The Qortal Minter Admins + The Qortal Development Group are in the process of making CHANGES TO THE PROCESS required to BECOME A MINTER.

• Becoming a Minter will not be able to take place by the would-be Minter alone.

• Any would-be new Minter will require a 'nominator' to submit their account to Q-Mintership for Minter Admin and Community review/comments/approval.

• The Nominator must be a level 5 or higher existing minter.

• Nominations will be published on behalf of the would-be minter by the Nominator on the Minter Board in Q-Mintership.

New version of Q-Mintership (including a large number of new changes , such as a built-in account data explorer to make it simpler to validate accounts and their real contritubions to Qortal, updated more modern appearance, new display modes, much faster loading times, and much more) will be published at the activation of this change.

The GROUP_APPROVAL process and pre-approval poll votes will not change. Only the requirements to publish on the Minter Board change, no longer allowing new accounts to publish on their own behalf.

This essentially combines the original 'sponsorship' concept, with the new Mintership concept, and results in a much more optimal overall system that should resolve many issues before they arise. 

This creates a true 'Mintership' concept (Mentoring a new user by a level 5+ then proposing their joining the MINTER group.) Mintership = Mentorship+Minting.

These changes do not require modifications to Qortal Core. Instead, they represent an evolution of the community-driven nomination and approval workflow that already exists on the Minter Board in Q-Mintership.

The objective of these changes is to improve scalability, strengthen the integrity of the minting process, reduce abuse of existing application mechanisms, and encourage more meaningful community participation across the network.

Under the current system, aspiring minters are able to create Mintership Card applications directly, after which Minter Admins review those applications and attempt to determine whether the applicant represents a genuine and active participant within the Qortal ecosystem.

• As Qortal and QDN continue to grow, several challenges with this approach have become increasingly apparent:

• The review process is inherently subjective

• Fake or low-effort identities can be created with relative ease

• Accounts have increasingly generated low-value or spam-like activity simply to satisfy perceived application expectations

• The growing international nature of the platform, language differences, and widespread AI-assisted communication make individuality and authenticity significantly harder to evaluate consistently

• The existing application structure does not scale smoothly for large future user growth

• The updated process is intended to address these limitations while preserving the original community-oriented philosophy behind mint sponsorship and network participation.

Aspiring minters will no longer be able to independently create posts on the Minter Board.

Instead, Mintership Cards will be created through a nomination-based process.

Minters who have reached Level 5 or higher will be eligible to nominate community members for minting consideration.

The expectation is that nominations will be made thoughtfully and only after a user has demonstrated clear value, contribution, and legitimate participation within the Qortal ecosystem.

A system for 'discovering a potential Nominator' will also be getting built into Q-Mintership as time goes on. However, the initial updated release will not include this. 

The Mintership Forum can be a temporary location for seeking a Nominator. Along with any other existing location on Qortal.

The revised process introduces greater accountability for nominators and encourages stronger community involvement in identifying valuable contributors seeking to become new Qortal Minters.

By shifting toward community-backed nominations instead of open applications, the network can better encourage:

Higher quality QDN participation

Meaningful engagement within the ecosystem

Organic reputation building

Community recognition of valuable contributors

Nomination sources can also be tracked more effectively, allowing abuse of the process to be identified and addressed when necessary.

A 'Nominator Statistics' section of Q-Mintership is being built that will keep track of each nominator, their nominees, and other interesting data points. 

This could potentially become a sort of 'competition' to see which nominator can bring the highest quality or most impactful new Qortal Minters.

The initial version of the Nominator Statistics page will be built into the updated Q-Mintership app. 

Because nominations are expected to occur only after meaningful community presence has already been established, Minter Admin review and verification should become significantly faster and more manageable.

This change is also intended to ensure that the minting process remains sustainable and scalable as Qortal adoption continues to grow.

Community feedback and card voting will continue to play a role in the evaluation process.

However, as before, final approval authority for group admission remains with the Minter Admin group.

A Higher importance should be placed upon COMMUNITY support (and support of EXISTING MINTERS of all levels) in regard to the would-be new minter being given access to the MINTER group.

The more community support and thoughtful comments on a nomination, the more likely it will be that the Minter Admins will be able to make a decision more quickly and easily.

Aspiring minters will no longer create Mintership Cards themselves

Level 5+ minters will be able to nominate community members for minting eligibility

Community feedback and votes will still be considered during review, and will be more likely to have impact overall.

Final approval decisions remain handled by GROUP_APPROVAL of the Minter Admins - The underlying Qortal Core validation of the GROUP_APPROVAL, ownership of the MINTER group by null account, and all of the base level functionality will REMAIN THE SAME.

The updated process is designed to improve scalability, accountability, and overall quality within the minting ecosystem

Further details and implementation specifics will be provided as the updated nomination system is rolled out.

An exact launch date of the updated Q-Mintership app, and any deviations (if any) from the above announcement's details, will be published (if needed) once the app has been sufficiently tested and new methods agreed to be fully functional. 

Thank you!