Title: AIP 3: Decrease fees to testnet levels
Description: Recommendation by the Fee Pricing Committee to substantially decrease fees to match those in the Turing testnet
Author: Dan Mills
Proposed Fee Summary
The Fee Pricing Committee (FPC) is responsible for establishing and recommending data submission fees within the network (see charter here). In this recommendation, the FPC proposes reducing fees on Avail DA mainnet by 10x. Currently, sending 512 KB of data costs 9.49 AVAIL, enacting this change would make that 0.95 AVAIL (~1/10 as much), which matches what it would cost on the Turing testnet.
Background and Rationale
Although extensive testing was performed on the Turing testnet with fees set to their current values (10x lower than mainnet), mainnet was launched with higher fees in order to reduce likelihood of spam in the initial days and weeks after the launch.
The committee believes that now that the network has launched and its robustness demonstrated, the risk of spam by lowering fees back to the levels of the testnet is minimal.
Moreover, this recommendation gets closer (though slightly higher) to USD $0.2 per MB, which the committee believes is a reasonable target. The FPC believes this target represents a reasonable balance between the need to deter spam and congestion, reward validators, and to offer a competitive and affordable service to the community.
Analysis and Impact
The recommended fee equates to about 1.901 AVAIL per MB (1024 KB), or about USD $0.26 at the current AVAIL token price (as of writing).
As noted above, this is somewhat closer, though still somewhat higher than the committee’s rough target of $0.2 per MB. The FPC believes that given the dynamic nature of the token price and the recency of the mainnet launch, this initial adjustment is a reasonable first approximation to the target, which can be refined in future recommendations. The FPC will seek to develop more sophisticated tools to that effect.
Note that the token price in USD does not remain static, causing the price per MB in USD to similarly fluctuate. Do not rely on the USD price given above or the target in this recommendation without checking the current cost. Given this volatility, the target is thus only a rough guideline which the committee uses to evaluate along with other considerations.
Security Considerations or Risks
The primary security consideration of lowering the data posting fees is the risk for additional spam. Based on testing on the Turing testnet as well as by observing fees on other data availability services, the committee believes that the risk of spam is minimal at the recommended fee levels.
Copyright Waiver
Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.