FAQs about fees

Why is the Forta Network implementing subscription fees?

Fees for subscriptions to bot alerts and related data feeds were implemented with overwhelming support of the community (that voted “yes” to FP-5 and FP-6), requiring users to pay for the data they consume, and rewarding the detection bot developers that create and maintain those data feeds.

Developer rewards represent a vital component of a sustainable and decentralized Forta Network. These incentives create a flywheel effect in which developers create better data feeds, which bring more users, and that drives more revenue to developers, which again attracts more developers to build on Forta. These will be sustainable incentives, as they will be coming from real demand from users, and not from the protocol’s treasury.

What fees are being introduced in the Forta Protocol?

At the moment, only fees to consume the Threat Intel Data: users will need to pay to access alerts, findings, and labels generated by the Forta Network. These fees will provide rewards to the participants in the network that generate corresponding data (i.e. bot owners).

Will other fees be introduced in the future in the Forta Protocol?

Other fees may be added to the Forta Network through future community governance proposals. For example, bot execution fees that could be paid by detection bot owners to directly reward node operators and their delegators for running bots on the network. Members of the Forta community are encouraged to explore how the Forta Network can evolve and explore how other types of fees might promote the long-term health of the network.

Users

What Threat Intel plans are available?

1. The General Plan: Forta’s General Subscription Plan plan gives you access to 99%+ of the Network’s hundreds of detection bots (ie. everything except Premium Feeds).You can also browse the 1,000+ other bots on the network here.
   The General Plan can only be paid in FORT.

2. Premium Plans: Premium Feeds are owned and maintained by one or more reputable community members (teams and/or individuals) and must meet certain requirements for performance and precision. The price for each Premium Feed is set by the owner. You can see all the Premium Feeds on the homepage of the Forta App once fees are live.
   Premium plans will be paid in either USDC or FORT. This decision is made by the premium feed’s owner.

How to buy a plan?

Plans can be bought directly through the respective Plan’s smart contracts or using the Forta App in the Threat Intel Page that will go live on August 8th. You can also visit the documentation for all the details.

How long do plans last?

Plans have a duration of 30 days and are automatically renewed until canceled. If you do not hold sufficient funds in the wallet you subscribed with at the time of renewal, the renewal will fail and your subscription will lapse.

How to cancel a plan?

Users can cancel at any time, however their subscription will continue to give the user access until the end of their current subscription term. Current plans can be reviewed and canceled in the account tab of the Forta App, or directly through the smart contracts.

What happens if I don’t have enough funds in my wallet on the renewal date?

If the user doesn’t have enough funds in their wallet on the renewal date, the plan will be canceled. The user will need to add funds to the wallet and purchase the plan again to resume it.

What happens if I don’t have enough approved funds on the renewal date?

If the user doesn’t have enough approved funds on the renewal date, the plan will be canceled. The user will need to purchase the plan again to resume it.

In this context, approved funds are the funds (USDC and/or FORT) that you have authorized the Forta dapp to access and move from your wallet. As with other Dapps, the Forta smart contracts need your permission -as the wallet owner- to access and move your tokens. For more information about token approvals, please check here.

I already paid for the plan, now what? How can I access the data from the bots that belong to the plan I purchased?

Intel from Premium Feeds and the individual bots on the General plan can be accessed either through Forta’s GraphQL API (pull) or by subscribing to a bot directly (push). Purchasing one or more network subscriptions will give you access to both options.

How do I manage my API keys?

The user can manage their API keys in the API Keys section of the Forta App.

I’m subscribed to a bot but I’m not getting notifications. Why?

You might not have access to that bot intel on the plan you have purchased. Please, make sure the plan you’ve purchased includes access to the bot you are trying to subscribe to.

If the problem persists, you can always get technical support on Discord.

I want to try Forta before purchasing, are there free trials?

You can apply to gain access to a 1-month free trial of the General Plan here.

Each premium feed owner manages their own discounts and free trials, please refer to the premium feed page to learn more or apply for the Scam Detector 1-month free trial here.

Are there other terms and conditions applicable to my subscription?

Assuming that a bot constitutes an original work of authorship under applicable copyright laws (software typically does), bot owners should automatically garner the right to license the use of their bot as they see fit. By deploying a bot to the Network, other participants in the Network will act as if a bot owner is giving an implied license to utilize their bot in accordance with the protocol rules (e.g. nodes will run your bot, users may subscribe to your bot if they pay the corresponding fees, etc). Bot owners may choose to apply other licensing terms to their bot(s), so be sure to review any such licensing terms (e.g. on Github or other documentation).

