Traffic-Based App Rewards (CIP-0104) Miss Their 18 August Go-Live on Canton
The on-chain proposal that bundled the new reward models with switching them on was not approved. The models are enabled, the rewards stay off, and no new date has been set.
Traffic-based app rewards will not go live on Canton MainNet on 18 August 2026 as planned. A notice on the Canton forum on 17 August said the on-chain proposal that combined enabling the supporting Daml models with activating the rewards "was not approved".
What CIP-0104 changes
CIP-0104, "Traffic-Based App Rewards", written by Simon Meier and approved on 12 February 2026, changes how app builders earn Canton Coin:
- Rewards follow usage. Instead of featured app activity markers, apps would be rewarded according to the traffic their transactions actually burn on the Global Synchronizer.
- Free confirmations. Protocol-conformant confirmation responses become free for validators.
- Per-app weights. A change merged into the specification on 7 July 2026 added featured app weights, so governance can adjust rewards app by app.
What happens instead
According to the notice:
- Models on, rewards off. On 18 August the supporting Daml models are to be enabled, but the rewards themselves stay inactive.
- A vote on weights. Super Validators get a voting interface to propose and vote on Featured App weights. The release notes for Splice 0.7.0, tagged on 30 July, list the governance voting interface behind this, which supports updating weights through UpdateFeaturedAppRight.
- No new date. No activation date has been set. It depends on review by the Tokenomics Working Group and the Super Validators.
The notice does not give a vote tally, and does not say whether the proposal was voted down or fell short of a threshold.
Why it matters
CIP-0104 is a significant change to how Canton Coin rewards reach app builders: it links them to the traffic an app actually generates rather than to activity markers. Until weights are agreed and the rewards are switched on, app reward economics on Canton stay as they are.
The delay also shows on-chain governance working as a real check. An approved CIP still needs the Super Validators to activate it, and here they did not switch on the change as it was packaged. For app builders, the next signal to watch is the first set of Featured App weights put to a vote.
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