I see 3 ways to adjust the collator rewards without adjusting tokenomics or enabling slashing (which we should avoid for now).
- Adjust the pool size (collators and/or orbiters)
- Adjust the min collator deposit
- Enable/disable collator deposit delegation rewards
There are some technical limitations around #1, so we should keep that as a constant for now, but it will be an important variable after these limitations are removed.
#2 has been discussed already above, there are multiple reasons why this may be a good idea.
For #3, the collator bond is currently earning rewards as if it was delegated to the collator, this can be turned off to make the minimum bond more effective.
Currently, compared to simply delegating, running a collator will always increase total rewards, no matter what the minimum bond is (since the bond is generating the same rewards as simply delegating, running a collator is just gravy on top. So anyone with enough to post the entire bond is still strongly incentivized to do so.
If the bond no longer earns rewards, it will be easier to dial in the rewards % where it’s no longer as attractive and possibly not worth the effort to run a collator if are in it only for the money.
We should discuss what the appropriate reward for new (and existing?) collators should be. IMO it should be somewhat higher than just delegating, enough to make it viable but not too much people only do it for yield generation. Once we have this target reward number we can solve for the other values.