Bot Owners

I created a bot on the Network, what happens next?

By default, any newly created detection bot will be automatically assigned to the General Plan. Anyone who wants to access your bot’s data, will have to purchase the General Plan and subscribe or integrate with your bot.

What happens if a premium feed consumes my bot data?

Your bot will still be part of the General Plan, and you will collect the revenue it generates for being part of the General Plan.

Whether the premium feed owner has funded your bot development or has agreed with you on the bot’s usage, the premium feed belongs to the owner and he can decide to distribute the revenue the Premium feed collects or not.

What are the benefits of having a Premium Feed on Forta?

The benefits of launching a Premium Feed on Forta are (a) leveraging Forta’s infrastructure, including thousands of node runners, and (b) leverage Forta’s position as the leading network for threat intelligence in Web3 and exposing your data to a larger audience.

Do I have to pay to make my bot a premium feed?

No, you will have to submit a proposal at the Forta’s forum to get governance approval. Premium Feeds must meet certain requirements for performance and precision, but every bot developer can submit a proposal to make their bots premium feeds.

How do I make a premium feed?

Every Bot developer and owner can submit a proposal on the Forta forum to make their bots a Premium Feed.

The proposal needs to include, - Name of Premium Plan, - Proof of bot ownership and owner name, - Price in FORT or USDC, - Performance data; - Documentation; - Compatible licensing (Forta Bot License 1.0 is compatible, but not required); - Owner’s Polygon wallet address for fee collection

Here an example proposal.

Provided that a submission to create a Premium Plan submission includes all the requisite information, a Premium Plan can be approved in one of two ways through the community governance process,

• the Forta Council can approve the Premium Plan (for clarity, the Council may delegate any of its responsibilities as appropriate, e.g. depending on the volume of requests), or
• majority approval of the Premium Plan by the community via Snapshot voting using the FPP process with at least 1 million FORT votes.

Once and if your proposal gets governance approval, your feed will be included in the Forta Threat Intel page and you will be responsible for maintaining it and managing its users.

Can I change the price of my Premium Feed?

The price of the premium feed is approved by governance proposal on the Forta forum - and the owner can change it by submitting a follow up proposal (although current subscribers to that plan will keep using it at the same price until the subscription term ends).

Do I need to purchase a plan to access the data produced by my own bots?

Yes, if a bot owner wishes to receive data from the Forta Network they will need to pay the corresponding plan to access the data generated by their bots. Assuming a bot owner legally owns their own bot, they could run it locally, however this would not garner the benefit of it being run by the decentralized Forta node network.

For premium plans, all fees are currently paid directly to the plan owner, so if you are the owner and are required to pay, effectively you will get 100% of that amount back as rewards.

If a bot belongs to the General Plan, the fees collected will be part of the general pool and distributed to all the bots in the plan according to the bot rewards formula, so the owner who is paying to access his own bot from the general plan may have their costs offset.

Do I need to purchase a plan if my bots read Forta data from other bots?

If a detection bot reads Forta data, the bot owner would need to pay respective data fees for the data they rely on (from the corresponding plan) or their bot will not function correctly.

Does my bot need a license?

Assuming that your bot constitutes an original work of authorship under applicable copyright laws (software typically does), you should automatically garner the right to license the use of your bot as you see fit, whether on the Forta Network or anywhere else. With this in mind, the Forta Foundation funded the development of the “Forta Bot License”. You are free to adopt the Forta Bot License if you think it fits your purpose! Alternatively, you can adopt any other license you believe is compatible with the technical architecture and spirit of the Forta Network, or no license at all. However, by deploying your bot to the Network, other participants in the Network will act as if you are giving an implied license to utilize your bot in accordance with the protocol rules (e.g. nodes will run your bot, users may subscribe to your bot, etc).

Distribution of Fees

How are fees distributed among bot owners?

Data fees will be collected into the respective Unlock smart contract related to each plan (please check Technical Architecture for further details). These fees will then be programmatically distributed as rewards to the bot developers who create and maintain the detection bots in that plan (bot owners) at the end of each epoch.

Rewards are distributed on a weekly basis to align with node rewards, by distributing 23.3% (7/30) of the accumulated fees at the end of each epoch.

