Page Spec

Item	Content
Page URL	/discover/fio-chain/block-producers
Page Title	FIO Protocol - FIO Chain - Block Producers
Design

Section Content

Anybody can register to be a Block Producer (BP) and if they receive enough votes, they can produce blocks.
Block Producers (BPs) run the infrastructure necessary to run the FIO Chain, and play a major role in the governance of the chain.
FIO Tokens choose the BPs through an ongoing vote, where 1 FIO Token = 1 vote.
The top 21 active BPs and up to 21 stand-by BPs are paid.
Any change to any smart contract on FIO Chain ⅔ + 1 (15 BPs) supermajority.

Blocks are produced exactly every 0.5 seconds by a specific BP designated to produce a block at that time.
Blocks are produced in rounds of 126 (6 blocks each, times 21 BPs).
At the start of every round, the top 21 active block producers are selected to produce the blocks of the next round.
The selected producers are scheduled in order of geographic location to ensure high performance.

The Block Producers have published the following Code of Conduct, which serves as their guide and is used by the community to decide who to vote for.

Secure the FIO Chain and Protocol.
Ensure the network has enough capacity and processing power to service user requests.
- Every active BP shall run an API node capable of handling at least 100 simultaneous connections.
- BPs will publish real-time performance metrics of the block producing nodes.
Run the latest code base approved by BPs via a supermajority vote.
- BPs will self-report version number of software running.
Set fees and number of bundled transactions included with each FIO Handle.
BPs will not share fees in exchange for votes. However, BPs may outsource the technical operation of running the node. Vote incentivization has the potential to degrade Delegated Proof of Stake systems. The block reward should incentive value creation over value transfer and no single entity should have a controlling stake in more than one block producing node, otherwise the decentralized intent of DPoS will be compromised.
Each of the 42 BPs submits their desired fee amount of FIO Tokens for each blockchain interaction and amount of bundled transactions to be included with every FIO Handle.
Amounts submitted by active block producers are analyzed, and the fee is set at median of all submitted amounts.
Until an on-chain mechanism is proposed, maintain a bp.json file (and chains.json if producing on multiple EOSIO-based chains) as described here and regularly review community tools like this one to keep information up to date.

You can either vote on specific Block Producers or you can proxy your FIO Tokens to someone you trust to vote for you.

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