Hello everyone,
I’d like to suggest several changes to the proposal above so that it would align better with Marinade’s growth objectives. Here are the suggested changes to the original proposal:
- Reduce the campaign duration from one year to 3 months. The ratio would be kept intact, so staking 1 SOL for 3 months in either Native or mSOL would make you eligible for a reward of 1 MNDE.
- Use a budget of 80M MNDE for those 3 months, still capped by TVL growth (the full amount would only be distributed if 40M SOL joins the pool and stays for the full 3 months. We’d currently only distribute 7.1M MNDE over 3 months if there is no growth.)
- Introduce a new way to earn MNDE from this campaign, referrals.
- Refer people to Marinade Native. This option will allow anyone, from a regular user to Phantom or Solflare to become Marinade advocates and push its growth.
→ Referring someone would make you eligible for the same rewards as your referee, 1 MNDE per SOL over 3 months.
- Up to 40M MNDE would be distributed to mSOL/Native users, with a rate of 1 MNDE/SOL held in those products for 3 months. Up to 40M MNDE would be distributed to Marinade Native referrers.
- MNDE would be available to claim at the end of the 3 months campaign, and locked for 30 days. People will have 90 days to claim their MNDE before they are clawed back and sent back to the treasury.
- If Marinade TVL grows so much that 80M MNDE needs to be distributed at the end of 3 months, the distribution would be split proportionally among participants based on participation to not go above 80M.
The rationale and benefits of running such a campaign stay extremely similar to the original proposal, so I will mostly focus the rest of this post on the rationale behind the changes.
Rationale and expected positive impact of those changes
Marinade Native success and growth (as well as mSOL’s, in a way) greatly depends on deep integrations, as well as large stakers moving to Marinade. Getting mSOL or Marinade Native directly into wallet’s UI, or as an option offered by custodians to their clients can be a hard task if those entities are not incentivized at all.
Being able to reward the people or protocol bringing stake to Marinade Native should play a huge role in aligning everyone behind Marinade’s success. This is why expanding the incentive campaign to include some MNDE distribution toward referrers and potential integrators is something we should consider.
Moreover, this incentive campaign has the potential to be a powerful growth flywheel, as everyone already benefits from more people joining, without getting diluted, due to its design.
Adding a direct incentive for people to talk about Marinade Native, refer their friends or audience, and get people to use it will reinforce this virtuous circle where everyone (existing users, new users, validators, the network, and Marinade) wins as more stake joins Marinade.
Shortening the campaign to 3 months will allow us to concentrate the focus and the activity on a smaller timeframe, as well as having a shorter feedback loop.
For example, the open door program was designed and voted to last for a year. Even if it didn’t bring the results we hoped for, it’s currently impossible to revamp it or modify it significantly, as its terms are already agreed upon, on chain.
Running this campaign for 3 months will allow us to quickly see if this strategy is effective or not. It also opens the way to repeat it, cancel it or completely change it, based on the data obtained through the first iteration, instead of having to commit to a full year.
Overall, those changes allow a better alignment with integrators, which will be key to Marinade’s success in the long run, while conserving all the benefits that will allow large holders to move to Marinade and invite their friends to do the same. I believe those changes are needed for the incentive campaign to stand out and unlock growth for Marinade.
Any other considerations?
- Due to the liquid nature of mSOL, creating a perfect and impossible to game referral system for mSOL before launching this campaign is not something that can be done. For this reason, earning MNDE by referring people will only be available if the referee is using Marinade Native.