Revised TANIP-1 Proposal: Redirect TEL Issuance Towards Centralised Exchange Listings

Council Proposals TANIP
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TANIP: Proposal - Revised TANIP-1 Proposal: Redirect TEL Issuance Towards Centralised Exchange Listings

Submitted by: Bluelights
Date: 07th July 2025

Overview: The original intent of TANIP-1 — to incentivise fee-generating activity on the Telcoin platform and reward real ecosystem participation — remains sound. This revised proposal does not reject that goal, but instead offers a practical redirection of $TEL issuance that better aligns with current outcomes and the broader mission of adoption.

The original TANIP-1 was designed to activate $TEL issuance at the application layer, rewarding stakers and referees based on protocol fee activity. However, real-world implementation has revealed several critical issues that have undermined its effectiveness and fairness.

Problems Identified:

  • Reward Concentration: The top 6 wallets have collected over 69% of all distributed rewards, and the top 25 wallets account for more than 85%, despite representing only 2.7% of total participants. This extreme concentration undermines the principle of fair distribution and discourages broader participation.
  • New Wallet Drop-off: Early phases saw strong new user engagement, with nearly 68% of reward-earning wallets being new. However, recent periods show a sharp decline in new wallet participation, suggesting the current system is failing to attract or retain new users.
  • Regional Accessibility Issues: Many users are excluded from participating due to the Telcoin app not being available in certain regions, resulting in an inherently unfair distribution structure. Even though many users are eager to participate in the rewards programme, they are currently unable to do so. Rather than waiting for the app to launch in these regions before onboarding users, it would be more effective to allocate resources toward building on/off ramps in underserved areas now. This approach would enhance the user base and enable faster onboarding, ensuring that users are ready to adopt the Telcoin Wallet as soon as it becomes available in their region. If the objective is to grow app adoption, the current rewards system does not support this goal and fails to nurture emerging user bases globally.
  • Disproportionate Rewards: A small number of wallets dominate reward distribution, collecting millions of $TEL while most users receive minimal or no rewards.
  • System Gaming: The structure allows for behaviour that exploits the system without contributing to meaningful growth or adoption.
  • Significant Missed Rewards: Many users are missing out on their expected $TEL due to unclear mechanics or flawed eligibility tracking.
  • Lack of Observable Impact: Despite ongoing $TEL issuance, there has been no corresponding increase in TVL, transaction volume, or user growth.

Community Sentiment: The community has voiced strong concerns about the fairness, transparency, and utility of the current reward model. There is growing consensus that a different approach would be more effective in driving adoption and long-term value.

Proposed Solution: Redirect the remaining Phase 1 $TEL issuance—originally intended for protocol-level staking rewards—towards funding Tier 1 and Tier 2 centralised exchange (CEX) listings. This includes pausing the current distribution model and repurposing unissued or future rewards into a growth-focused exchange listing fund.

Objective: Support Telcoin’s growth and liquidity by securing $TEL listings on major centralised exchanges.

Justification:

  • Reduced Operational Overhead: Ending the current reward system reduces the internal resources needed to maintain reward calculations, eligibility logic, dispute handling, and frontend display within the app—allowing the Telcoin team to focus development efforts on scaling core features and improving user experience.
  • Increased Visibility & Access: Listings on Tier 1 and Tier 2 exchanges significantly increase user access and market exposure.
  • Stronger Demand Drivers: Unlike the current reward emissions—where most $TEL is absorbed by a small number of wallets without contributing to growth—centralised exchange listings create sustainable demand by increasing access, liquidity, and long-term user adoption.
  • Better Return on TEL Issuance: Every $TEL spent can deliver a tangible network benefit, versus being absorbed by a small pool of insiders.

Execution Plan: 5. Consider capping any further Phase 1 rewards at a maximum of 1 million additional $TEL, or implement a tapering issuance structure over time to mitigate runaway dilution. 6. Re-evaluate anti-gaming mechanisms to ensure fairer, more distributed participation and reduce the dominance of a few addresses.

  1. Pause TANIP-1 distributions immediately to prevent further inefficiencies.
  2. Allocate TEL to a CEX Listing Fund, governed transparently and with oversight by the Telcoin Authority Organisation (TAO) Council.
  3. Engage with Tier 1 and Tier 2 exchanges to explore listing terms, liquidity requirements, and marketing options.
  4. Submit a formal council proposal for approval by the Telcoin TAO Council, as outlined in the forum’s council governance structure.

