SCP-166 ThorFOX, a FOX tokenomics upgrade proposal

[jonisjon]

Thank you so many folks for continuing this spirited discussion on the all various sides of this proposal and debate. I love seeing the engagement and interest from so many folks about this subject. It’s also encouraging to see so many intelligent voices of agreement and dissent, I welcome all of it and hopefully all these additional perspectives will end up making any official proposal that goes forward for vote a much better one for it.

When I first made the RFC post, my hope was whether or not this proposal ends up moving forward that at the very least the DAO would engage in a important discussion around FOX tokenomics and possible ways to improve. It was something I voiced during the SCP 153 debate as a missing component of that proposal in order to actually upgrade the tokenomics and I am glad the idea is now getting more of the attention it deserves.

Similar to SCP 153 (and the prior fee debate), I think there are some high level strategic details about which way the DAO should or shouldn’t go that are going to inevitably be contentious. I don’t view the contention as a bad thing, but a healthy indicator that the subject matter at least is on track. As a result, at a certain point governance needs to weigh in and help settle contentious points within the community as it has before.

On that note there are some aspects that are coming up repeatedly (both on and off the forum) where reasonable and well-intentioned folk may simply disagree:

• Some folks in this discussion believe that “now” is the right time for a tokenomic upgrade like this and others believe it is not the right time.
• Some are very concerned about the impact this could have on the DAO’s treasury and view it as high risk/cost, others believe it is a minimal impact with low risk/cost
• Some think the proposal needs more research, modeling, metrics and details before being submitted to ideation. Others think the discussion and what has been presented to this point to be more than sufficient to move forward with an ideation vote.
• Some think the initial starting parameters are about right/too low and others think they are too high.

I think everyone has good reasons for believing what they do from their perspective in regards to these points and so I won’t continue to push further and explicate/repeat on those areas where the contention likely needs to be settled by vote, the current ideation vote will give us a good sentiment gauge of where the proposal stands among the community before any next steps.

A few brief things to add from some of the latest discussion:

@0xdef1cafe

This proposal skims top line revenue, effectively risk free to token holders.

Well in my mind having to stake a small cap volatile asset for a minimum of 28 days is not at all “risk free” for a variety of reasons.

@0xdef1cafe

Buy back and burn schemes only make sense under a few conditions, e.g. excess cash (nope), perceived unvalued stock price (we’re still overvalued at ~$24mm market cap). Neither is true for the DAO.

There are a number of different perspectives around the burn mechanism, some in crypto swear by it and some hate it, maybe this is another of those contentious areas that is bound to affect perspectives, but i don’t think this description is somehow the “only” viable burn model. Many tokens have and use burns effectively even if they are not “cash flow” positive (and arguably a number of those have used such models to help them achieve growth and positive cashflow). I think burning has potential value for FOX holders, but I understand that some just don’t want to see a burn at all. One question is do those folks think something like “buyback” or “buyback and lock” is better or should the bucket just be eliminated? To me those seem pretty strictly worse from a tokenomics perspective though maybe the difference isn’t enough to matter at the scale we are expecting early on?

@0xdef1cafe

Distribution to stakers (“dividends” if you will) is akin to looting the newly found revenue from the treasury, at the businesses expense. “As a token holder of an unprofitable organization, is a top line distribution of 25% of revenue to me in the organization’s best interest?”. It’s difficult to make an argument for the yes case. The org is far better off holding this on the balance sheet (for TMDC to speculate roon bags) or dumping for stables for operating expenses.

@0xdef1cafe

Another way of looking at it, is this proposal applies a 50% COGS as a dead weight on fresh saplings of revenue. It’s unnecessary and illogical.

I think this perspective misses the forrest for the trees in many ways that have been discussed, but also understand where it comes from and I thank @0xdef1cafe for giving such clear articulation to this viewpoint. Ultimately if you feel similarly to this its prob not about the specifics and you just disagree with the mechanism fundamentally and thus should vote this down.

Enough people seem to see the merit in the proposal though that I think it is worth the discussion and ideation vote at minimum.

@seven7hwave

These benefits are hard to predict/quantify, but it feels like a reasonable trade-off to improve FOX’s tokenomics;

@seven7hwave

This feels like a relatively low-risk experiment (assuming smart contract risk is aggressively managed) to finally augment the token with some compelling reasons to hold it. (And as outlined above, this overall strategy could be replicated in other ecosystems/partnerships, which makes more powerful and extensible…potentially).

By no means do I consider this iteration of the tokenomics upgrade “done” or “complete” if it passes, I expect there will inevitably be alterations, additions, changes, and more as the DAO iterates on top of this foundation. In fact, this was said in the RFC post and in this iteration of the proposal that the aim is to setup a new foundation for FOX tokenomics which can be bult on top of.

What I do think, that @seven7hwave 's puts nicely here a few different ways is that the risk/reward seems worth the attempt/experiment - and ultimately this is one of the strongest arguments to vote for this. If you think the risk/reward seems worth it, its likely you want to vote this up, and if you don’t think that risk/reward is worth it you likely will want to vote this down.

@seven7hwave

What if the burn aspect was completely eliminated, or reduced to 10%? Suddenly the month “cost” of the proposal drops, making it even less of a headwind on the treasury. Meanwhile, there would still be a powerful reason to hold FOX, in order to enjoy those revenue-sharing benefits. And the treasury could still benefit from any resultant increase in demand for FOX. So perhaps the burn parameter in particular could hold the key to finding community consensus; I just don’t see it as core to the spirit/objective of this proposal.

