TRAIN has an on-chain Discovery Registry (see technical specification) that maintains protocol metadata to ensure Users, Auctions, and Integrators can discover Solvers. Through this registry, Solvers register their addresses and supported routes.

The Discovery Registry is designed to be permissionless, allowing anyone to register as a Solver. However, this open nature necessitates flood protection to prevent malicious actors from:

  • Registering numerous non-functional Solvers
  • Creating Solvers that fail to complete transactions
  • Potentially causing DDoS attacks on the protocol

While a staking mechanism could provide security, it would only be effective if we could verify a Solver’s behavior within the network where the Discovery Registry is deployed. However, autonomous verification of Solver behavior across chains is not possible, as the registry chain cannot access information about Solver activities on other chains.

To address this challenge, the Discovery Registry implements a token-burning mechanism:

  • Active and registering Solvers must lock in a specific amount of TRAIN tokens
  • These tokens are burned at regular intervals (daily/monthly) as a protocol fee
  • This fee serves as an operating cost for maintaining Solver status in the network