Optional Community Involvement:

  • Community feedback to inform council decisions.
  • Transparent reporting of how TEL is allocated and spent, ensuring accountability.
  • Future incentive rounds can be proposed, but should be tied to measurable outcomes post-listing (e.g., new user growth, usage volumes, or holding milestones).

Conclusion:
While the current rewards structure may be retired for now, it does not mean it must be abandoned forever. Once the Telcoin ecosystem is more established—with wider regional access, deeper liquidity, and stronger user activity—the reward system can be reassessed and potentially reintroduced in a more targeted and effective manner.

The original goals of TANIP-1 remain valid: to grow Telcoin adoption and reward ecosystem participants. However, the current implementation fails to deliver on those goals. By redirecting $TEL issuance towards centralised exchange listings, we align community incentives with Telcoin’s growth, bring new users into the ecosystem, and provide real value to token holders.

Call to Action: We urge the Telcoin TAO Council to approve this revised proposal and work towards a more impactful use of $TEL issuance.

*Note: This proposal is an amended version of the original TANIP-1 based on live data analysis and community feedback. Supporting documentation is available in the attached spreadsheet.

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Hey there, @bluelights! Good evening.

While I appreciate the sentiment, the TAN council is granted an allocated budget to develop and support the application network. I don’t know how reallocating funds to exchanges from TAN helps that mission?

We just discussed a lot of these topics (and addressing them) in last council meeting. It’s novel, and will need monitoring and course corrections, but not defunding.

I’ll wait for others to jump in as well, look forward to following the discussion.

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*Edited original to include additional justification:

Reduced Operational Overhead: Ending the current reward system reduces the internal resources needed to maintain reward calculations, eligibility logic, dispute handling, and frontend display within the app—allowing the Telcoin team to focus development efforts on scaling core features and improving user experience.

and refined conclusion with extra paragraph:

While the current rewards structure may be retired for now, it does not mean it must be abandoned forever. Once the Telcoin ecosystem is more established—with wider regional access, deeper liquidity, and stronger user activity—the reward system can be reassessed and potentially reintroduced in a more targeted and effective manner.

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I wholeheartedly support the Revised TANIP-1 Proposal to redirect TEL issuance toward centralized exchange listings. This is a fantastic step forward for the Telcoin ecosystem and its broader community for several reasons:

  1. Increased Accessibility and Adoption: Listing TEL on prominent centralized exchanges will make it easier for new users worldwide to access the token, driving adoption of Telcoin’s mobile-based financial services. This aligns perfectly with Telcoin’s mission to empower financial inclusion through blockchain and telecom integration.

  2. Enhanced Liquidity: More exchange listings will boost TEL’s liquidity, making it easier for users, stakers, and developers to trade and utilize the token. This strengthens the Telcoin Application Network (TAN) by supporting its growing ecosystem of apps, remittances, and digital wallets.

  3. Market Visibility and Growth: Centralized exchange listings elevate Telcoin’s profile in the crypto market, attracting new investors and partners. This increased exposure can accelerate platform growth, benefiting all stakeholders, from miners to everyday users.

  4. Strategic Use of TEL Issuance: Redirecting issuance to fund exchange listings is a smart, community-driven approach to prioritize long-term value over short-term rewards. It shows Telcoin’s commitment to sustainable growth and global reach.

I encourage all community members to back this proposal. It’s a proactive move to strengthen Telcoin’s position in the market and amplify its impact on financial inclusion.

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I guess there could be an argument made that redirecting the funds to exchange listings will help people gain access and awareness of telcoin. An argument could be made against that point, no way of knowing. But I think it’s time to acknowledge that the stake and refer program is not doing what it was intended to do. Its objective is failing, low amount of new wallets being created, concentration of rewards, etc. even if this proposal doesn’t gain traction, I think the council should come up with a better use of these funds, it’s a large amount of tel issuance that is yielding a poor ROI.

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Members can write proposals until they are blue in the face, the only thing that this council has proven so far is they are a buffer to support their own agenda. Only seem to be interested in what’s good for the few and not the many. Extremely active and vested members bring data and metrics to the table to show what’s already not working and it’s met every time with resistance. The referral program at its best looks like a scammy malware link when posted on social media. I’ve been in tel since shortly after IPO and wouldnt trust that link. So i can’t expect someone who doesn’t know about tel to trust it. The lack of new wallets should make that evident as well. I think the proposal provides good argument as to why it should at least be considered. Defunding or temporarily reassessing based off current metrics is probably the most unbiased perspective you could have. Unless someone can dispute the data provided and show proof of the rewards program actually creating value and growth i don’t see why it wouldn’t be at a minimum brought to the table.

