# QIP-5 proposes a second $1,000 round from the sink reserve for a second trading agent run privately by the team

Draft. No ballot is open and no round is active. The round is $1,000.

## In short

QIP-4 backed one trading agent, run privately by the team, with a $1,000 round from the sink reserve. The round backed $999.87 over Bells 27 and 28 and ended. QIP-5 asks whether quotum should back a second trading agent, also run privately by the team, with a second fixed $1,000 round from the same reserve, using the same route as QIP-4. The team states that the second agent follows a different strategy from the first; nobody outside the team can check this.

While the round is open, each seat's cap is raised toward the upper bound; a small remainder can leave it lower. The regular part of the cap works exactly as today: the seat's keys get it, what they use pays the provider, and what they leave buys and burns QUOTUM at the bell. The rest of the cap, the backing part, is reported as used and leaves the sink to the published PAY_TO address with the provider payment. From there the team funds the second agent. The agent, its wallet, venues and trades are private and are not published. Settled profit comes back in ETH to a second public splitter contract, deployed from the same verified source as the first. When anyone calls `distribute`, it sends its whole ETH balance 50% to this round's own seat slip account, 20% to the sink converter and 20% to the quotum treasury, each rounded down, with the remainder going to the team-controlled running-costs account. The addresses that held a seat at this proposal's B and at a backed opening, and still hold it at the bell, are recorded as the round's contributors, in proportion to the backing reported for each. This proposal gives seats and holders no ownership, no claim on the agent's funds, no payout, no redemption and no share of trading proceeds.

The vote signals a preference. It does not execute anything by itself. The team publishes execution receipts or a specific refusal, and passage cannot bypass the funding, accounting, provider or reserve checks. A trading agent can lose money, up to the whole round. Because the agent is private, its funding destination, balances, positions, value, realized profit and the return of its remaining funds cannot be independently verified by anyone outside the team. Settlement figures and the amounts and times of private onward funding are team reports; sink forwarding, splitter deposits and distributions, conversions, buys and burns have public transaction receipts. Nothing here promises a return.

## The first agent

- The QIP-4 agent's settlements, G, D and S, are published in the QIP-4 session records with every profit and onward record. The record for Bell 28 is due before 24 October 2026 at 20:00 UTC.
- The QIP-4 agent continues after the QIP-4 round on the funds it already holds. It gets no new backing from the reserve, and its profit rules stay as in QIP-4: settled profit in ETH goes to the first splitter, which splits it 50/20/20/10, and every settlement is published in the QIP-4 records.

## Why now

The QIP-4 round ran as written: $520 at Bell 27 and $479.87 at Bell 28, with the session records and forwarding published on the governance page. Its settlements are in the QIP-4 session records. A second round tests a second strategy on the same terms, with its profit visible on its own splitter.

The round can start at the first 20:00 UTC opening at least 2 hours after the final result, once the reserve check passes. While QIP-1's $10 floor is active the gap up to the upper bound is $40 per seat, so at 13 seats the round closes in about two bells, as QIP-4 did.

## What changes

For each opening while the round is open, every check passes and no stop has latched, the keeper applies QIP-4's backing rule with this round's own remainder:

- Upper bound U: the lower of $50 and the 0.25% supply-value bound the contract will apply at this opening, independently reproducible as in QIP-4.
- Regular part r: the per-seat cap the rules in force would give without QIP-5, for example measured input divided by the seats, or a floor if an approved floor pilot is active.
- Backing per seat b: U minus r, but no more than this round's remainder divided by N.
- The keeper supplies the regular input plus `b * N` USD to `TaxSink.open`; keys get only r; the page and the session record show the cap from the Open event split into r and b.

With 13 seats, QIP-1's $10 floor and U = $50, r is $10 and b is $40 per seat: $520 at the first backed bell and the remaining $480 at the second. More opening seats close it faster; late real use slows it. After a floor pilot ends, r falls to measured input and each bell backs more. On a max day under any active QIP-2 r is already U, so that day backs nothing. The cap never goes above U.

