Eden Delegates Accounting Standard
The Eden Accounting Standard is a reporting mechanism meant to provide the Eden on EOS community information around how Eden funds are being allocated. Elected delegates may adhere to the standard and easily report their Eden expenses using a specific format for the memo field of the EOS token transfer action.
The Eden community’s feedback and engagement is critical to the success of the project. We hope to make this effort as collaborative and easy to use as possible as the quality of the reports generated are a direct result of the level of participation of the Eden delegates.
The list of active delegates and their income will be automatically sourced from the genesis.eden smart contract when delegates withdraw Eden funds to their accounts.
Expenses are then picked up automatically by the application by interpreting the memo field messages that delegates must include using the standard EOS token transfer contract.
The memo field must follow a specific format in order to :
- Identify the token transfer as an Eden delegates expense.
- Categorize the expense into one of several predefined categories.
- Describe with additional information on the nature of the expense.
If a delegate chooses not to apply the memo format, their transactions will still be tracked but their reports will show all expenses as “uncategorized.”
Transaction Memo Format
Delegates may include any expense into the reporting system by using the following memo format:
eden_expense: <category/description>
-
eden_expense is a general prefix to identify this expense as related to Eden, it must be followed by a colon :
-
category must be one of several predefined category keywords that best describes the nature of the expense. The category must then be followed by a forward slash /
-
description is a free-form short text that describes the use of Eden funds.
The following is an example EOS token transfer memo using the Eden expense tracking format:
eden_expense: salaries/payroll for internship program
Expense Categories
Category names are limited to a single word so that they can be used as keywords in the transaction memos.
We have provided the following initial list of categories and would like to ask the Eden Delegates for suggestions on new expense categories.
| Category Name | Description |
|---|---|
| admin | General Administrative |
| charity | Charitable Donations |
| development | Software and Web Development |
| dues | Dues and Subscriptions |
| education | Educational Courses and Materials |
| hardware | Computer hardware |
| infrastructure | Web Hosting and Servers |
| legal | Legal and Professional Fees |
| marketing | Media and Outreach |
| pomelo | Pomelo Projects Support |
| salaries | Salaries and Payroll |
| software | Software Licenses and Subscriptions |
| travel | Travel Expenses |
Example Transaction
Follow this link to see an Example eden expense transaction memo:
Eden Smart Contract Integration
The expense tracking platform will source all active Eden delegate’s accounts from the Eden smart contracts.
Every time an election occurs the delegate’s accounts will be included in the list of accounts that will be automatically tracked to capture all expense reporting information via the transaction memos.
All income will also be automatically tracked every time a delegate claims their funds.
Token Transfer Event Listener
The application backend service will track all token transfers originating from Eden delegates EOS accounts.
When a token transfer includes the transaction memo format this will be parsed and used to populate the database and automatically track and categorize the expenses.
Database fields
The database will persist the following data for EOS token transfers that involve an Eden delegates account:
| Field Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| txid | SHA256 | Transaction ID |
| date | Date | Transaction Date |
| type | Text | Income or Expense |
| delegate | EOS Account Name | Eden Delegate’s Account |
| amount | Number | Transfer Amount in EOS |
| recipient | EOS Account Name | Receiver of Funds |
| category | Text | Expense Category |
| description | Text | Transaction description |
Data can then be aggregated to be displayed on a web application with graphs and other data visualizations.
Data Visualization and Reporting
Some interesting data visualizations to be included in the dashboard could be :
Expenses by category pie chart
- Total Expenses By Category per Delegate
- Total Expenses by Category for all delegates
- Total Expenses by Category for all chief delegates
- Total Expenses by Category for all level 1 delegates
Expenses over time line graph
- Expenses over time per Delegate
- Expenses over time for all delegates
- Expenses over time for all chief delegates
- Expenses over time for all level 1 delegates
Total Expenses
- Total expenses reported by each delegate
- The top 10 largest Eden expenses this election cycle
- The top accounts receivers of Eden funds
- Total number of expenses
- Average number of expenses
- Average expense size
Development
The chief delegate (Edgar Fernandez) will fund the development of a web application which will be executed by the EOS Costa Rica team at Edenia.
The initial scope of the project is to collect information related to EOS token transfers originating from elected delegates’ accounts.
Development will take place in the following GitHub Repository: eoscostarica/eden-accounting-standard
Initial MVP1 will be delivered before the next Eden election.
Future development and features
Adding / Editing expenses after transactions take place
Delegates may want to classify transactions that have been sent without the proposed memo standard.
- Delegates could use a smart contract to edit their expenses after they have taken place and provide justifications
Please share your thoughts on the above and participate in the future development of features.