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To be clear, the TAN council agrees completely that a change in the program is necessary and last week we spent the majority of the council call discussing different methods to better meet the goals of the tanip1 rewards program as it was originally intended.

This has also been discussed on the discord channels as well.

Let’s keep these conversations productive and not inflammatory. The purpose of proposals is to do exactly that, and the TAN council looks forward to working with the community in coming up with a better plan in how we can make the program more beneficial for all

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Thanks jay for the input.

The program we’re discussing is the tanip1 referral program, which is different than the stake and refer.

For tanip1, definitely agree a change is needed.

I’ll compile some of the ideas we discussed so that they can be talked about eith blue’s proposal

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Aren’t these rewards given to the stake and referees?

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Yes they are - just wanted to clarify the stake and refer program is different than the tanip1 program. Both use staking and referrees

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Please remember that this is phase 1 as well, there’s a phase 2 planned to incentivize devs on the application network as well.

As stated, tuning this program to attract and incentivize more users is at the top of our list.

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Wouldn’t it be an idea to utilise the ideas in this proposal until phase 2?

Sorry I didn’t catch up with the last meeting so I’m unaware of what’s been mentioned

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Exchange listings are a TELIP, not a TANIP. We’re talking about intermingling budgets, and some council governance.

Again, I’ll wait on others thoughts on the proposal.

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You’re absolutely right — and I appreciate the clarification.

To be clear, this proposal isn’t intended to override or duplicate any existing TELIPs focused on exchange listings. In fact, it’s in full alignment with them.

What this TANIP revision proposes is simply this:

Rather than continue issuing $TEL into a broken reward system, let’s pause TANIP-1 and make those funds available to support broader strategic initiatives — such as listings already under discussion in the TELIP track.

If the appropriate path is for the Council to absorb the paused issuance into a TELIP framework, that’s absolutely fine. I’m not asking to merge budgets — just to redirect emissions from a system that is provably not working, and make those tokens useful in the wider Telcoin growth strategy.

At its core, this is about being responsible with issuance and adapting.

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I think talking about a pause is fair but what Steve said it’s taking the Tans money from their budget and just giving it to the platform council who has there own budget for listings which are still in the works. A proposal to ask for more funds for a listing is more appropriate but at this time those listing agreements are still being worked and funds needed aren’t known until we have a listing agreement hashed out. Ending the 3.2 mil a week for the rest of the year is 83 mil tel which still doesn’t cut it

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The emissions are generated based on the reward program through staking and trading activities though. With your proposal, you’re asking that it stop, which would halt the generation of them.

It would then require budget transfer, which is where I’m not sure on the logistics.

Just trying to map it out in my head.

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Totally fair point — but just to clarify, this isn’t about taking funds from the TAN Council and handing them to the Platform Council.

It’s about pausing a broken reward system that’s emitting over 3.2M TEL a week — over 160M TEL annually, which is 4x more than the 40M TEL already allocated for listings.

Even if listings aren’t ready yet, keeping that TEL flowing into a system that isn’t delivering isn’t efficient. Pausing it gives us space to reallocate later — via TELIP, revised TANIP, or whatever path has the best impact.

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Just wanted to add my 2 cents here.

I’ve been following the data since inception of the program, and have noticed some wallets taking advantage of this program, and I agree that we need to adjust rewards distribution in order to make it more accessible/fair for all, while focusing on growing the TAN. Keep in mind these wallets haven’t been doing anything wrong, they just found a way to game the system to their advantage. We’re also starting to see this strategy isn’t as profitable anymore, and we’ve seen those 2 biggest trading wallets drastically reduce their trading activity over the last period (18).

With that being said, I don’t think we need to blow the whole thing up just because we’re noticing its not working as intended. Even a pause on this doesn’t seem like the right direction for me. The goal is to get more users/usage of the Telcoin App, but eventually the goal is to drive more network activity to the Telcoin Network, specifically the Telcoin Application Network (TAN).

As others have mentioned, I agree that we should look to break the current weekly rewards of 3.2M TEL into different buckets to accommodate for different KPI’s. It would be best to gain alignment with the TAN Council and the TAO to determine what these KPI’s are, and work towards aligning the rewards.

