FIO Block Production

Block producers run the infrastructure necessary to run the FIO Chain, and play a major role in the governance of the chain. Those holding FIO Tokens choose the block producers through vote. Blocks are produced exactly every 0.5 seconds by a specific block producer designated to produce a block at that time. Blocks are produced in rounds of 126 (6 blocks each times 21 producers). In FIO, block producers can modify system smart contracts with ⅔ + 1 (15 BPs) supermajority.

Selection Process

Anybody can register to be a block producer (BP) and produce blocks if they receive enough votes. The top 21 active BPs and up to 21 stand-by BPs will be paid – the pool of the 42 total BPs are determine by number of vote.

At the start of every round, the 21 block producers with the highest number of votes are selected to produce the blocks of the next round. The selected producers are scheduled in order of geographic location to ensure high performance and prevent regional centralization.

BP Code of Conduct

• Secure the FIO Protocol network

• Ensure the network has enough capacity and processing power to service user requests

  • Every active BP shall run an API node capable of handling at least 100 simultaneous connections

  • BPs will publish real-time performance metrics of the block producing nodes

• Run the latest code base approved by BPs via a vote

  • BPs will self-report version number of software running

• Set fees and number of bundled transactions included with each FIO Address

• BPs will not share fees in exchange for votes. However, BPs may outsource the technical operation of running the node. Vote incentivization has the potential to degrade Delegated Proof of Stake systems. The block reward should incentive value creation over value transfer and no single entity should have a controlling stake in more than one block producing node, otherwise the decentralized intent of DPoS will be compromised.

• Each of the 42 BPs submits their desired fee amount of FIO Tokens for each blockchain interaction and amount of bundled transactions to be included with every FIO Address.

• Amounts submitted by active block producers are analyzed, and the fee is set at median of all submitted amounts.

• Until an on-chain mechanism is proposed, maintain a bp.json file (and chains.json if producing on multiple EOSIO-based chains) as described here and regularly review community tools like this one to keep your information up to date.