I did. Some of of those comments, ones like — the automatic lock-ups for for $mnde rewards – could qualify for a separate proposal.
I think the idea that the wealthy can afford to lock $mnde long-term is silly.
- Because if people can’t afford to think long-term, then they shouldn’t be voting in the first place. 2) Poor people don’t have to lock-up all thier tokens; for example, they could lock-up a quarter of thier tokens for 5 years (max lock-up period).
Also, short lock-up times incentivizes mercenary capital, because you can come in to vote and then quickly get out. If you want smaller groups to hold more power than you should propose something that gives extra voting power to smaller wallets.
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Whales will be involved in every project. They are part of the ecosystem. I think we should make decisions according to the users in the middle who are probably the majority. What moves help them the most? They are the grassroots investors who are more active in the community, and who benefit more from MNDE doing well.
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Fully agreed. My concern is that whales also have the resources to lock up MNDE for longer than grassroots investors, which would further multiply their decision-making power over the smaller fishes. That’s why I think we may want to consider some vote weight tapering.
Speaking of grass-roots investors, I’ve been kicking around an idea on if the limited-edition NFTs could have a voting multiplier - that way early supporters get to have more of a say in the protocol.
It’s not yet fully formed to create its own topic, and it’s related to what we are discussing, so how do you folks feel about that?
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I don’t think the double vote could be a fair solution, vote power’s rules should be the same for everyone.
Maybe a good incentive for early investors could be double rewards instead.
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I’d love that.
What Marinade is currently looking for is:
- mSOL TVL growth
- mSOL retention
An NFT voting multiplier would attract attention and gamify something (Solana staking) that is rather bland to non Defi Degens. Free branding and more attention → mSOL TVL growth and higher mSOL retention. All of this without spending money, without needing to emit $mnde.
Other use cases for the limited NFTs:
- Breeding (really a fan of embracing the NFT gamification).
Every 2 weeks-to-2 months, a baby octopus NFT is emitted to wallets holding limited edition Octopus NFTs, periodically reminding people to check in on the project, keeping them engaged.
The more Octopus NFT’s you have the greater chance of minting a rare. You could then “breed” a baby octopus, perhaps with a baby shark, which could form a super cool mutant Octo-shark. Why? Because it’s fun, it could bring people together, form community and perhaps win something (like $mnde rewards)
Would like to hear from a dev @keisuki @griffin about how technically complicated this is, specifically the NFT voting multiplier, and how much energy this would take to build.
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I think the most unfair thing about this is that a voting multiplier would benefit those who were early, who minted before anyone was really paying attention to the project… more or less it’s an airdrop to early governance folks. That doesn’t personally bother me.
If it still bothers you though I was brainstorming some non monetary ideas here.
limited edition NFT value ideas
Maybe a deeper question to ask, is it ok to treat early investors favorably (“unfairly”)? Is being unfair wrong?
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Agree with @Massimiliano in that double voting power is probably a bit too much, but maybe something like a 1.25x multiplier (or even less) could make things interesting and increase secondary market demand for the limited edition Marinade NFTs.
Double MNDE rewards on the limited editions for a period of time could also produce a similar effect IMO.
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Long term rewards for limited edition NFTs are good.
Other thought I really like:
Give the NFTs a 2x $mnde multiplier and simultaneously introduce 2% royalty fees which funnels into the DAO treasury. Given the DAO revenue is ~$1M, I think this would be nice way to add cashflow.
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My take on few of the ideas mentioned here:
-
Longer lockups = more voting power and higher emissions
This is the most promising idea to explore for several reasons
- there is a want to align incentives over the long term
- and allow aligned participants to steer the project more compared to short-term oriented actors
- in fact, one of the early concepts of Marinade Chef NFT was designed around 4 years (Curve model) or at least 300 days (still within a fiscal year to unlock when planning for a year)
Team went with the 30 days lockup to reduce holders’ risk as governance processes and are just setting up and settling down.
300d lockup resurfaced again within the context of Ecosystem Token Exchange and would be probably connected to higher voting power and emissions (if these get voted in). The simple approach would be linear, so 10x voting power and emissions which is the most readable. Maybe there can be some diminishing return, but that’s really hard to model.