## Rules carried over from QIP-4

The following QIP-4 rules apply to this round word for word, reading "QIP-5" for "QIP-4", "this round" for QIP-4's round, "the second agent" for the agent, "the second splitter" for the splitter and "this round's slip account" for the slip account: the grant budget and late-seat rule; the final report per seat at the bell, the opening cohort, L and the Open-cap reconciliation; the `forward` route and the move of backing on from PAY_TO within 24 hours of the bell, stating amount and time but not destination; the cost of late seats and of reduced backing; the stops and execution shortfalls; the profit settlement S = G - D in ETH at each 20:00 UTC bell from the first bell after S0 and at close; the slip account's buying limits, holding rule, 56-day deadline counted from this round's S0, burn and conversion rules and no clawback after later losses; and the session records. QIP-4's worked examples and figures do not carry over. Where QIP-4 refers to QIP-1 or QIP-2 requirements in the reserve check, this round counts every other approved pilot active at that opening, as set out below.

## What stays the same

The $50 ceiling, the 0.25% supply-value bound, the contract and the claim, report, bell and forward routes. The regular burn: unused regular cap buys and burns QUOTUM at the bell exactly as without QIP-5. OPS keeps 40% of ordinary claims, outside this vote, and backing creates no extra OPS claim. Seat 1 contributes as an ordinary seat. The team has no other share in the round except the running-costs branch, 10% before rounding, which goes to an account the team controls and is published in every settlement. QIP-4's splitter, slip account and records are unchanged by this proposal.

## Cost

The reserve pays the round size, $1,000, on top of what the regular rules cost. Backing reported for seats counted at opening does not burn. Late-seat and reduced-backing exposure is as in QIP-4: it is reserve use outside the round, bounded per late slot, and goes through the existing guarded pooled burn. The round is never exceeded.

The sink reserve was about $5,700 free on 24 October. QIP-1 and, if passed, QIP-2 draw on it until 4 November. At 13 seats, with QIP-1's remaining sessions, QIP-2's two max days and the whole round counted, the check below needs about $5,700 at the first possible opening, about what the reserve holds, so the first backed session can wait until QIP-1's remaining sessions lower the requirement. A fall in NVDA or more seats delays it further, and if no opening passes within the S0 window, approval expires. The $1,000 this round uses is no longer available for a longer floor for seats after 4 November.

## When it stops

Before each backed session, free reserve must be at least $2,000, plus what every other active approved pilot requires above its own $2,000 buffer (for a floor pilot, its per-seat amount times N times its sessions left; for QIP-2, $50 times N times its max days left), plus the round's remainder, read from one fresh reconciled snapshot. The $2,000 buffer counts once. At 13 seats with no other pilot active and the whole round left that is $3,000; with QIP-1 and QIP-2 active it is higher, as set out in "Cost". Equality passes, and the check does not lock reserve funds.

A failed reserve or freshness check, unresolved provider accounting, a provider shortfall, an execution shortfall, a missed or unrecorded move of backing from PAY_TO, or the team's published emergency stop end the round, as in QIP-4. A provider usage read that times out is retried before it counts as unresolved accounting; only accounting still unresolved when the next opening is checked ends the round. Failed input measurement postpones the opening and does not extend the round. A stop never cuts the cap or cancels the bell of a session already open. What the round has not backed and is not left in an open cap stays in the reserve. Resuming after a stop needs a new proposal.

The first backed session S0 is the earliest scheduled 20:00 UTC opening at least 2 hours and at most 168 hours after the actual final result F at which every check passes, the keeper's backing code for this round is deployed and checked, and the second splitter is deployed, its source verified and its four recipients equal to those in the activation record. Before S0 a failed candidate only defers within that window; if none succeeds, approval expires. The round closes when its remainder reaches zero or at the end of session S0+13, whichever comes first, or when a stop latches; failed ticks, delays and unbacked sessions add no sessions. Another round needs a new proposal, and the team will not propose one before this agent's closing statement is published.

## The agent

The team runs the second agent privately. Its wallet, venues, rule and trades are not published, and it is funded only by this round: the team adds no seed and the seats counted at this round's openings are its only contributors. The team closes the agent no later than the 20:00 UTC bell 28 days after S0, or earlier, also after a stop. Whatever remains of its funds then returns to the sink as NVDA in a published transaction, and the team publishes a closing statement: the amount funded, what returned to the sink, what was sent to the second splitter, and the net result, which is negative when the agent lost money.

