Thanks for the interesting article @artstein. To support your argument the RAC build and decline is gradual. To illustrate this, I have added a chart with RAC decline as percentage of the point when a project would be delisted.

Assuming the following:

• a member has built-up a certain stable RAC output
• the RAC output of the project is flat
• the person is earning 5 GRC (I could have taken any other amount) per day for this project on the day it is delisted

Using the graph above, you can calculate that a person would theoretically lose around 45 GRC as none realised contribution building up his RAC output. This basically means with delisting a project s/he has crunched around 9 days on this project for the benefit of science only (based on the assumptions above, which I wouldn’t consider exceptional).

Obviously this is not rewarding for decay. The amount paid in the decay period is actually the work performed but not rewarded while building up the initial RAC output to maximum level (which only happens after +/- 30 days). If you look at the chart below, the blue area on the left of the green line is identical to the blue area on the right of the green line.

Due to the complexity of the RAC build-up/run-down mechanism, I would instead of developing the process above, explore and implement TCD to address the issues.