As a first pass at this, these are a few KPI’s that I would suggest:

  1. Networks Activity/Transactions (In-App Volume/Fees)
  2. New Users Onboarded to the TEL App (All DApps in the future)
  3. Frequency of usage of the TEL App (All DApps in the future)
  4. Amount of TEL Staked within the TEL App (All DApps in the future)
  5. Rewards Distribution Efficiency (Already active with Arie’s time-weighted TANIP)

I also posted in Discord with some other options on what we could do to further break the rewards into different buckets. Here were the suggestions:

  • Base Participation - Equal share to the wallets who hit the minimum activity (ex. $50 USD), which would encourage broader participation.

  • Weekly Lottery for Active Users (Arie’s idea) - A small % of the weekly pool is set aside for a lottery among eligible wallets (above a min fee threshold). Adds excitement and rewards luck.

  • Streak Bonuses for Consistency - Users who participate for 3+ consecutive weeks earn compounding TEL bonuses. Encourages habit formation and ongoing participation.

  • Referral-Based Reward - Users earn from a pooled amount based on how many new users they onboarded to the App for each period.

  • Expanded Use Case Rewards - Introduce TEL incentives for everyday transactions like paying utilities, mobile data, or merchant purchases through partner apps.

  • NFT Badges & On-Chain Achievements - Non-financial rewards like collectible NFTs for hitting milestones (e.g. first trade, 4-week streak, referral goals). Builds loyalty and user identity.

  • Milestone Boosts When Global User Counts Hit X - When the program reaches major adoption milestones (e.g. 1,000 active wallets), the community is rewarded with a one-time TEL bonus.

Granted all of these may not work, but these are just some ideas to get the ball rolling.

If we looked at these KPIs and suggested adjustment, we could possible break down the reward distribution into these buckets:

  1. Volume Based Rewards (50%)
  2. Base Participation (20%)
  3. Referral and Staking Bonus (20%)
  4. Gamified Incentives (10%)

Volume Based Rewards - Proportional to fees generated (staker + referral) within the TAN, same system as we currently have.

Base Participation - Equal share to the wallets who hit the minimum activity (ex. $50 USD), which would encourage broader participation.

Referral and Staking Bonus - Proportional to new users onboarded per period, plus additional rewards based on streaks and consistency of use. Could also add a component for increased staked TEL.

Gamified Incentives - Lottery, Online/Merchant Payments, etc.

Again these are just ideas, and I would encourage everyone in the community to provide some feedback on these suggestions.

Let’s try to right the course of TANIP1 instead of blowing it up in favour of T1 Listings. We already have a budget for that, and if more is needed, then another TELIP can be proposed.

Remember the goal of TANIP1 was to get more users to the app/network.

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Great proposal and points that followed. In my opinion, pausing is a governance call the TAN Council can make and I’m ok with that until we can figure out a better formula for the distribution of funds. However, I don’t want to see a long pause there… It’s important that we pivot to something else and quickly. But how that freed-up TEL gets reused must follow the governance framework… which keeps TAN-focused funds for TAN outcomes unless reauthorized at the platform level.

To echo some of the ideas that were laid out by others, my favorite ways for redistribution that I believe would incentivize users to continue to use the app every week are streak bonuses for consistent use, referral tier bonuses, and a weekly lottery for active users. Using TAN funds for listings would divert resources away from the very users and ecosystem that TAN was designed to support and out of principal, I would not be supportive of that allocation. If more TEL is needed for exchange efforts, the appropriate path is through a TELIP submitted to the Platform Council.. not by repurposing local TAN issuance.

That’s how Telcoin’s decentralized governance is designed: each council has a clear mandate, and the integrity of those roles is key to long-term trust and accountability. I am just reiterating this as I’m sure some people will read that and automatically assume this is me saying I’m anti-cex. I’m not… I’m just saying that is a TELIP issue; not TAN. However, I’m on-board with freezing distribution until a better solution to TANIP1 is agreed upon, but we should work quickly on that.

We’re still in the infancy of the council and this is all new territory. There are going to be trial and error moments, and that’s not a flaw in the process, it’s part of building something decentralized and community-driven from the ground up.

TANIP1 was a solid idea when it launched, and it helped us learn a lot about how people interact with the app, how incentives are used (or abused), and where gaps exist. Yes, some things didn’t work as intended, but that’s the whole point of running live programs like this: to observe, adapt, and improve.

If we halt these distributions now, we risk losing a key feedback loop just when developers and users are starting to understand and build around the system. The better path forward, IMO, is not to pause the program any longer than we need to, but to tune it, run experiments, diversify the incentive structure, and let the data guide future decisions. That’s how we build a rewards engine that actually works long-term… through iteration, not interruption.

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I was going to reply but I think you’ve summed up all the points in my head . As usual - very clear thinking my friend

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