HD-3: Smart Contract Creator Incentives

Feature Overview

Introduce a configurable fee-sharing mechanism that allocates a portion of transaction fees to smart contract creators whose contracts are actively used during block execution. By default, creators receive 10% of transaction fees, but this percentage can be adjusted via governance. The system can also be toggled on or off through governance without affecting the underlying metadata about contract usage.

Motivation

Smart contract developers are at the heart of innovation in decentralized ecosystems. Despite this, current gas fee structures (such as EIP-1559) offer no direct compensation to creators for the usage of their contracts. This discourages long-term protocol development and innovation.

The proposed incentive model creates a built-in, protocol-level mechanism to reward creators based on actual usage of their deployed contracts, fostering developer engagement, ecosystem health, and network utility.

Objectives

  • Provide a native, transparent way to reward smart contract creators for active on-chain usage.
  • Align developer incentives with protocol growth.
  • Reduce reliance on external funding, grants, or off-chain monetization.
  • Allow governance to manage:
    • The incentive percentage.
    • The enable/disable state of the distribution logic.
  • Ensure toggling the feature off preserves all historical creator and usage data for potential re-enablement.

Key Features

  • Usage-Based Rewards: Smart contracts involved in transaction execution result in a reward share to their original deployers.
  • Governance-Controlled Percentage: Default set to 10%, modifiable by governance through parameter updates.
  • Governance Toggle: Feature can be enabled or disabled at the protocol level without deleting creator records.
  • Non-Destructive Disablement: Turning off the incentive mechanism stops revenue distribution but retains all contract metadata.

Technical Implementation

  • Identification of smart contracts executed per transaction (via internal EVM call tracing).
  • Attribution of executed contracts to their original msg.sender at deployment (CREATE, CREATE2).
  • Post-processing logic to redirect a configurable portion of transaction fees to the creator address.
  • Parameter module integration for:
    • enable_revenue (bool)
    • developer_shares (in decimal basis points, e.g. 0.100000000000 for 10%)
  • Logic hook integrated at the fee accounting level (post-EVM execution, pre-burn).
  • Contracts with unknown or nonstandard deployment origins are excluded from attribution.

Acceptance Criteria

  • Contract creators receive 10% of fees by default for executed contracts.

  • Percentage is adjustable via governance.

  • Incentive feature can be toggled on/off via governance.

  • Creator attribution works reliably for standard contract deployments.

  • Non-destructive toggling preserves creator metadata.

  • No impact on contracts not used during transaction execution.

  • Events emitted when incentive payments are made (types.EventTypeDistributeDevRevenue ).

  • Unit tests covering key flows: execution tracking, attribution, payout, governance updates.

  • Integration tests simulating real-world transactions and fee splitting.

  • Complete developer documentation on deployment patterns, fee accounting, and governance control.

Documentation

  • Full developer documentation to be published under

    Smart Contract Creator Incentives

    with examples, API behavior, governance guide, and integration best practices.