I’m about to submit an alternative proposal and would like to share it here for open discussion within the same thread.
Proposal: Balanced Inflation Strategy for Massa (Alternative Path)
Overview
This proposal offers a more sustainable and ecosystem-friendly approach to reducing MAS token inflation without cutting validator rewards, which currently serve as the primary incentive for network security and token lock-up.
Instead of reducing block rewards, this proposal focuses on:
Gradual increase in fee-related costs (gas and storage)
Future implementation of a burn mechanism on transaction fees
Maintaining validator incentives while introducing deflationary pressure
Suggesting the introduction of a new governance parameter for base transaction gas price
Parameter Changes
1. Deferred Call Min Gas Cost
Proposed Value:100 nanomassa (10× current value)
Purpose: Introduces a meaningful economic threshold for deferred smart contract operations. This change helps deter spammy or inefficient usage and enables deflationary mechanisms (e.g., burning part of this minimum fee in the future).
2. Deferred Call Constant Gas Cost
Proposed Value:2,000,000 gas units (up from 750,000)
Purpose: Increases the execution cost of deferred calls to make them more economically balanced with regular transactions. This results in higher validator rewards and stronger base for future fee burning, while still being affordable (~0.002 MAS at 1 nanomassa gas price).
3. Ledger Cost Per Byte
Proposed Value:0.0002MAS per byte (up from 0.0001)
Purpose: Makes on-chain storage more economically significant, discouraging bloated or careless data usage, and raising average transaction fees — laying the groundwork for deflation.
Suggested New Parameter (for governance discussion)
Parameter:MinTransactionGasPrice Proposed Value:0.15 – 0.2 MAS (vs. current ~0.1 MAS default) Rationale:
Prevents low-value or spam transactions from clogging the network
Increases minimum revenue per block
Supports future fee-burn models
Helps stabilize long-term token economics without affecting validator rewards
Future Recommendations (non-parameter roadmap)
Fee Burn Implementation: Burn a portion of transaction fees (e.g., 50%) to reduce circulating supply, following the model of Ethereum’s EIP-1559.
Tiered Staking Incentives: Introduce variable APYs based on lock-up duration or governance participation, improving long-term retention.
Ecosystem Growth: Launch grant programs and incentive structures for developers to build real use cases around MAS.
Final Thoughts (as always)))
This proposal aims to preserve validator income while gradually transforming the network’s economic model from inflationary to usage-driven and deflation-aware.
It is a balanced, non-destructive path toward long-term token value growth, higher sustainability, and more meaningful economic behavior on-chain.
Let’s build toward long-term value — without destabilizing what’s already working.
I will support it, In addition, the current top 20% of large-amount pledges actually affects decentralization. I think some inhibitory factors for large-amount pledge rewards should be introduced, and some random small-amount rewards should be introduced for small-amount pledgers.
Incentivizing people to use less the chain is not what we need right now. Reducing inflation should come by reducing node rewards (emission or burning gas fee) not increasing fees for users
The updated parameters are within reasonable ranges and won’t cause technical issues.
Alignment with our goals
At a time at which we are pushing for:
adoption of Massa beyond pure staking
increase in deweb usage
rollout and adoption of the new Deferred Calls feature
We believe that increasing the deferred call min gas costs does not really balance it with normal operations as they are not measured the same way. For deferred calls, it is a minimal price per unit of gas, while for operations it is a minimal absolute coin fee. Also note that active deferred calls are stored in the state, and therefore incur a storage fee as well which is not the case for normal operations. Because this change would deter Deferred Call usage while causing further imbalance with normal operations, we do not believe it achieves the goals we desire.
The same applies to the constant gas cost. It would artificially limit the number of active deferred calls per slot, despite the current limits being based on empirical measurements to maximize the number of deferred calls allowed per slot without hampering security, and therefore maximize their utility.
Doubling storage costs would also hamper adoption for the DeWeb and damage our efforts aimed at onboarding new users for that feature, by making it significantly less competitive and attractive. Also note that the current values are based on empirical measurements and calculations to minimize cost while maintaining security.
On my side I think this is a bit early, and that we should wait to have more transactions per second and ASC operations before adjusting these values, taking into account the feedback from more users. I also agree that it can have adverse effects in the mid-term. Foundation will vote against at this stage, but we’re happy to rediscuss these important mechanisms and parameters when needed.
