ORIGINALLY POSTED: 25th June 2022

The Flare Network audit performed by Trail of Bits is complete and passed with no vulnerabilities. According to Trail of Bits: “The audit did not uncover any significant flaws or defects that could impact the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a Flare node or the network at large.”  With this milestone, Flare’s mainnet genesis will occur on or shortly after July 11th, 2022, subsequent to a final audit of the token distribution smart contract code taking place the week of July 4th.

Observation Mode

The network will launch in “observation mode”, during which time it will be tested and become fully decentralised. At genesis, the Flare Foundation will operate all network validators. Next, FTSOs from Songbird as well as new FTSOs will be able to join Flare and start submitting FTSO data. Validation power will thus pass from the Flare Foundation to FTSO providers that operate validators. Upon completion of observation mode, FTSO data providers will validate the network and will earn validation rewards. Observation mode will last for a minimum of 8 weeks until the point at which sufficient validation power has passed to external validators such that Flare Foundation is no longer in control of the network i.e. not more than 33% of validation power is controlled by Flare. During observation mode, inflation and rewards shall be zero in order not to prejudice participants; furthermore, the network state may be rolled back at any time.

At genesis, all initial token balances will be created. The Flare Foundation will hold all tokens that are attributable to all Flare-related entities and team. These tokens will be distributed at the public token distribution event (see below). The only token transactions during this time will be made for operational purposes, including funding and delegating to FTSOs and for system testing purposes. Each Flare address will be published.

Public Token Distribution Event and Further Distributions

Upon exiting observation mode, the initial token distribution of 15% will take place. It is at this point that self-custody token recipients will be able to access and use their tokens and that exchanges can distribute the tokens to their users.

The remaining distribution will start subsequent to a governance vote, mentioned as FL02 in the Flare rollout document, on how to conduct the distribution. The governance proposal will be published around mainnet genesis. The vote will take place on Flare at the earlier event where at least 66%* of the initial distribution is capable of voting or 6 months from the public token distribution have elapsed. In the case where tokens have gone to exchanges, this means that the exchanges will have distributed the token and made it possible for users to withdraw them.

Inflation will commence after observation mode completion and will be set to 10% per annum calculated monthly on the total unlocked supply. The governance vote will then dictate future inflation.

* When this blog was originally posted, this figure was set at 75%.