Become a PlanetWatcher
Halving | PlanetWatch

The weight of new halving for the upcoming years

PW:GOV#5 | The weight of new halving for the upcoming years

Voting will start on December 7th at 11 am CET and will close on December 16th at 11 am CET.

UPDATE: The Governance vote is closed. The option “Yes, I agree with the token model update and the respective budget allocations” won with 96.8% of the votes.

Halving | PlanetWatch

Hello PlanetWatchers,

After proposing the most groundbreaking and game-changing token model update through PW:GOV#5, many of you already showed your support for the overall proposal (nearly 50% of our Twitter poll participants said they were excited about everything!). 

We have been actively following the conversations and comments on our social channels. Burning, topping up the recycling bins, and the new Hodler bonus program are popular topics.

However, we mentioned something in the blog post that is not getting enough attention. That is HALVING. To be fair, we only mentioned it very lightly – you can find the only mention of it below – hence why we intend to deepen the topic in this blog post.

Last but not least, reward budget halvings will be done every year (instead of every four years) to distribute Planets faster.


What is halving?

Let’s start with the basics: halving is the periodical reduction of the rewards that are issued to the participants of a blockchain-based project. Whenever a halving occurs, fewer rewards/tokens (typically 50% of the previous budget) are released to the participating parties. The mechanism drives token scarcity.

📝 In the case of Bitcoin, halvings occur every four years. Since 2020, a person who uses their computers to participate in Bitcoin’s blockchain – as a transaction processor and validator – is awarded 6.25 BTC for each block they successfully mine. After the next Bitcoin halving occurs, in 2024, the block reward will fall to 3.125 BTC.


Why is this good?

Although one might think that reducing rewards would also reduce incentives for PlanetWatchers to operate sensors, in fact, experience shows that the opposite is true in the long run. Scarcity driven by halving leads to a much faster distribution of the total token supply, which is ultimately beneficial in terms of the project’s global visibility and attractiveness.  

Therefore, we believe that this proposal will help PlanetWatch achieve faster growth during 2023-2026

As you can see in the table below, from 2023 (year 0) to 2026 (year 3), the majority of tokens will be distributed among PlanetWatchers. By year four, we will hit the 2.1 billion mark so the circulating supply will be very close to the total supply – this is usually well-perceived by the markets. From this point onwards, we will get into the hyper-scarcity phase, which will benefit the people who got their sensors and held their tokens in the first three years. In other words, we are still in the early stages of PlanetWatch so it’s a great time to join!

Halving | PlanetWatch
Please note that the figures shown in this table are estimated. Only after the implementation of the proposal (in case PW:GOV#5 passes), we will have 100% accurate figures for the new reward budget.

Why now?

As we are building the #1 global blockchain-based air quality data network, we need more devices on the ground measuring air quality. 

Our community-driven network already surpassed in size governmental air quality monitoring networks in many cities across Europe but, in some cases, we still do not have enough sensors to capture hyperlocal phenomena, which is one of the most important competitive advantages of what we are all building. 

Additionally, the more data we have, the more appealing we become for public organizations and companies who want to integrate air quality data into their products and services – whether this is for governmental decision-making or to directly alert users from the most polluted areas in their cities. 

We are confident that by implementing changes that will boost network growth in the upcoming years, significant data sales opportunities will arise which will be instrumental in returning increasing value to PlanetWatchers.


While you’re here, you might be interested in watching our second episode of Fireside Chat 👇