UBI for validators?
This is a complex subject and in my view hasn’t been properly addressed by the most of the blockchains. How do you propose UBI is sponsored? How is it different to NEAR Foundation incentives with delegations?
Lets put delegators into 5 groups:
- NEAR Foundation - an official body which can perform staking operations based on blockchain needs, for example, it is possible for NF to incentify chunk-producers and other node runners with delegations, which will generate rewards based on certain rules, such as max allowable fee validator charge, uptime, etc. This can make sure overall network health by adding / incentifying more nodes, but is permisson-ed, custodian, and may have some legal challenges.
- Funds and investors, who received lockups or liquid tokens in return to their contribution - they usually stake in top 10 validators, low fee, or have their own 100% fee, private pools - more often.
- Projects on NEAR, which received grants in form of tokens or delegations in - they usually own pools and only stake into themselves
- Average NEAR user, an individual who purchased NEAR tokens during ICO, or on exchanges
- NEAR team member: now Pagoda, Aurora, Proximity and other spinouts team - they will likely stake in low fee top 10 pools, or pools they have personal connection too.
Now let’s review who can actually provide UBI? In my view it’s just group 1. You can’t force group 2,3,5 to stake in certain pools. And you can’t force them to share their rewards to contribute to UBI.
According to NEAR Whitepaper the 1% of inflation/rewards is going towards NEAR treasury, this can be used as source for UBI, but in reality, how is it different to Group 1 simply re-index their contributions based on NEAR price.
Look how other chains for example doing that, Solana, for instance: its foundation program, stake into participants from stake pool, which is automated in runs every epoch, so no delay, efficient, of course, when bot is working 
It also incentify testnet by paying for the server with locked tokens.
As we can’t in any way make group 2,3,5 select when’re to stake, and group 4 is very small to make a difference, I think we have only one option short term: Is to improve NF delegation process by automating it, efficiently adjusting to market conditions, and introducing locked incentives for running testnet.
No matter how we call it UBI or simply NF delegations it is still the same.
Thought?