@seven7hwave you are correct that the burn aspect is not core to this proposal, it could be completely eliminated if that is what the community prefers. I think it does add value, but the proposal also works fine without it. As currently stands if this proposal does move forward I would make sure to delineate a “0 % burn” option as one of the starting parameter options that the DAO could vote on.

@PTT

If a new contract would be needed, what is the estimated cost, including audits to make that happen?

I’m not sure that cost is explicitly called out in this proposal.

Ultimately the engineering and product workstreams would need to work on this if it was passed and implement the details as they see fit, there has been an estimate done though by the current interim engineering workstream lead who posted it on the RFC thread: [RFC] ThorFOX, a FOX tokenomics upgrade proposal - #9 by 0xean

@Tyler_ShapeShift

To me, a proposal that would need follow up proposals to define itself seems like a clear example of a poorly defined or specific proposal. The incubation or RFC stage has been used to do what you have pushed into ideation and potentially will push through as multiple proposals. I get there is excitement as well as time spent waiting for others to comment, but no real debates and measurable data have been presented to the questions presented by @0xFBL, myself and other community members taking part in the process.

The idea of adding on the potential secondary vote on starting parameters (if we are to do that, still tbd) was an idea generated from feedback from all sides of this debate as a way to separate the contention over the param settings from the tokenomics upgrade model itself. I think that makes sense and is a reasonable way to handle a detail where there is not likely to be wide community consensus, but if this is seen as somehow meaning its not defined enough, we don’t have to do that secondary vote at all, but it seems to do the job of separating those contentions well (and seemingly has support from both those who want lower and higher params).

Right now ideation is the first actual step of the DAO governance process, so this proposal in its current form seems like its in the right place for the discussion that is now happening. If the community wants to require some additional thresholds for a proposal to be put forward into ideation then the DAO should probably consider changing its governance process again to require some preliminary steps or hurdles, but right now this seems like exactly the right time and place to have the discussion that this ideation post has elicited.

@Tyler_ShapeShift

Length of time needed to unstake and un-staking costs/penalties is pretty specific. I feel like there have been a few conversations discussing this idea and it makes sense to highlight and ask why this ideation proposal came to the 28 day cliff for staking as its final decision on this number. If 28 days is the right choice, how did we come to that and how would we know if it needs to be shorter or longer?

@Tyler_ShapeShift

Something parametric that has staking time locks calculated in relation to either the % of the pool your stake represents, to the value of both FOX, RUNE, and % redeemable at any given time seems like something that could use a good tire kick and explore data findings of before moving forward in an official vote. It might in the very least give us an idea of how to measure the success of the number or function ultimately chosen here.

Well, it doesn’t seem like the 28 days being proposed is unclear, but perhaps you think there is a better way to approach setting this number? 28 days is generally on the long side for unstaking periods, but not unheard of, I think its a reasonable place to put this to start that does a good job of balancing any “lock” or “attack” risk without being so overly punishing as to disincentivize staking entirely.

IMO going the parametric direction would be a bit overly complex and I am trying to keep any additional complexity out of the proposal unless absolutely necessary. I don’t think getting this detail perfect right now is particularly necessary (it can be iterated on in the future, and even be a setting in any staking contract the DAO could update as needed), but if others think it is necessary to have a different model then I would encourage them to propose alternatives to what the staking may look like as you have done, there is still plenty of time in this current ideation period to have more detailed discussion on this subject for anyone who has thoughts on this.

@Tyler_ShapeShift

You’re allowed to continue to think it’s affect on the runway is negligible or dismissive. You should expect to continue to receive pushback and feelings contrary from contributors who view it as an additional cost and liability, further dragging on our runway because it technically is one. One that will continue to grow in cost to the DAO if we are ultimately successful or will be a bleed out of our biggest current revenue generator to the FOX blessed while we starve in the desert looking for PMF and the next bull.

@Tyler_ShapeShift

The runway/expenses doom and existential threat is so front of mind it takes away cycles from every contributor to the DAO and has rippling affects on staffing, stability, camaraderie, and culture of the DAO

@Tyler_ShapeShift

as written it is the DAO making it 50% harder to generate revenue from our most successful revenue generating service yet and I am not sure as to why

There has been a lot of talk on this (as noted in the beginning of this post), its a reasonable concern and I don’t expect it to stop, but also am not going to continue to repeat that I disagree on the potential runway impact and why as I don’t think I am adding anything additional at this point that hasn’t already been said multiple times by myself and others. I really believe that this proposal will help the treasury and runway situation and hopefully help alleviate some of that existential contributor stress you describe or I would never have proposed it. For those who disagree, and think this is a substantial threat to the DAO and it’s treasury they should absolutely vote it down.

@Tyler_ShapeShift

I think there is more than enough feedback from @0xFBL, myself, @kent, @0xdef1cafe, @woody and others to strongly consider doing more research, presenting more data, and being open to discovery on new ways to consider a tokenomics proposal upgrade rather than the current presented proposal. It feels impulsive and naive to me that we are at this place with this potentially going to governance as written with this level of direct feedback in the forums. Perhaps we did not learn enough hard lessons from FOXy or the FOX farming incentivization programs.

I really do appreciate all the feedback from you and everyone else, it has made this a much more productive and engaging discussion and I think any subsequent proposal that may go forward will be the better for it.

I don’t personally think having this in its current form in ideation is “impulsive or naive” though, and if others agree with that they should vote it down for that reason too (or better yet propose a “less impulsive and less naive” counter proposal!). And at that point the community should reconsider having ideation be the first actual step of the governance process if this current proposal doesn’t meet some misunderstood standard the DAO wishes to place on future proposals that wish to begin ideation.