ICON validators: an incentive to care

ICON validators: an incentive to care

bOMM provides access to cheap ICX voting power. Use it to vote for up to 5 ICON validators, and see which ones offer incentives.

ICON validators (also known as P-Reps) operate the servers that produce blocks and verify transactions for the ICON blockchain. Many also collaborate on products to support the ecosystem, like Omm.

As compensation for their time and operating expenses, validators receive a portion of the daily ICX inflation. The amount is determined by the number of votes they receive from the ICON community. 1 staked ICX = 1 vote.

But voting isn’t restricted to ICX holders. Boosted OMM (bOMM) holders can also participate using the staked ICX held in Omm’s ICON market. There’s enough to provide more voting power than ICX staked traditionally.

At the time of publishing, 1 bOMM is equivalent to 1.71 ICX of voting power. $1 of OMM locked for 4 years has the same voting power as $26 of ICX.


Consider the incentives

You just want to use a money market. Why should you care about ICON validators and cheap voting power?

OMM locked for 4 years earns 22.76% interest, but you can increase your return by voting for specific validators.

A subset of validators offer voting incentives in the form of airdropped tokens or a share of their ICX rewards. Some are estimated to offer up to a 16% return.

To improve discoverability, validators that offer voting incentives have an ‘Offers incentives’ link underneath their name on the Vote page. You can also click the Incentivised tab to view all your options at once.

The validator list on the Vote page, filtered to show validators who offer incentives.

To learn more about each validator’s incentives, view the Omm docs:

Vote for ICON validators - Omm support
Learn how to delegate a share of the ICX supply to teams that support the ICON ecosystem.
If you’re an ICON validator and want to incentivise bOMM holders, use the ICX delegation script to track your votes, and fill in the Validator information form to add your details to the app and docs.

Use Omm to vote for ICON validators

Before you can vote, you’ll need to lock up Omm Tokens (OMM) to get bOMM:

  1. Earn OMM by using Omm, or buy some on the Balanced exchange.
  2. Go to the Omm Vote page, sign in, then click ‘Lock up Omm Tokens’ in the ‘Vote overview’ section.
  3. Choose how many OMM to lock and for how long, then complete the transaction to get bOMM.

You can now delegate votes toward a maximum of 5 validators. By default, your votes are split between the validators that work on Omm. To adjust them:

  1. Click ‘Adjust validators’ in the ‘Your votes’ section.
  2. Click + next to a validator to vote for them, or – to remove your vote.
  3. Click Save and confirm your changes.

Your votes will be evenly distributed to the validators you chose.

If you vote for validators that offer incentives, additional rewards will be sent to your wallet according to their distribution schedule. For more information, see Vote for ICON validators.


Got questions, or want to discuss validator incentives? Join the Omm community on Discord.


Appendix

The information below was used to calculate the dollar value of bOMM voting power and the returns from validator incentives.

Voting power per dollar

1 bOMM = 1.71 ICX voting power

1 OMM = $0.01

1.71 ICX = $0.26

$1 of OMM locked for 4 years is equivalent to $26 of ICX voting power

Returns from validator incentives

Plan P’s incentives were used to calculate validator rewards. They give 50% of their ICX back to voters.

Rewards shared with voters:

ICX inflation rewards (9%) x Validator share (13%) x 50% = 0.6%

Rewards received for every $1 of bOMM voting power:

$26 x 0.6% = $0.16 of ICX