Announcement of procedural changes and a revised price plan per September 16th

August 17, 2021

Announcement of procedural changes and a revised price plan as per September 16, 2021

The Board of Trustees performs an annual review of the technical, economic and legal policies in order to secure the sustainability and availability of the Sovrin Utility. Advice is provided by the Sovrin Governing Bodies: Sovrin Technical Governance Board, the Sovrin Steward Council, the Sovrin Steward Qualification Committee, the Sovrin ID4A Council, the Sovrin SSI in IoT Working Group, the Sovrin Guardianship Working Group, the Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group and the Board of Trustees https://sovrin.org/team/. This annual review has led to two board actions:

A revised price list.
A number of updates in procedures regarding enforcement of policies to distribute nodes over our three networks.

Price plan as of September 16, 2021 Status: resolved by BoT, 30 day notification as of August 17, 2021

New procedures as of September 1 2021 Status: resolved by BoT

Net	Purpose	Ledger Write Fees	Steward DID	Endorser DID	LEI Registration
MainNet	Production network for scaling live SSI applications & services	MainNet Pricelist (unrevised)	Onboarding fee 750 USD	Annual fee 5,000 USD [1] 1 free per Steward	Mandatory for Stewards and Endorsers. Existing Stewards and Endorsers must register before September 16, 2022.
StagingNet	Pre-production network for prototyping and demonstrating SSI applications & services	90% discount on MainNet Pricelist	Onboarding fee 750 USD	6 Months fee 500 USD Removal after 6 months [2]	Mandatory for Stewards, optional for Endorsers. Existing Stewards must register before September 16, 2022.
BuilderNet	Developer test network for building SSI applications & services and testing pre-production Indy Networks code	Free	Onboarding fee 750 USD	Free Removal after 6 months	Mandatory for Stewards, optional for Endorsers. Existing Stewards must register before September 16, 2022.

[1] In full recognition of its Identity for All mission and to facilitate SSI adoption in hardship domains, upon a well-grounded request the Sovrin Foundation will consider a special 90% discount for a MainNet Endorser DID for an initial phase in individual cases, for e.g. volunteer-driven low-funded non-profits, educational organizations and global south start-ups.

[2] Removal of Endorser privileges for StagingNet Endorser DIDs created prior to August 16, 2021 will commence on March 1 2022.

Ledger write fees in effect from September 16 2021

Type	MainNet Price USD	StagingNet Discount	StagingNet Price USD
ATTRIB	10.00	90%	1.00
CLAIM_DEF	25.00	90%	2.50
NYM	10.00	90%	1.00
REVOC_REG_DEF	20.00	90%	2.00
REVOC_REG_ENTRY	0.10	90%	0.01
SCHEMA	50.00	90%	5.00

Why these procedural changes and price plan proposals?

Maintaining the current ledger write fee structure on MainNet is relevant compared to the market situation. The Sovrin Foundation is experiencing an increase in ledger writes which proves relevance of the networks and viability of the pricing model on MainNet.

Setting up a discount for StagingNet will enable Endorsers to test services for a period of 6 months at a reduced price before moving to MainNet. Charging for StagingNet transactions is a vital step in the evolution of the Sovrin Foundation’s business model.

By adding an onboarding fee for Stewards, we acknowledge the effort required to conduct Steward vetting and due diligence compared to the value of a “Steward seat”. The Board hopes to create a model in future that will eventually remunerate the Steward’s costs.

Adding an annual fee for the Endorser DID acknowledges that access to Sovrin MainNet comes with a shared responsibility to fund the Sovrin networks and in general sponsor the Sovrin Foundations endeavours to realize Identity for All.

Making LEI mandatory at registration provides the Sovrin Foundation with a certified identification method for entities that enter the Sovrin Ecosystem.

The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) is a 20-character, alpha-numeric code based on the ISO 17442 standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It connects to key reference information that enables clear and unique identification of legal entities participating in financial transactions. Each LEI contains information about an entity’s ownership structure and thus answers the questions of ‘who is who’ and ‘who owns whom’. Simply put, the publicly available LEI data pool can be regarded as a global directory, which greatly enhances transparency in the global marketplace. See https://www.gleif.org/en/

Added motivation for the outcome of the changes (Added September 7 2021)

Following the announcement of August 17th, the Board of Trustees has collected questions and responses from the community. Thank you all for your feedback!

