Etica has two distinct currencies. Etica (ETI) and EGAZ.
The necessity for another currency (EGAZ), is due to the fact Etica has its own blockchain. EGAZ is used to secure the Blockchain, it rewards miners that run Etica fullnodes and mine blocks. EGAZ is also necessary to make transactions as it is the Ethereum's Ether equivalent of Etica Blockchain.
As a consequence each address has 2 balances:
0x2a674CC92dE583590f96135F6259553EaAABeD28
Etica balance: 23.0511141312188 ETI # Actual currency used within Etica Protocol smart contract
Egaz balance: 203.0511141312188 EGAZ # Used for Blockchain level
Note that Etica (ETI) is the actual currency of Etica Protocol and it is much more scarce than EGAZ. Etica issuance will be about 2 100 000 ETI every year until 21 Million ETI and then there will be a tail emission of 2.61803% per year. On the contrary EGAZ is issued according to Ethereum's Ether issuance rules.
Etica divides Time into intervals of 7 days called Periods. For each Period the protocol issues a fixed amount of ETI for both reasearch reward and voting reward.
All proposals that are submited within the same Period, compete for the research reward of this Period.
Indeed the Period's research reward is proportionally distributed between the approved proposals of the Period (in proportion to the amount of Bosoms they got).
Every Thursday 00:00 am (UTC) the Protocol changes of Period interval, thus all Proposals submited between Thursday 00:00:00 am and the next Wednesday 11:59:59 pm (UTC) belong to the same Period.
When a proposal is submited, it is voted upon for 3 weeks. Etica token holders can vote to approve or reject the proposal and allocate an amount of Bosoms (staked ETI) to their votes. At this stage the proposal status is set as Pending
This proposal will compete for a part of its Period's research Reward with all proposals that are submited within the same Period.
For instance: if a Period's research reward is 4 000 ETI & a total of 160 000 bosoms were used to approve proposals in this Period.
An approved proposal that gathers 16 000 Bosoms of approval votes, will get 10% (16 000 / 160 000) of Period's research reward.
In this example the research reward for this proposal would be 400 ETI (10% of 4000 ETI)
After 3 weeks of voting, the proposal becomes closed to votes and enters revealing stage.
At this moment those who voted on the proposal (for & against included) have one week maximum to reveal their votes.
If they don't, the vote is not taken into account and the amount of (Bosoms) they allocated to the vote becomes unrecoverable.
Once the Protocol reaches at least 5 Periods (5 weeks) beyond the Proposal's Period (the Period when proposal was submited), the proposal will update its final status to rejected or approved depending on the votes.
The first person that calls the reward function will trigger the final status update of the proposal. When a person (voter or reseacher) calls the reward function, the function will reward or penalise (slash & optional fee) the person.
If nobody claims its reward the proposal's status remains as pending.
The reason why both the persons that voted on good side or wrong side are incentivised to call the reward function is because otherwise the amount of Bosoms they have allocated to their votes becomes unrecoverable.
The claiming stage has no deadline, and it is possible to call the reward function at any time once the 5+ Periods has been reached.
Making a stake consolidation let's you gather several stakes into one. In order to make a stake consolidation you must have at least 2 stakes. It is useful in cases you have a lot of stakes, indeed for gaz issues it's better to make a stake consolidation before calling the reward function in cases you have a lot of stakes.
Making a stake snap let's you split a stake into two different stakes with different amounts but same expiration date as original stake. In order to make a stake snap you must have at least 1 stake. It is useful in cases you want to retrieve a ETI stake that has already passed the limit date, but you can't retrieve the stake's full amount due to having blocked some BOSOMS in voting system.