Community Verified Pools now live

T-Starter
6 min readJul 17, 2021

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At T-Starter we have made it our mission not to allow scam projects on the platform. This vetting process can however add friction to the listing process and discourage projects from using our platform. This is why we have now added an option to list through a community vetting process. This community vetting requires that a project garner enough community support over a voting period of 1 or 2 weeks to proceed to sale. If the project has gained sufficient support after this voting period (currently set at);

(Yes votes - No votes)/(Total staked balance) > 5%

a sale will be created. This simple vetting process solves the following common problems experiences on some other launchpad platforms;

  • The 1 to 2 weeks voting process makes it impossible for pools involving fake tokens or real tokens at an inflated price to quickly listed while a genuine sale is in progress with the hope that unsuspecting users accidentally join the wrong pool.
  • Projects where the development team does not engage with the community and disclose sufficient details are unlikely to achieve the necessary support. The ballot period allows the community to become familiar with the project details and team before any sale begins.
  • Project that are unable to convince the community of their purpose and potential are unlikely to proceed beyond the ballot process.

Besides the obvious benefits to potential investors, community verified pools also allow projects to test and refine their offer to investors before proceeding to sale. If they don’t get it 100% right on the first attempt they are always able to create a new ballot with more favourable terms. We expect that through our community vetting process we will see higher pool sale success rates.

Project listing process

Projects need to complete a simple 3 step process to successfully open a ballot;

Step 1 : create a draft ballot

A draft ballot is created by clicking on the “List Project” button and completing the form provided. Once complete the user “Create”s the draft ballot. A 1000 START fee is charged when the draft ballot is created. This covers the resource required to run the ballot and discourages spam.

You return the the ballot to review, make changes and update as many times as you wish to ensure everything is perfect.

Step 2 : fund ballot

Once the ballot has been created it is necessary to transfer project tokens to the T-Starter platform to allow the voting and sale process to proceed.

Step 3 : publish ballot

Voting is opened by publishing a ballot. This action changes the ballot state from draft to published which makes it visible to the public. The ballot will now run for the 1 or 2 weeks voting period chosen when it was set up.

Note : if this listing process does not satisfy the needs of the project they may apply for a direct listing.

Voting for a project

Anybody with staked START is able to vote for projects. Your voting weight is based on your staked START balance. You may also change your vote or unvote at any time if you change your mind.

The awesome thing about voting on an EOSIO based blockchain (EOS, WAX, Telos) is that it cost nothing to vote. As a result there is no reason other than voter apathy preventing anybody from voting.

To reward the community for the time and effort involved in vetting projects and voting, 3.75% of the funds raised during a successful pool sale are distributed as staking rewards to community members who have staked START. This is one of these few cases in blockchain where incentives align perfectly with desired behaviour.

What happens if the vote is unsuccessful?

If a ballot does not achieve the required 5% of total staked balance lead when the ballot closes,

  • all sale tokens are returned to the owner
  • the ballot and all voting records are cleared (freeing up RAM resource for everybody who participated in the vote).

What happens if a vote is successful?

If the ballot achieves the required 5% total staked balance lead when the ballot closes,

  • a token pool sale is created.
  • the ballot and all voting records are cleared (freeing up RAM resource for everybody who participated in the vote).

The pool sale will begin when the sale start date is passed. This is set by the project owner and need not coincide exactly with the closing of the ballot. This allows the project to control exactly when they want the sale to begin (as long as the pool sale is set to start after the ballot completes).

Pool sale process

All pool sales now include an automatic 3 hour headstart and guaranteed allocation of token to START token holders with staking VIP levels 1 to 5. The guaranteed allocation increases as the VIP level increases. This headstart begins 3 hour before the advertised start of the pool sale and is enforced by the sale smart contract (no backdoors or gaming the system).

When the advertised pool sale start time is reached a first come first serve sale begins. This phase of the sale may be divided into two parts, a premium access period requiring users to lock up 500 START for 30 days followed by an open public sale. This progressive relaxing of participation criteria provides T-Starter community members an advantage in hot projects while still allowing the project to reach the biggest possible audience if sales are slow.

What happens if a sale soft cap is not reached?

Projects specify a soft cap (minimum number of tokens sold) which must by achieved for a sale to be successful. If the soft cap is not reached the sale is cancelled and all tokens are returned to their owners. It is unlikely that a project will be successful if only a fraction of the sale needed is achieved. The fairest thing to do is to cancel the sale and return all tokens.

What happens if the soft cap is exceeded?

If the soft cap is exceeded the sale is successful. All sale participants receive their tokens and the project receive the proceeds of the sale after platform fees have been deducted. One quarter of the fees are paid to the platform fee account. The remaining 3/4 is paid in staking rewards.

Staking rewards

Project pay a 5% fee when a pool sale is successful. 3/4 of this fee is added to the staking reward pool. The staking reward pool is divided between staking accounts based on their staked balance.

This staking reward as paid out to encourage our community to participate in on boarding and vetting projects. Nobody benefits from an unsuccessful sale. The more successful a sale is, the bigger the staking reward paid.

For more on T-Starter

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T-Starter
T-Starter

Written by T-Starter

At T-Starter we are building a cross-chain token pool swap platform on the Telos Blockchain, making it possible for projects to build on Telos