Longer lockups, while technically possible, don’t look as promising at this point. Marinade has started only a year ago. Asking for a several years lockup might make sense over ossified protocols that have clearly won their markets, but not high growth and high learning projects. Even from a governance angle, it makes sense to optimize for rapid learning over risk-averse multi-year alignment.
My personal addition is that it wouldn’t be fair to ask for such commitment from investors right now - it’s really hard to foresee a future of Solana, blockchain, and maybe even the World in 4-5 years. And, when not perceived as fair, the participation and locking would respectively be lower. But again, please take this as an expert’s intuition.
But I agree with @Chief_Standing_Wolf that if 300d NFT happens, there needs to be a conversion for 30d NFT owners to equal the playing field. Early governors should not suffer the cost of progress.
-
Limited edition power
I lean against empowering limited edition for several reasons:
- speaking from the Marinade tokenomics perspective, the team feels strongly against high APYs and ponzinomic for the sake of short-term attention. This feels like an experiment with an unclear hypothesis.
- this does not create a new value, it simply borrows it from the future potential, entrenching what is. Retention is better done by utility manifested and value created, instead of incentives. I think Marinade still has some time to evaluate whether it was successful in creating and capturing the liquid staking market. Paying for retention now feels premature.
- limited edition was communicated as purely aesthetic with the point, that governance participation should be equal. Where locking a token for longer is a meaningful decision communicating alignment, Governooor having to mint a regular edition (or paying a premium on the secondary market) because speculators minted out all the limited NFTs sooner, does not feel inclusive, egalitarian, and simple. I believe the aesthetic approach to limited ed will win premium over the long term simply because it is not trying to be anything else. Why would we need to steer the market here?
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Agreed.
I think this is a really interesting argument. My feeling is when art + utility are combined in an NFT, the NFT tends towards the value of the utility and disregards the value of the art. Which leads me to something I proposed earlier, some non-monetary benefits for the L.E. NFTs :
Other use cases for the limited NFTs:
- Breeding (really a fan of embracing the NFT gamification).
Every 2 weeks-to-2 months, a baby octopus NFT is emitted to wallets holding limited edition Octopus NFTs, periodically reminding people to check in on the project, keeping them engaged.
The more Octopus NFT’s you have the greater chance of minting a rare. You could then “breed” a baby octopus, perhaps with a baby shark, which could form a super cool mutant Octo-shark. Why? Because it’s fun, it could bring people together, form community and perhaps win something (like $mnde rewards)
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I personally love the breeding part
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Let’s separate a problem/opportunity from a solution first, so we can understand if they are a good match.
1) If we want to remind people what’s happening in Marinade
- they will be probably better in following Twitter or joining discord
- alternatively they can start reading the bi-weekly Kitchen Stories on Medium and subscribe for notification - we might need to promote that more
2) If the problem is notifying NFT holders about a new proposal and generally reminding them about Marinade/governance (which I think is a valid problem!), I think we have a wider solution space:
- We can ask them to input an email when minting and when visiting the governance to get the reminders
- We can start using services like https://www.dialect.to/ to send messages directly to their wallets
- We can merge the notification system into Tribeca Notifi | Solana: Build crypto apps that scale
3) If we the opportunity is to create fun
Then perhaps self-contained breeding is perhaps not being ambitious enough. We should be asking what opportunity do we see on the market, how can it be approached using game or play thinking and if there are ways how to connect it to Marinade OKRs.
I am happy to write down my idea about NFT kitchen, where using ecosystem protocols would allow you to collect NFT ingredients and cook various utility recipes from them (discount, access, whitelists…). Think Zelda BoTW cooking with Marinade 
But I don’t think it can help reaching roadmap OKRs for 2022 so I am not pushing it.
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With the sunToken standard (About sunTokens | Sunny Aggregator Docs), another protocol could create a liquid staking derivative of max locked ve-MNDE which would alleviate the user from having to commit for such a long time (assuming sufficient liquidity for trading in & out).