Distribution of rewards to bot developers among each will be distributed following the bot rewards formulas described in the documentation.

Is there any other source of revenue for bot owners?

There are several rewards programs in the Forta ecosystem that are independent of the distribution of data fees and compensate developers for developing detection bots.

You can find some of the existing rewards programs on forta.org, although a bot developer might also get paid for building a bot for a third party.

How to claim fees?

Fees will be distributed directly to bot owners.

Technical Architecture

What is the technical architecture of the Fees Implementation?

The Forta Network implements the fee architecture using the Unlock Protocol smart contracts. Unlock offers a number of benefits including: - The Unlock smart contracts are open-source, including the Lock Factory contract, which is used for creating new Locks to enforce fees on-chain in the Forta Network. Locks are time-based, auto-renewable, subscription-enabling smart contracts (each plan in each token would have a respective Lock). - Unlock also offers additional functionality for users (e.g. helpful payment mechanisms), which is currently free. - Unlock is also in use by other established web3 projects.

Implementing the initial fee structure in the Forta Network using Unlock does not present significant reliance on Unlock (i.e. switching to an alternative technical solution is feasible).

Node Runners & Delegators

Does the implementation of Data Fees have any impact on node runners and delegators? No, at the moment the implementation of Data Fees doesn’t have any impact on node runners and delegators.

About Premium Feeds

Premium Feed Requirements

Before a bot can qualify as a Premium Feed, it must meet certain requirements as specified by the Forta community in FP-6, related to technical performance, detection performance and documentation.

Technical performance: the bot must first: - Run on the public Forta Network for without dropping any alerts/labels - emit public alerts and/or labels such that any user subscribing to the Feed could receive the threat intelligence via real-time notifications or the Forta Graphql API

Detection performance: the bot must meet a certain level of precision as determined by the minimum requirements.

Documentation: the owner must provide documentation that clearly and sufficiently describes how the bot works and the threat intel it generates, including details about specific alert Id’s and labels, and associated metadata.

Staking: There is no distinction between minimum stake for regular bots and for premium feed bots. Premium feed owners can stake more and advertise that as a higher security advantage, but it’s not compulsory.

Privacy and IP: For competitive and IP-related reasons, owners may be hesitant to make their detection logic publicly available in the bot itself. Therefore, Feed owners are permitted to keep their detection logic private if they choose. Owners can host their own logic or models, as long as they relay the findings through a Forta bot (the Premium Feed), such that the intel can be consumed by subscribers.

Premium Feeds Pricing

Each Premium Feed has a separate subscription fee (fee plan) set by the owner. Currently, the only fee structure supported by the Forta Network is a flat monthly rate (i.e. FORT 500 per 30 days). While certain community members have requested usage-based pricing in the future, initially both Premium and General plans will have flat monthly pricing and support unlimited API calls.

Collection of Fees

The Forta Network implements the Unlock Protocol to facilitate on-chain payments. Users can purchase monthly subscriptions to a Premium Feed using either USDC or FORT, paid at the time of purchase. Monthly subscriptions expire at the end of each month and will be automatically renewed for another month to the extent there are sufficient assets in the user’s wallet.

Currently, 100% of the subscription fees generated by a Premium Feed are paid to the feed owner. This may change in the future based on network governance.

Initially, fees will be manually distributed on-chain via a relayer to Feed owners once a week. We expect this process to be automated via smart contracts in the future.

Trials for Premium Feeds

Premium Feed owners should have the ability to offer free trials to their feed, and more details on how this can be funded or enabled will follow.

Maintenance guarantees

Premium Feeds must be actively maintained. If a maintainer no longer wishes to actively maintain the Feed, it must provide at least 30 days written notice to the Forta community via the governance forum and the Forta Discord. If a Premium Feed is abandoned, it may be removed from the Network in accordance with the community governance process.

Support

Premium Feed owners must commit to providing technical support to the Feed’s subscribers. Support options could include: - Each Premium Feed has a dedicated support channel in the Forta Discord moderated by the Feed owner (members of the Forta Foundation team can be asked to support) - Owner provides contact information (i.e. email address, TG handle) on Feed’s profile page so subscribers can reach out directly with questions

Sales and Marketing

Each Feed owner is responsible for promoting and selling their own feed. That said, the Forta Foundation may engage in joint-marketing efforts with owners, and will promote the Forta Marketplace (Launch Date TBD).