Solutions to the problem of centralized, timelocked mining rewards

General
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Lately, the Neptune protocol has received some legitimate criticism about the timelocked mining rewards. The criticism is not that miners have to wait three years before selling half of their rewards but rather that these rewards stay at the mining pools, thus giving them a centralized stash of coins.

For the record, I agree that this is a real problem. Luckily I see multiple solutions to the problem, without the need to change tokenomics or the consensus mechanism.

Concretely, I can offer three solutions which I present in a list where the first is the technically easiest but also the one requiring the most trust, and the last is the hardest to implement but probably also the one yielding the biggest benefit.

  1. Sell the timelocked coins in a way that requires trust. The buyer can then send back the liquid rewards that the mining pool can then distribute to its users. The mining pool can also distribute the proceeds of the sale of timelocked coins. A forum thread on this forum could be used for the matching of buyers and sellers of these timelocked coins (beware of scammers).

  2. Distribute the timelocked coins directly to the users of the mining pool. If the mining pool is also generating block proposals (“composing”) and not just contributing hash power (“guessing”), then it can set the “guesser fraction” to zero and use the command `neptune-cli set-coinbase-distribution --file <coinbase_distribution.json>` to specify the distribution of coins for the next block proposal.

    A concrete way of doing this would be for the mining pool to distribute liquid rewards as they do now (e.g. once a users balance hits 100 liquid NPT), and then distribute the timelocked coins to one user per mined block. So that when a user’s balance e.g. reaches 64 timelocked NPT (half the current block subsidy), they get the entire timelocked reward of a block.

  3. Set the lock_script_hash in the block header to the post image of a lockscript that requires token ownership, making the timelocked coins instantly and trustlessly tradeable. The guesser reward can be sent to any lock script, as the guesser (mining pool) are free to set the lock_script_hash value in the block header to whatever they please. This Digest value can be the hash of a lock script that validates a deferred cryptographic witness, instead of a simple hash pre-image check.

    A deferred cryptographic witness could be either of:

    1. A signature on the transaction that spends guesser reward, valid under a public key that is announced by the mining pool operator in response to the client’s withdrawal request. This announcement is made on the blockchain in a way that guarantees that for any concrete chain (among many possible forks) there is only one assignment of a public key to each guesser reward UTXO.
    2. The provable burn of an IOU token (which is a token with a different type script from the native currency). The IOU token would be minted by the mining pool operator and assigned to the client who initiates a withdrawal request, once again in a way that guarantees that there is only one IOU per guesser reward UTXO. In contrast to the signature, the IOU can be traded until it eventually unlocks the native currency UTXO.
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Buying 60,000 timelocked NPT for 15,000 liquid
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0.Official Pool — Enhanced Proposal

Core Concept: Launch an official pool that pays out locked 50% of rewards directly to miners’ wallets, with a 5% pool service commission allocated to an open development fund for the project.

Key Advantages:

1. Zero interference with core economics This pool operates as a fully independent module — no changes to the algorithm or tokenomics are required.

2. Three pools are better than two Healthy competition strengthens the ecosystem and gives miners real choice.

3. Market pressure as a self-regulating mechanism Miners will naturally migrate to the official pool. Competing pools holding frozen payouts will face a trust crisis — and will be forced to release funds or lose their user base.

4. Network security & data quality If even 50% of the network hashrate moves to the official pool, the team gains deeper operational visibility and the network becomes significantly more resilient.

5. Community trust An open development fund with transparent commission usage signals long-term commitment and builds credibility with the community.

This proposal preserves the original 50% lock-up concept — and makes it stronger.

The Centralization Problem in Blockchain Networks

At this point in time, the network is becoming increasingly centralized in the hands of a small number of major players — specifically, large mining pools operating under a PPLNS reward system.
Additionally, 50% of the total coin supply is being frozen for a period of three years, with those coins set to be released to the same major players in the future.
The Core Question:
Will those locked 50% of coins actually reach their rightful owners after three years?
Is there not a very real risk that, at any given moment, a large pool could simply seize all of those frozen coins for itself — effectively absorbing the entire 50% over the course of three years?
And destroying the entire project in a single day.