## How the agent's profit is split

Profit is counted in ETH and settled as in QIP-4, through the second splitter only, so each agent's profit is visible on its own contract. The second splitter has no owner, no upgrade and no swap and is deployed from the same verified source as the first. Its four fixed recipients are this round's slip account, the sink converter, the quotum treasury and the team-controlled running-costs account, 50%, 20%, 20% and the remainder. This round's slip account is a new dedicated 2-of-3 Safe, separate from QIP-4's slip account and from the treasury and used for nothing else; its address, public signer designations and threshold are published at least 24 hours before the first profit is sent to the second splitter, and its code makes it ineligible to vote under eoa-only-v1.

## How the vote works

QIP-5 is first published before 1 November 2026 and runs in the charter's bootstrap class: 2 hours of voting, then 1 hour for objections to the count and 1 hour to check the proofs, so the earliest final result comes 4 hours after opening. The team sponsors it from seat 1; OPS's weight counts in no vote. Passing, quorum, the five-address rule, eligibility and exclusions follow the [charter](charter-fast.md). The result is published with the largest voter's and the top three voters' shares of participation.

## Words used below

- Round: the fixed amount of reserve this proposal backs the second agent with.
- Remainder: the part of the round not yet reported as backing.
- U: the upper bound, the lower of $50 and the 0.25% supply-value bound at this opening.
- r: the regular part of the cap under the rules in force without QIP-5.
- b: the backing part of the cap per seat.
- N: the keeper's count of seats before it sends open.
- PAY_TO: the published address the sink sends provider payments to.
- Second splitter: the immutable contract that receives the second agent's settled profit in ETH and sends it 50/20/20/10; the first three branches round down and the running-costs account receives the remainder.
- G, D, S: as in QIP-4, for the second agent only.
- Closing statement: the amount funded, the amount returned to the sink, the amount sent to the splitter and the net result of an agent, published at its close, with transactions where they exist.
- Live contract: TaxSink v1 at `0x42AbC7b64eD47dB6899b4F01Aa6c765c600a53a2`, unchanged by this proposal.

## Exact rules

These rules are the proposal itself. If anything above reads differently, these rules apply.

### Ballot package

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Venue | quotum.org/governance, own gasless EIP-712 ballots and public deterministic tally |
| Ballot URL and public discussion thread URL | https://quotum.org/governance#qip-5 and https://github.com/qvotvm/qip-1-receipts/issues/5 |
| B number, hash, totalSupplyWei, readable supply and quorum amount | in the ballot package: `snapshotBlock`, `snapshotHash`, `totalSupplyWei`; quorum is 1% of `totalSupplyWei`, rounded up |
| Frozen strategy, exclusions and reconciled ledger manifest | in the ballot package: `exclusions`, `ledgerSha256`, `ledgerManifestSha256` and the ledger-strategy artifact; the ledger is published with the package at quotum.org/governance/qip-5/ledger.json with the same hash |
| Proposal hash | `proposalHash` in the ballot package |
| Publication, voting, objection, proof-check, final and expiry UTC timestamps | in the ballot package and its publication record: `votingOpens` (V), `deadline` (D = V+2h), objections [D,D+1h), proof check [D+1h,D+2h), final eligible from D+2h; activation expiry F+168h |
| Collector identity and receipt proof/mirroring policy | collector Ed25519 public key `MCowBQYDK2VwAyEAetjCl1JO350n7s/Df/GIS9GOwd+DPE/cXLS+M61jVZM=` (DER SHA-256 `5d15f2b83a89b476dd3091388b69593d323f15d7755e970ba6315b0210549ce7`); independent mirror Ed25519 key with DER SHA-256 `0367d223ac5b79b8fe59b459aa90f4e912be08e70494ce4b1e7c4ad5e613df87`; mirroring and recount at least every 15 minutes, at D and at or after F |
| Anchor wallet address | `0xBbbC8F2aa7C59136AA630E2195c504907844C822`, an ordinary account funded only for gas, distinct from the keeper signer and OPS |
| Account policy | `eoa-only-v1`: only addresses with empty code at B, by ECDSA signature of the address's own key; EIP-7702 delegated addresses and any other code are not accepted; account evidence hashes are in the ballot package |
| Class | bootstrap (v = 2h, o = 1h, p = 1h); first publication before 2026-11-01T00:00:00Z |
| Sponsor | the team from seat 1; OPS's weight counts in no vote |
| QIP-4 settlements | G, D and S in the QIP-4 session, profit and onward records on the governance page |
| Agent | a second agent run privately by the team, which states its strategy differs from the QIP-4 agent's, funded only by this round; wallet, venues, rule and trades not published; closed no later than the 20:00 UTC bell 28 days after S0, with a published closing statement |
| Profit split | as in QIP-4, through the second splitter: 50% this round's slip account, 20% sink converter, 20% quotum treasury, each rounded down, remainder to the team-controlled running-costs account; remaining funds to the sink as NVDA at close |
| Second splitter and recipient addresses | published in the activation record before S0; deployed from the same verified source as the QIP-4 splitter, no owner, upgrade or swap, source verified before S0; this round's slip account is a new dedicated 2-of-3 Safe published at least 24 hours before the first profit transfer |
| Round size | $1,000 |
| PAY_TO address | the sink's immutable `PAY_TO`, `0x8a8Fc2A7023cA5270c4F1729D80Ae5a32aDa6234` |
| Policy-build hash, reserve valuation, freshness and provider/accounting criteria | the policy-build document in the ballot package with its SHA-256 |

