Halvening, VPNs — SteadFast Storm Update

uPlexa
3 min readAug 4, 2019

If you have not already heard, the uPlexa project is working on implementing Utility Nodes (much like masternodes) into our network for a PoW/PoS block reward split of 80/20. The Utility Nodes will be a gateway into allowing our very own private VPN network, privacy based side-chains and applications (UNApps), minuscule fees, and instant transactions. All without sacrificing the sacred foundation of our project, Privacy. You may read more about the upcoming SteadFast Storm release scheduled for Q2, 2021 here.

After some discussions with our community, we have decided to implement a block halvening at the same time of the SteadFast storm release. Although our block rewards smoothly decrease over time, our community feels like we are awarding miners with too much liquidity. This liquidity may be holding the UPX market back. As we’re also one of the most profitable coins to mine at the moment, this brings a ton of for-profit miners who instantly dump their coins on our low-liquid exchanges.

Our current reward algorithm works as so:

Smooth emission

The upper bound for the overall amount of all digital coins is also digital:

MSupply = 264 − 1 atomic units

This is a natural restriction based only on the implementation limits, not on intuition like “N coins ought to be enough for everybody”. To make the emission process smoother uPlexa’s CryptoNote uses the following formula for block rewards:

BaseReward = (MSupply − A) >> 21

Where A is amount of previously generated coins. It gives a predictable growth of the money supply without any breakpoints.

Currently, our daily emissions are just over 3M UPX in which are rewarded to PoW based miners. On November 1st, 2019 — block rewards will be around 4,100 UPX per block (one block per two minutes, 1440 minutes per day = 720 blocks * 4,100 = 2,952,000 UPX per day).

As such, we have decided to implement a halving, reducing the block reward by 50%. Thus, rather than 4,100 UPX per block, the block reward will be around 2,050 UPX per block (and will still slowly decrease over time).

Our new found block rewards starting November 1st will look like:

Total emitted per day: ~1,476,000 UPX
PoW Rewards: ~1,180,800 UPX
PoS Rewards: ~295,200 UPX

Not only is there a decrease in rewards by 50%, but Utility Nodes (PoS) will also take 20% of the block rewards. This should help our economy push through the duress of low liquidity.

uPlexa VPNs

After discussion with our lead eCommerce developer, blk, we have decided we will launch our VPN network for free. We will have been the first VPN provider to offer such privacy for no cost at all.

We will also have another hardfork ready (but not yet implemented). This hardfork will be used as a security feature in-case the scalability of said VPN network is not sufficient enough (if there’s not enough Utility Nodes to act as Exit Nodes on the network). As we will be providing the first ever, completely free unlimited data VPN — it is likely users will flock to our service. If at any time the network becomes congested, we will implement a hardfork in-which charges a per-byte fee to access the VPN network. The idea is to add limitations on network abuse whilst also adding more spending utility to the uPlexa network. If we do have to implement a per-byte fee on data, the costs would likely be around $0.01–0.05 USD per 1GB of VPN usage based on your selected data priority (normal to super fast). Therefore, users who are already using the network will not likely freak out about spending a few cents every month, but will have to learn how to obtain and utilize UPX coins. On top of the profits Utility Nodes already make, they will also be rewarded with 100% of the per-byte VPN fee if the fee is needed to be imposed.

As we get closer to the release date of SteadFast Storm, we will be releasing more information on any changes or additional features being worked on.

Please feel free to jump into our Telegram or Discord chats if you have any questions, concerns, or general feedback.

Telegram: https://t.me/uplexaOfficial

Discord: https://discord.gg/M3yy2H6

The uPlexa Team

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uPlexa

uPlexa: Incentivizing the mass compute power of IoT devices to form a means of anonymous blockchain payments.