From the point of view of the protocol, it would be beneficial to have as much max locked MNDE in governance as possible (ie. for a longer time horizon then 30d), as a reduced liquid supply of MNDE makes numba go up.
Hey Everyone - A little late to this discussion but have read through everyone’s posts and response so I feel I’m up to speed on the current thoughts (well the thoughts of people in this thread).
Here’s my two cents for whatever its worth:
Time-locked MNDE providing greater voting power with or without depreciation over time will likely lead to a similar fate of CRV/CXV over on Ethereum and SBR/SUNNY here on Solana (and seemingly ever new DeFi project). There’s no value in creating artificial complexity by leaving the door open for another protocol to simply gamify the governance of Marinade. The mission is pure and the economics are still good, no reason to muddy the waters with anything unnecessary imo.
Taking this into account, and in hopes of possible turning a new leaf for governance in general, why don’t we consider flipping the concept of vote escrowed tokens on its head. Rather than offering 1, 2, 5, year lock up period for MNDE or the NFT version(which is essential our own form of vote escrowed) we instead create a mechanism that increases the voting power of each NFT overtime the longer that it remains in its current form (i.e. doesn’t get redeemed for the underlying MNDE).
I believe this could be a solution to the “whale influence” conundrum by offering the same increase rate for the smallest chefs to the largest (the impact would obviously be relative but the multiple would be the same). This way, someone who stakes MNDE receives their NFT, and similar to the way that mSOL’s value increases as validator rewards are claimed, the voting ability of someone who mints in 2022 at 1,000 MNDE might have the voting power of 2000 MNDE by the end of the year. This doesn’t mean distributing an extra 1000 liquid MNDE.
In my mind this would reward those who are invested in the long-term and want to actively participate in the governance of Marinade without simply diluting MNDE supply by pushing out more tokens or creating a “claim & dump” dynamic. I’m not sure the technical requirements of increasing the power of a NFT’s voting rights over time but if it’s not that challenging it could be an interesting solution and definitely something that could get peoples attention - the right people at least.
To my knowledge I don’t think anyone is doing something quite like this but correct me if I’m wrong. Very interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this idea. Excited about this project and the community supporting it.
Keep Cooking Chefs,
thedamnswan
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I am undecided on vote locking mechanisms generally but believe it is way too soon for Marinade to move towards implementing one. Marinade has many critical governance processes ongoing (token auction and exchange, NFT launch, stake gauge voting, etc.). The community should be focused on these necessary and urgent tasks.
Vote locking with multi-year periods is an irreversible decision and requires deep consideration. Even Convex introduced it less than 12 months ago and it’s impacts are still evolving. Marinade is far too dynamic and important to gamble on new governance mechanics like vote locking.
The implicit goal of many vote-locking proponents is pumping the token price. I believe MNDE’s price would be much better served by demonstrating clear utility via validator gauges, mSOL growth and effective governance. Until we have exhausted those avenues, vote locking should wait.
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Completely agree with focusing on what’s right in front of us.
Agreed, simplicity matters. In a sense, it’s one of the most ‘fair’ things we can do.
Love this, voting power increasing over time rewards ‘compounding NFT’ holders who are in it for the long term.
Also, the whole notion of “locked” CRV is defunct considering the existence of veCRV liquidity pools that allow you to swap out of “locked” tokens. To be fair, the same thing would apply to the 'compounding NFT" concept…unless we think of something.
I also appreciate how the 'compounding NFT" concept doesn’t inflate $mnde token supply, however, it would dilute the governance power of $mnde (as long as the NFT isn’t redeemed) which is very similar to inflating $mnde token supply, but in a more round about way and with less direct sell pressure.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it would be v interesting if the ‘compounding NFTs’ were only redeemable for the the original $mnde deposited.
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Yeah veCRV and the tradability of the NFTs act in a very similar way. I agree too the NFT should be redeemable for the same amount but the voting power increases on it’s own. Could either keep it simple where the staking contract that the NFT would be in is where the increase power accrues or it could accrue to the specific NFT which would still redeem for ex. 1000mnde but the voting power is higher than that possibly giving it a premium on secondary markets (this might be too complicated and kinda defeat the purpose all together).
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