Paying Dividends to Token Holders
Counterparty supports Dividends through user-created tokens, which in many other Communities could be called "airdrops". This means that you can pay out BTC or any Counterparty Token to holders of a any XCP user-created token. This feature lets you distribute XCP, BTC or any other token to the holders of any token you wish. You can specify an amount per unit, and everyone who holds units of your own token will receive a proportional amount of the secondary token being distributed.
This feature also has many clever uses, such as transparent voting.
If you would like to check out a video explanation of a single use case of deploying Dividends using Freewallet, check out this informational video on this subject made by RobotLoveCoffee.
To Pay Dividends, go to Freewallet and right-click on the asset you would like to pay dividends to holders of this asset, and then click “Pay Dividends on TOKEN"
You can also use the “Actions” icon on the upper right and choose “Pay Dividends” though the “Token Name” input will not be automatically filled
To distribute BTC to token holders, first verify the Token Name is the correct token you wish to pay dividend to holders. In this example below we are distributing PEPECASH to holders of the asset MMMPEPE.
In the “Dividend” input make sure you select the correct Dividend Token you wish to distribute to the holders of the Token Name input.
For BTC, use the BTC icon
For XCP use the XCP icon
For other assets, use the drop-down menu to choose the correct asset
Only assets you have the Token Issuance Ownership can have dividends payed out to the holders of that token:
Either you already minted the token yourself
Or you were given the rights of Token Ownership from somebody
In this example above let's review a very important part of the Dividend process:
Viewing MMMPEPE on xchain.io, we can sort the token information by Holders as shown with the Green arrow above.
The amount of the Token that is shown in the example to distribute, which is 1 PEPECASH per unit of MMMPEPE owned, will be given per unit MMMPEPE owned.
This means the number 1 Holder of MMMPEPE, who has 28 MMMPEPE tokens, will recieve 28 PEPECASH total in this Dividend payment. While the 10th holder, who holds 3 MMMPEPE tokens, will only recieve 3 PEPECASH total. This means with this Dividend payment you would be sending 111 PEPECASH total because there are 111 total MMMFOOD tokens.
Once you have decided these inputs mentioned above, the last step is the Fee to use when broadcasting this Dividend as a transaction.
It is best to look over the What BTC Fee should I use? section of this User Manual first.
Note for BTC Dividends to XCP Token (or user-created) token holders:
It is possible to pay out distributions using Bitcoin directly. However, this process is a regular Bitcoin transaction without any extra added data (which would make it a Counterparty transaction). This means when sending out Dividend payments of BTC, it will not be possible to distinguish it as a Counterparty type transaction on block explorers or inside Freewallet. Dividends with BTC will simply appear as a regular BTC transaction with multiple recipients and not be seen on Counterparty Block Explorers and only Bitcoin Block Explorers.
Because this makes it difficult to distinguish distributions from regular transactions, it is recommend that you use one address per asset when issuing Bitcoin dividends, and do not use that address for anything else for simpler record keeping with blockchain data. This will make it much easier to keep track of past BTC distributions. Otherwise, it may be difficult for you and/or your users to get an overview of past distribution payments.
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