DataCap Refresh - Compliance Reviews resulting in 'Throttled' status

[Kevin-FF-USA]

Our recent compliance reviews have highlighted several compliance issues which have resulted in several pathways having the amount of refreshed DataCap reduced - throttled. The intent of the Refresh audit review process is to provide actionable feedback when issues are identified so that the issues can be corrected with a smaller amount of DC awarded. To that, our goal is to provide clear guidance and support, ensuring that all allocators can confidently align their operations with community standards and continue to receive DataCap Refresh amounts.

Key areas to ensure compliance is met and maintained.

1. Public Diligence in GitHub Applications:

• Perform thorough and transparent client diligence proactively, ensuring transparency and trust - this means that allocators need to provide sufficient due diligence on their clients in public GitHub repositories, before they approve the clients.
• Proactive verification is key to maintaining community confidence - allocators are expected to monitor their clients’ behavior and react, rather than await community of Governance Team intervention.

2. Accuracy of Storage Provider Lists:

• Regularly update and verify your lists of Storage Providers - at any point in time the SP list should reflect the exact state.
• Follow the distribution plan stated in the application - ensure that the diversity of SPs and their regions
• Aim for diversified allocations to enhance decentralization and resilience.
• Allocators should avoid working with non-compliant SPs that fail to meet retrievability and other requirements. If they find that an SP is no longer compliant - at least an intervention is expected, followed by a termination of a collaboration if the SP continues to not meet the standards.

3. CID Duplication and Distribution:

• Monitor and minimize duplication of datasets, helping the community utilize resources efficiently - the duplication should be kept to a minimum, ideally zero.
• Allocators should avoid using VPNs - this suggests they are trying to hide or find ways to cheat the regional distribution and continues to be a flag in a review process.
• Follow and promote CID-sharing best practice - monitor CID sharing and raise it with your clients.

4. Storage and Retrievability:

• Uphold retrievability standards to strengthen the reliability and reputation of Filecoin storage - the retrievability for open datasets should never fall under 70%.
• If an allocator finds that their clients work with SPs with a retrievability below 70%, they are expected to intervene and stop further DC allocation until the issue is resolved.
• Avoid redundant practices such as unnecessary replicas, which add minimal value to the network.

5. General Compliance Practices:

• Consistently apply thorough KYC processes and adhere to approved tranche schedules - do not approve clients who have not passed a KYC and do not give DC out of schedule stated in your application.
• Transparently communicate and adhere to stated allocation methods - It is not acceptable for an allocator to claim automated DC distribution and then use manual verification.

The throttling of DataCap is intended as an opportunity to reassess and adjust practices with our support. However, persistent non-compliance ultimately will result in DataCap no longer being allocated to a pathway. Allocators unable or unwilling to address these issues within a reasonable timeframe will be respectfully removed from the Filecoin Plus program.

Open discussion created for any lessons learned from the community on challenges met or feedback on how to improve this refresh.