Title: Asset Issuance Fees
Author: JP Janssen
Discussions-To: https://forums.counterparty.io/t/fee-on-numeric-assets/6601
Status: Draft
Type: Standards
Created: 2023-05-22

Abstract

Add XCP fees to all asset issuance transactions.

Motivation

Balance the cost of issuing assets with that of running nodes/infrastructure, and to encourage use of broadcasts when issuances are not strictly needed.

Rationale

The issuances and assets tables are growing rapidly, making it expensive to run nodes and infrastructure. In particular, one project has within the last weeks issued [X]% of all assets ever created – with no intent of using the token system. They could just as well have used broadcasts, which would have been less resource incentive for Counterparty nodes.

Adding an XCP fee to issuances will discourage the issuance of useless assets by making it cheaper to use broadcasts.

Another benefit of XCP fees, as opposed to BTC tx fees only, is that the XCP price is very responsive to demand. If there’s a surge in asset issuances, there will be a shortage of XCP around, increasing the cost of issuance.

This holds true even with a static XCP fee. However, it is crucial to set the fee appropriately, and to be open for adjusting the fee through a fork in the future. For example, if the DB is optimized in the future, making it cheaper to run a node, a lower fee will make sense.

I suggest a fee of 0.05 XCP for a registering a numeric assets. This implies a theoretical limit of about 40 million numeric assets ever being created. The realistic number is much lower as some XCP is presumed lost, and most XCP will likely not reach the market.

From the perspective of the current XCP price of $4.60, a 0.05 fee only adds $0.23 to the registration of an asset. This is less than the BTC fee, but this is intentional. It is enough to encourage the use of broadcasts instead. And it is enough to make it difficult to spam with 1,000,000 new registration, as this will require 50,000 XCP – which is hardly available on the market.

Specifications

  • 0.05 XCP fee for registering a new numeric asset
    – this will apply to subassets too, which are technically numeric assets.
    – note that this CIP will change the subasset fee from 0.25 to 0.05 XCP
  • 0.50 XCP fee for named assets remains unchanged
  • 0.01 XCP fee for all other updates to the issuances table
    – this includes changing asset description, locking and issuing supply, and transfer of asset ownership
  • no longer save invalid transactions to the issuances table

Copyright

This document is placed in the public domain.

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