Background

Since June 2020 the Board of Trustees has been working on revising the economic policy for the Sovrin Foundation. In April 2021, a Sovrin Membership Program was introduced that among other things enabled Transactions Endorsers to sign up under the following conditions:

Community

€ 20k / US$ 24k)

• Participation, speaking and branding opportunities at all Sovrin events

• Invitation to special Sovrin events (up to 1 member)

• Unlimited ledger writes

Company

€ 4.6k / US$ 5.6k)

• Participation at all Sovrin events

• 120 free MainNet writes

In May 2021, The Sovrin Governance Framework Group and Steward Council signalled challenges with this Membership Program.

The membership program is not embedded in the Sovrin governance structure and creates a perception that Endorsers or other sponsors could “buy” influence, thereby sidetracking the Stewards.

The Steward Council confirmed this problem.

An additional topic was identified:

StagingNet being used for production grade services without any enforcement of policy to move production to MainNet. The ratio in billable writes in June was 1 (MainNet) to 10 (StagingNet).

Thus the Board decided to redevelop the economic policy in order to:

Incentivize Stewards with benefits
Stimulate the intended activity on the dedicated nets by enforcing the existing policy of limited use on the testnets.
Create a sustainable business model that would rely on use of the Sovrin Utility rather than financial sponsors.

Introducing a StagingNet DID at a 90% discount will allow Endorsers to use StagingNet as intended: as a pre-production network for prototyping and demonstrating SSI applications & services. The operational process for this will be communicated a.s.a.p.

Adding a price plan for StagingNet to create awareness for participants that the community has a shared responsibility for the sustainability of the Sovrin Utility and should not expect services for free.

Removing Endorser DID’s from StagingNet and BuilderNet on a 6 month basis rather than resetting will allow Endorsers to still use the registered DID’s but disable new writes. A new StagingNet Endorser DID with a 6 month value will need to be purchased.

Providing each Steward with one free Endorser DID acknowledges the efforts that our Stewards are already making to achieve 100% availability across the nets.

Making a LEI-number mandatory at registration provides the Sovrin Foundation with a global, certified identification method for entities that enter the Sovrin Ecosystem. This ensures that Sovrin complies with regulatory requirements regarding AML etc. and can provide auditable information about ledger fee collection. The choice for GLEIF is due to it being a uniform, globally available and also lightweight process (which even fulfills regulatory requirements of the financial industry). GLEIF is a supra-national not-for-profit organization headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.

Board of Trustees Resolutions

Resolution 1

BE IT RESOLVED that the ledger fees and policies agreed to at the Sovrin Foundation Board of Trustees meeting of July 21, 2021 (listed below) be approved and that the actions necessary to apply these policies be taken with the goal of having them announced and in place by September 1 2021.

Stewards (all ledgers)

The onboarding fee for a Steward is 750 USD.
A Steward, no matter on which ledger, receives 1 MainNet Endorser DID for free (i.e. 100% discount on annual fee for 1 DID)
All Stewards need to have a LEI (“GLEIF ID”) when applying, where possible (e.g., government exception)
Handling existing (“clean up”): One year time to get a LEI
Handling new: LEI mandatory when filing application

MainNet Endorser DIDs

Generally: Mandatory registration with LEI (“GLEIF ID”), where possible (e.g., government exception)
Handling existing (“clean up”): One year time to get a LEI
Handling new: LEI mandatory when filing application

MainNet Txs Fees

Ledger write fees remain as they are

StagingNet Endorser DIDs

Generally: Mandatory registration for self-service
Handling existing (“clean up”): Age away over 6 months, can register during this time
Handling new: Mandatory registration when using self-service
Announce now that Endorser DID fees are coming in future

StagingNet Txs Fees

Announce now that Txs fees are coming in future

BuilderNet Endorser DIDs

Endorser DIDs remain free
Removal of endorser privileges for any endorser DID after 6 months

BuilderNet Txs Fees

Ledger transactions remain free of charge

Resolution 2

BE IT RESOLVED that the ledger fees and policies agreed to as per circulated documents to the Sovrin Foundation Board of Trustees on August 16, 2021 (listed below) be approved and that the actions necessary to apply these policies be taken with the goal of having them announced on August 17, 2021 and in place by September 16, 2021.