Economic SecurityIncentivesHow Rewards Work

How Rewards Work

Staking incentives on Tangle come from two sources:

  1. Service fee revenue paid by customers (in the service’s payment token).
  2. TNT incentives funded by governance (pre-funded, no minting).

ELI5

If you delegate to an operator that runs useful services, you earn:

  • A share of the fees those services pay (in the same token the customer used).
  • Optional TNT incentives when the protocol has funded an incentives budget: “I also earn TNT from RewardVaults plus optional staker inflation.”

You choose your exposure scope (All vs Fixed), and your share is calculated from your delegated amount and lock multiplier.

How The Money Moves On-Chain

  1. A service is paid (one-time or subscription).
  2. Payments.sol splits the payment into developer, protocol, operator, and staker shares.
  3. Operator shares accrue as pending rewards in the core protocol.
  4. Staker shares are forwarded per operator to ServiceFeeDistributor (or to treasury if no distributor is configured).
  5. ServiceFeeDistributor allocates those fees to delegators by score:
    • Score = principal × lock multiplier (per asset, per operator).
    • All vs Fixed blueprint selection gates which pools you participate in.
    • Optional USD weighting and security commitments can scale the effective exposure.
  6. Optional TNT incentives are distributed from InflationPool in epochs:
    • The staking portion funds RewardVaults (TNT incentives by asset deposit and lock).
    • If stakersBps > 0, a staker TNT budget is distributed by service exposure and routed through ServiceFeeDistributor.

Why This Design

  • Single fee distributor: All staker service-fee payouts use ServiceFeeDistributor, so the math is consistent across tokens.
  • Explicit budgets: TNT incentives only exist if governance funds InflationPool. There is no hidden minting.
  • Exposure fairness without per-user loops: Exposure is computed at distribution time (USD-weighted where possible), avoiding per-delegator loops in inflation logic.

How To Get Rewarded (Practical Steps)

As a staker

  • Deposit and delegate in MultiAssetDelegation.
  • Choose All or Fixed blueprint selection.
  • Optional: add a lock multiplier for a higher reward score.
  • Claim:
    • TNT incentives from RewardVaults.
    • Service-fee + staker-inflation rewards from ServiceFeeDistributor.

As an operator

  • Self-stake minOperatorStake to register.
  • Join services and set exposure and commitments responsibly.
  • Claim operator service fees from the core protocol.
  • Claim TNT commission from RewardVaults if you opt into commission.

As a blueprint developer

  • Publish a blueprint and manage services.
  • Earn the developer split from each service payment.

Examples

Example 1: Service fees (USDC) Alice delegates 100 wstETH to Operator O, All mode, no lock. Bob delegates 200 wstETH to Operator O, All mode, 3-month lock (1.3x). A service pays 10 USDC and the staker share is 2 USDC. Alice score = 100, Bob score = 260, total = 360. Alice earns ~0.56 USDC, Bob earns ~1.44 USDC.

Example 2: Inflation staker budget (TNT) An epoch has 1,000 TNT with stakersBps = 20%. The keeper calls distributeEpochWithServices with active services. InflationPool allocates 200 TNT by USD exposure per service/operator and routes those TNT to ServiceFeeDistributor, where delegators claim as usual.

Where To Look In Code And Tests

  • Payment split and staker routing: src/v2/core/Payments.sol
  • Staker fee distribution and claims: src/v2/rewards/ServiceFeeDistributor.sol
  • Inflation budgets and staker exposure allocation: src/v2/rewards/InflationPool.sol
  • TNT staking incentives: src/v2/rewards/RewardVaults.sol
  • Tests:
    • test/v2/tangle/Payments.t.sol
    • test/v2/rewards/ServiceFeeDistributor.t.sol
    • test/v2/rewards/ServiceFeeDistributorStreaming.t.sol
    • test/v2/Rewards.t.sol
    • test/v2/InflationPool.t.sol

See Claiming Cheatsheet for one-tx claim options and multicall tips.

How Staking WorksClaiming