Governance Mining

Governance Proposals
#1

There has been a lot of discussion in the past week+ about the form that brands and brand memberships now take - particularly as it pertains to $ROBOT. As we know, Wicked Sunday Club was introduced prior to the existence or idea of $ROBOT. It is, however, one of the core drivers for its creation. We wanted to open up access to and participation in our brand factories (and MF generally). Its creation also means that all Wicked Sunday Club members will soon become MetaFactory members as well. :tada:

Moving forward, it no longer makes sense to ‘sell’ a membership, but rather leverage $ROBOT as the gate and access. There are a handful of different access levels available including dedicated brand chat, access to the brand style guide (which enables the ability to submit product ideas), and the ability to submit a formal proposal for the brand.

Instead, I’m proposing that we provide access to a particular brand by staking $ROBOT. Keep brand chat access low, but set a fairly high barrier for access to style guide, ability to submit product ideas and proposals. Members would mint 1 $WSCT by locking up 1 $ROBOT. 10 $WSCT for chat access, 100 $WSCT for style guide, etc. $WSCT would be non-transferrable and utilized only for governance of the brand. WSC Members would vote on which WSC product proposals are best using their $WSCT via conviction voting. Once a predetermined threshold is hit, the product would go into production.

Previously, we had proposed the ability for MF members to lock up their $ROBOT to earn further governance weight. The easiest way to handle this would be to simply reward members with more $ROBOT. The longer you lock up your tokens, the more you receive.

Now let’s consider brands. If a member decides to stake their $ROBOT for $WSCT and Wicked Sunday Club sells a lot of products, should that member receive a greater share of the $ROBOT governance mining rewards? What if we allocate potential $ROBOT rewards according to how successful each brand is?

How about for products? What if voting (staking?) on a particular, popular (high selling) product’s creation would return higher rewards? Staking would return $ROBOT based on the success or popularity of an item in the store. The benefit of being a member of a particular brand is both the ability to leverage that brand’s style guide and participate in any rewards for products created. Members are challenged to participate in the most successful brands and vote on the most popular designs.

But wait, I know a DOPE designer that would be perfect to create a WSC product, but they don’t know much about crypto and/or have access to $ROBOT. What if $ROBOT holders could stake on behalf of others and sponsor their access to the style guide + product submission? In turn, those members would receive a percentage of any $ROBOT rewards earned by that designer. This also challenges our members to identify the greatest designers and pair them with right brands.

I see an opportunity for MF to provide a path and motivation for the creation of the best products from the best designers - all powered by the efforts and contribution of its members. Governance mining rewards the most engaged and savvy members for selecting the best selling products and enabling their creation.

I know this potential plan is ambitious and it makes sense for us to start simple and evolve. I definitely think we should consider approaching this in phases to allow for learning along the way (ie. platform staking -> brand staking -> product staking). This is just a first attempt to capture some of our thinking and discussion on the topic.

Looking forward to feedback from everyone.

3 Likes
Airdrop Ops/Gov and WSC membership tokens
#2

Love the idea, I think I would need a diagram to fully flesh this out in my head though. i.e. Is staking for WSC tokens the same as staking for ROBOT governance in general? Would I have to pick a brand every time I staked, and that would only let me apply my tokens to one brand at a time?

#3

General platform governance mining would likely evolve (disappear?) with the introduction of brand staking. We could also consider MF its own brand and make the transition that way.

Yes - depending on how many tokens you had and what the brand access thresholds were set at.

Some ideas on reverse compatibility:

-Enable #RoboHub to accept any brand token, so that staking for a brand token doesn’t restrict access.
-Modify the general MF platform snapshot to count brand tokens the same as $ROBOT. (Brands would also likely have their own dedicated snapshot).

#4

I think this is a great token model both for brands and the overall MF platform, great job! We won’t be able to start platform staking until the initial $ROBOT distributions are done because all tokens are non-transferrable correct?

Platform staking $ROBOT for more $ROBOT doesn’t make sense to me from a value-add perspective, even though I’m probably a top ten $ROBOT holder and would gain more then others I don’t see what it does for the platform. If it’s tied to the success of a brand I think its great.

Brand Staking Rewards: Would rewards of $ROBOT be scaled linearly to a brand’s sales? One worry is that early (WSC) or very successful (MF) brands take up a majority of $ROBOT rewards which might disincentivize people from experimenting and exploring new brands because they get equal rewards for less risk by going with the safe option. The same doesn’t issue exist for products because they have a naturally short lifecycle whereas brands are longterm.

Sponsoring Artists: Wouldn’t it make sense to earn $ROBOT only for staking to your sponsored artist’s product? You earn rewards for staking to a brand whether or not the artist succeeds so making them stake to an artist specific product to get rewards from them seems more aligned and it would add curation points making the product more “popular” which benefits everyone. This also simplifies the system since we don’t need to add logic specifically around sponsoring artists, it’s the same brand + product curation we already want.

Product Curation: Would product curation by staking tokens be done in brand tokens or just $ROBOT? Would WSC tokens be able to stake to MF products? Will products’ profit/$ROBOT rewards be split between all parties - product designer, brand designer, brand token holders, and curators?

#5

I like it.

It solves a lot of the questions I still had about how to aligning motivations with the token. It also gives consideration for new brands and partnerships.

#6

IMO the “platform staking” would be the same mechanics as brand staking, it’s just as if you split your stake evenly among all the brands. We would still only give out ROBOT proportional to the sales generated. It’s basically an index on all the brands proportional to how successful each brand is.

