The case for having the #Marinators & channels open to view for all

General
#1

There was a soft vote recently in discord where the majority (total of ~100 votes only) voted to keep the Marinator channels locked & hidden to non-marinators role. And as true to it’s promise to the community, the team decided to make these channels private after the implementation of grape-NFT gating verification. Through this thread, I want to put across my point of view on why this decision is bad and detrimental to Marinade & Marinators.

Context:

First things first, the success of MNDE and Marinade depends on onboarding a lot of (retail) users to the platform. Institutional staking can skew the TVL in short term but in order for Marinade to succeed and 100x its TVL, we need regular users using and understanding the platform. So how do we ensure that this community is growing to greater heights and decentralising the Solana ecosystem.

Let’s take this discussion in either/view format and discern both sides of the story.

VIEW: Private channels, a sense of “exclusivity”

Calls for making the marinator related channels private can be understood on the need for “exclusivity” and rightly so. Here, the exclusivity comes from having a closed-free discussions on governance related topics, platform level discussions and well, just community bonding.

The argument is on governance-related discussions should be only visible to the NFT-holder and why would someone who do not have access to participate in the chat (due to the lack of role) be even seeing the chat in the first place. Keeping the channels closed, the community can vote on and discuss important things without any negative pollution of users who do not have a stake in the system.

COUNTER-VIEW: read-only channels to improve onboarding of more people

Exclusivity is important in any community and the governance NFT holders in Marinade should have a stake and a say in the platform’s running. What does “being exclusive” in Marinade mean for me?

  1. Holding beautifully drawn NFTs that only “Marinators” (role) shall have
  2. Voting on governance - Having a final say and actually vote on the topic I believe and steer Marinade in the right direction
  3. Having a NFT-gated chat channel where I can put in my thoughts and invite more others to support or argue my POV

If you notice the above pointers, people with the role “Marinators” can still feel exclusive without blinding the “Raw” role’ers.

Why is it important for keeping these channels as read-only?

All short term benefits aside, the real growth for any Marinator is:

a. The growth of Marinade TVL

b. The price of MNDE increasing

c. mSOL giving higher returns compared to any SOL staking or lending platform

The answer to this is not in “exclusivity” or “private channels” but instead on improving the onboarding of next 100K users to Marinade.

Closing Thoughts:

How do you think MNDE can “sustainably” reach $1 in value or cross the $2 mark? Institutional investors are not to be trusted with their dump at the right time mind set. It is us the individual users and HNWI who believe in the system can make this platform grow to such heights. And for that to happen we need more people to believe in the platform. And for that to happen we need to get in a lot more people using Marinade.

Having the Marinators channel in read-only mode opens up other possibilities:

  • Creates FOMO & shows a sense of intelligent platform specific discussions to the lurkers.

  • Creates a sense of openness and trust. As all the discussions are public while only the Marinators still hold the power to vote and decide the way forward.

  • The outer world sees that the role “marinator” does matter and that the chef team is building in public.

All these create a positive community culture in the longer run and the longer run is what matters to us. The price of MNDE, the higher returns in SOL staking and bringing in more folks under the decentralisation narrative and educating them to build a better Solana culture for years to come.

While I believe this is not the only “ways” to onboard more folks to the platform, but I do believe this is an effective way to spread awareness and build the community. We should be working towards encouraging everyone to become a Marinator and not deter.

Which path should Marinade take? Look forward to hear your thoughts.

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#2

Thanks for sharing your point of view. I don’t see us now suddenly overruling the community decision at this stage, as the change is happening within a day. And it is not about ‘‘which path’’ Marinade will take, as you conclude your text, nor will it deter anyone from becoming a Marinator the way you are portraying it, not at all.

For context: We had a lengthy discussion about this with the Marinators in the beginning of April for several days and everyone shared their points of view there, it was a healthy discussion. After that, there was a vote within discord amongst the Marinators where a clear majority preferred to have the Marinator chat private to NFT holders ie. Marinators.

Additionally, the Governance chat is open to everyone, no ‘exclusivity’ there, I think you misunderstood that - this is specifically related to the Marinator channel.

The way I see this is that it can be revisited after some time, but not immediately after the community have discussed, voted and decided. That would be disrespectful for the active Marinators in the discord. But you are entitled to your opinion of course! Not entirely sure why you did not partake in that discussion, where the points you brought up here now were also discussed at length amongst the Marinators.

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#3

I agree to the points C2yptic. That’s why I din’t create it under “governance” topic, I know this can’t be taken up for the vote at this point in time. We can reconsider this for the future maybe :slight_smile: I had this text in discord and forgot that this dint go through as the message was too long and when I went back to that channel it was in drafts :see_no_evil:

#4

Fair enough :slight_smile: but this led to something good and important anyway, at least in my opinion:

  • For how long should a grace period be before one can ‘vote on the same matter again’ based on a counter proposal, after the initial vote has been done and passed?

Something I brought up in the #governance chat in discord today, join that discussion before it becomes a forum post here! :slight_smile:

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