### Schedule

Voting follows the [charter](charter-fast.md) in the bootstrap class. S0, the closing rule and the stops are as set out in "When it stops": S0 is the earliest scheduled 20:00 UTC opening at least 2 and at most 168 hours after the actual final result F with every check passing, the backing code deployed and checked and the second splitter deployed and verified; the round ends at zero remainder, at a latched stop or at the end of S0+13. This remains a discussion draft until every outstanding package field and independently reproduced post-B evidence are published and verified before voting opens.

### Charter exception

This ballot also asks holders to adopt a narrow exception to the charter's reserve-transfer restriction for this $1,000 round, on the same terms as QIP-4's: the keeper may report reconciled backing separately from genuine inference use and forward it only through the existing immutable PAY_TO route, after provider obligations are satisfied, for the private second agent described here. This creates no general transfer authority, changes no sink destination and permits no holder payment.

### Question

Should quotum back a second trading agent run privately by the team with a round of the stated size from the sink reserve, by supplying the regular input plus `b * N` to `TaxSink.open` with `b = min(U - r, remainder / N)`, granting keys only r, reporting all real use plus the reconciled backing for each seat of the opening cohort, moving the backing on from PAY_TO to fund the agent after each bell, splitting settled profit S = G - D 50/20/20/10 through a second splitter, closing the agent within 28 days of S0 with a published closing statement, and adopting the narrow charter exception for this round, while preserving the $50 ceiling, the 0.25% supply-value bound, the regular burn and the claim, report, bell and forward routes?

### Records

Each session record publishes what QIP-4's records publish, for this round: measured, regular and effective input, U, r, b, N, the opening cohort and L, the Open event cap, the reconciled backing, grants, real use and reported use per seat, the remainder before and after, reserve and oracle reads, liabilities, provider reconciliation, burns, the `forward` transaction, the amount and time of the backing moved on from PAY_TO, the contributor shares and, from the first bell after S0, the profit settlement: G, D and S as team reports, the second splitter's deposit and distribution transactions, and the conversion and QUOTUM buy transactions. `tax24hUsd` stores effective input, not measured fees. At close the record adds the closing statement.

### Choices and outcome

Choose For, Against or Abstain. Passing, quorum, the five-address rule, sponsorship and exclusions follow the [charter](charter-fast.md). If QIP-5 does not pass for any reason, caps follow the rules in force without it. This proposal makes no payments to contributors, seats, holders or voters and grants no redemption or share of proceeds; slips are held as set out in QIP-4's rules until a later proposal decides; the only reserve funding permitted here is the fixed round through PAY_TO.