Most of us are familiar with Ethereum smart contracts and how they allow everyone to interact and perform on the blockchain. Many remain unaware of the the fact that theirs a cost (or fee) of interacting with a smart contract on any platform. On Ethereum this fee is called “Gas,” which is the financial amount it takes to process (or execute) a smart contract or to perform a transaction. Miners that verify and validate transactions on the network before they put it on the blockchain receive this fee as a reward.
RChain has a similar feature: “Phlogiston” (Phlo for short). Phlo is a mechanism to pay for contract execution on our network. While Ethereum has miners, RChain has validators that propose a new block containing transactions. Instead of having a pool of nodes validating all transactions occurring on the blockchain, RChain will have multiple shards being validated by different validators. Within a given shard transaction fees will be collected in a single pool and divided among validators. While we are still figuring out the validation rates, an exchange rate will exist between Rev and Phlogiston.
If you are interested in learning more about becoming a validator, click here.
