Proposed Polkadot Auction Schedule 2022

140843c3f3b24c6ebcb80a40d
2yrs ago
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We will have six parachains onboarding in Lease Period (LP) 7, projected to begin around 11 PM UTC on 11 March. These parachains are the winners of the six auctions that took place in the current LP (6).

The objective of this proposal is to discuss progress to date and agree on a schedule for the next year.

Current Schedule and Parameters

The current schedule, enacted by referendum 39, has two more auctions scheduled for LP 7-14:

  • Block 9,070,110 (17 Feb)
  • Block 9,271,910 (3 Mar)

Likewise, the runtime includes a few parameters that, while changeable via runtime upgrade, we will consider as fixed for this proposal:

  • An LP is 1,209,600 blocks long (approximately 12 weeks).
  • An auction is for 8 LPs (i.e. a full lease is 96 weeks long).
  • At least 2/3 of the Council (on Polkadot, 8 of 13) can initiate an auction, however,
  • Root origin (read: referendum) is needed to cancel an auction.
  • The ending period for auctions is 72,000 blocks (approximately 5 days).

Considerations

Number of Auctions

With Kusama's parachain count well ahead of Polkadot's and the network running smoothly, the Parity team thinks that it is safe to make a longer-term ramp up schedule for adding parachains to Polkadot. Based on the Kusama Polkassembly thread, this schedule should keep the number of parachains on Polkadot below 75% of that on Kusama.

This proposal suggests seven auctions per LP for the next 12 months (4 LPs). Kusama currently has 22 parachains running plus five more about to be onboarded in LP19. This proposal therefore assumes moderate growth in Kusama's parachain count, but any need to slow down auction cadence would have ample time for discussion/voting.

For Which Lease Periods

The first two auction batches were all for the next lease period after Polkadot's current LP. This was a tradeoff between onboarding immediately (auctions for the current LP) versus losing part of your lease (when the auction is late in the LP, your parachain has missed the majority of one of its LPs).

With Polkadot's LP's length of 12 weeks, it can be a long wait for the first winners to onboard. Winners of auctions that are early in an LP might prefer to trade a few weeks of their LP and onboard immediately.

I will start with a proposal that the first two auction winners in a batch onboard immediately, and that the last five onboard in the next LP. Parachain teams that want the full eight LPs can bid in the third to seventh auctions, but teams that want to onboard immediately can bid in the first two. Please comment on this thread with alternate suggestions if you think it should be different.

Note that crowdloans are configured for a range of LPs to bid on, not a batch of auctions, so one crowdloan can bid on the last five auctions of one LP and the first two of the next, without refunding.

Formalizing

Parameters

  • Opening period: 27,00 blocks (just under 2 days)
  • New auction starts every 172,800 blocks (12 days)
  • This leaves 73,800 blocks between auctions (about 5 days, 3 hours)

Proposal

utility.batch(
    calls: [
        // First 2 auctions, during and for LP7. Will onboard immediately.
        // LP7 starts on block 9,388,800, estimated 11 Mar 2022
        scheduler.schedule_named(
            // Auction ID
            id: 'auctlp07',
            // Start block of first scheduled auction
            when: 9_400_000,
            // How often to start auctions, and how many of this config to hold
            maybe_periodic: (172_800, 2),
            // Top priority
            priority: 0,
            // The auction configuration
            call: auctions.new_auction(
                // Opening period of 27,000 blocks
                duration: 27_000,
                // The first (of 8) lease periods for bidding
                lease_period_index: 7
            )
        ),
        // Auctions for LP8. The first 5 will occur in LP7, the last 2 in LP8.
        // LP8 starts on block 10,598,400, estimated 03 Jun 2022
        scheduler.schedule_named(
            id: 'auctlp08',
            when: 9_745_600,
            maybe_periodic: (172_800, 7), // 7
            priority: 0,
            call: auctions.new_auction(
                duration: 27_000,
                lease_period_index: 8 // 8
            )
        ),
        // Auctions for LP9. The first 5 will occur in LP8, the last 2 in LP9.
        // LP9 starts on block 11,808,000, estimated 26 Aug 2022
        scheduler.schedule_named(
            id: 'auctlp09',
            when: 10_955_200,
            maybe_periodic: (172_800, 7),
            priority: 0,
            call: auctions.new_auction(
                duration: 27_000,
                lease_period_index: 9 // 9
            )
        ),
        // Auctions for LP10. The first 5 will occur in LP9, the last 2 in LP10.
        // LP10 starts on block 13,017,600, estimated 18 Nov 2022
        scheduler.schedule_named(
            id: 'auctlp10',
            when: 12_164_800,
            maybe_periodic: (172_800, 7),
            priority: 0,
            call: auctions.new_auction(
                duration: 27_000,
                lease_period_index: 10 // 10
            )
        ),
        // Auctions for LP11. The first 5 will occur in LP10, the last 2 in LP11.
        // LP11 starts on block 14,227,200, estimated 10 Feb 2023
        scheduler.schedule_named(
            id: 'auctlp11',
            when: 13_374_400,
            maybe_periodic: (172_800, 7),
            priority: 0,
            call: auctions.new_auction(
                duration: 27_000,
                lease_period_index: 11 // 11
            )
        )
    ]
)

Calendar

  • "Batch Params" refers to opening duration (27,000) and periodicity (172,800)
  • "For LP" refers to the first lease period up for bidding in the auction
  • "In LP" refers to the lease period in which the block takes place

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