A Proposed Solution:
Would the development team consider launching an official pool as a reliable and trustworthy alternative?
This would provide several key benefits:

Increased decentralization — reducing dependence on a handful of dominant players
Healthy competition — giving miners a credible alternative backed by the core team
Community trust — an official pool signals long-term commitment and accountability from the developers
Network security — distributing hash power more evenly across the ecosystem

An official pool from the development team could serve as a cornerstone of a more resilient and fair network — one that cannot be held hostage by any single actor.

[30.04.2026 4:57] Thorkil Schmidiger – don’t DM me for marketing requests:

This is a good idea. I should add though that mining pools already have the option of distributing the timelocked rewards. They just have to do that in the coinbase distribution, and set the guesser reward to 0. The coinbase can have a custom distribution. The only requirement is that it sums to the block subsidy, and that half is timelocked.

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How to implement solution 1, “Sell the timelocked coins in a way that requires trust”.

A mining pool can sell their timelocked mining rewards, as they get mined.

Seller of timelocked rewards/mining pool runs:

neptune-core --compose --guesser-fraction=0.6 --mining-address=<buyer_address>

Buyer of timelocked rewards runs:

neptune-core --auto-consolidate=<seller_address> --num-consolidation-inputs=3

This will automatically send all liquid mining rewards from buyer to seller, and buyer will automatically retain all timelocked rewards (as long as you don’t leave node to run for more than three years).

Buyer and seller can then agree to a price.

Edit: Requires latest version of neptune-core: v0.10.2

Buying 60,000 timelocked NPT for 15,000 liquid
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“This is way too complicated for the average person :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: Let’s try to explain your idea for a regular person who can turn on a computer and browse the internet! I understand there might be some Monero guys here, but there are very few of them and they don’t really need an explanation anyway.”

5

Why would anyone buy or sell frozen assets?
The original idea was to lock coins for three years until the project’s first halving. This temporary lock has a purpose—trading frozen rewards completely defeats this purpose.
Or am I wrong?

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The problem that has been identified is that the timelocked coins currently seem to stay at the mining pools, and are not distributed to its users. This leads to a problematic centralization in the distribution.

Above I outline solutions for this, ranging from easy to hard to implement. Another user mentioned that the Neptune founders could run a mining pool themselves.

The easiest solution I came up with is that the mining pool just sells the timelocked coins for liquid NPT. There is some trust involved but if neptune-core is launched with the right flags, most of this can be automated by both the seller and the buyer.

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Buying 60,000 timelocked NPT for 15,000 liquid

This is a genuinely interesting solution — elegant and effective, like a lifebuoy thrown to someone drowning at sea.:slightly_smiling_face:

Then you end up centralizing the coins yourself :slight_smile:
And I propose the idea of ​​decentralizing the blockchain of one of the key elements of the cryptocurrency concept.

8

Then you end up centralizing the coins yourself :slight_smile:

The idea is to create a market for these timelocked coins. Other people can outbid me with better offers :slight_smile:

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Option 3.2 is interesting — could you briefly explain how difficult it is (in full scope) to implement changes to a blockchain?
A futures contract on 50% of tokens frozen for 3 years :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: — a genuinely interesting idea, especially if the token can be traded today.

11

tbh - i dont see real solution to this problem

fact 1. Huge chunk of existing stake is already in wrong hands - and it cost dsiproportionaly less for them. By your bid you just prove that discount is huge. So some crazy amount of tokens will inevitable flood the market after halving killing expectation of improved value after halving.

fact 2. 1.5m stake forked out because they foresee this problem and unsolvability of it

So its really will be economically hard situation especially in the presence of alternative that does not have this problem and have seriously more clean supply (wich asa we all agree is fundamental for store of value)

i thought about decentralized mining pool - and indeed its not very hard to develop it in the presence of trident, but i am not sure it would cut 100% of mining.

tbh i would remove this lock asap and get through the shit of well intended, but premature decision.