One easier way to allow for product level curation would be getting non transferable yROBOT tokens by locking up ROBOT and using those for conviction voting. So voting on a design to make it into the shop becomes the same thing as staking on that product, but we don’t need to create actual product tokens or anything, and there’s less friction of “if I stake on this brand do I forfeit my governance rights in MF” or “can Y brand token be used to stake on X brand”. $ROBOT becomes the only thing you stake and the only reward for curating, but we distribute rewards and membership based on what they voted on, proportional to how many tokens they voted with. With conviction voting if you use your tokens to vote on one thing, you can’t “double spend” your voting power on another thing. This creates an incentive for people to acquire more ROBOT and actively participate in curation since they will have the ability to vote / stake in more products.

The nice thing about conviction voting is that people don’t need majority approval to get a product into the shop, so if they bet on something they really believe in for long enough to meet the conviction threshold, it can make it into the shop and they would get the majority share of the ROBOT since not as many people voted on it.

Since the “curator reward” gets split among all the curators, if something already has a lot of votes you won’t get as big of a share of rewards, so people are incentivized to seek out underrated products for a higher share of the rewards.

As for membership in a brand, I feel like the OG creator of the brand should have veto power to sponsor anyone into the brand for style guide access. The rest of the membership for the non creators can be a function of how much conviction they had voting for that brands products to make it into the shop. Can maybe also do something like “if you spend $500 on WSC products you get an NFT that gives you access to member chat”.

IMO it’s cleanest if we avoid multiple tokens, especially this early on. The tracking of how much someone spent on a certain brands products is all centralized anyways, so we just periodically send out NFTs just like we periodically airdrop ROBOT.

Lastly, why get people to lock ROBOT vs just conviction voting with ROBOT directly? Two reasons:

  1. If we know that yROBOT can’t be transferred and ROBOT is locked, we can keep the conviction voting off chain, which means better UX and no gas costs.
  2. We can know how long someone has their tokens locked up and give extra perks / rewards to people who are longer term aligned. As soon as they unlock they would forfeit those perks.
2 Likes
#7

I like the logic here. Single token + conviction voting seems to solve the same problems, but more elegantly. Is there an existing solution that we can easily leverage?

I also agree it would be cleaner than introducing a bunch of separate brand tokens with differing functions/rules. It reduces confusion and will greatly help UX - especially for the crypto unfamiliar. If a brand ever grew so successful so as to warrant its own token, we can re-visit the multi-token format.

#8

The most readily available solution is 1Hive conviction voting on xDAI: https://1hive.org/

I talked with them and apparently there’s plans to implement conviction voting on snapshot as well, but the xDAI one is the only thing we can use immediately.

It wouldn’t be terrible to do it on xDAI either. Gas fees no longer an issue and people can easily bridge mainnet ROBOT to locked yROBOT on xDAI. Not ideal solution for long term but would be nice in short term.

1 Like
#9

I find the new approach to the project interesting. Although there are several themes on the air, from my point of view one of the main themes is attracting talent from brands and artists. How can we explain all this to a MetaStar (Artist or brand)? What are the benefits of doing it with MF as opposed to doing it individually? I think we should build that “Because doing it with us” adds more value. I would like to define that MetaStar onboarding so that its MF input curve is as coherent and functional as possible. Finally, what economic benefit will the artist or brand get in the end? $ROBOT? ETH? DAI? FIAT?

1 Like
#10

Hi there,
Like the combined layers for both the bonding feelings these mechanisms can provide to the members of the project yet have some remarks and open questions.

  • I would think of a seasonal voting where several projects/brands/apparel can be backed with yROBOT. Given the fact there will be just 420k, the projects above 50k (for instance) are automatically promoted to the production lane. Just short 9 projects could be promoted for each voting season. the threshold to be high enough to limit all proposals to go further yet not too high so no proposals made through the end gate. Could also be some big whale to place 50k at once to ensure project survival :slight_smile:
  • I would stake for projects/brands/apparel I either consider worth my support and potentially would promote such across the community to obtain enough staking for the previously mentioned threshold.
  • Would make as main driver the benefits from staking on a project/brand/apparel but to be able to make some initiative real. Eventually to get early access to such apparel before the whole crowd or some discount (rather the first than the latter) as it will imply a truly quid pro quo relationship with the staked project/brand/apparel. In case some of the projects backed are not making it, one only loses the ability to slightly increase their ROBOT by choosing ‘wisely’.
  • Ways to earn ROBOT, and therefore yROBOT, could be from earnings on the sales/profits of the backed projects/brands/apparel but also on being one self the promoter/member of such project/brand/apparel. Proposing a project should not require, though, to have ROBOT but the ability to showcase the project/brand/apparel in a proper manner to the community seeking for support.
  • Question would be how to ensure enough liquidity to distribute upon the season end the ROBOTS earned by the promoters/backers. One way could be by the spend of ROBOT for the purchase of apparel/products (providing better pricing than other cryptos or FIAT) so to motivate ROBOT to flow and not only to be treasured.
  • All these mentioned processes and flows should be captured in a one-slider diagram for anyone to understand and comment on.
    Enjoy!!
2 Likes
#11

I think that this approach will actually start to blur the line between artist and consumer. MF provides the tools, templates, playbook and facilitates the production of digi-physical goods. We reduce the technical and/or creative barriers of the past - very similar to what has happened in both the cinema / video production space (prosumer market segment) and more recently with software development (SaaS tooling). Additionally, the community will likely act as the primary incubation chamber for product ideas and creativity as well. Of course, I expect there to be many individual artists, teams and brands, but I see this distinction as being less important over time. Community curation will decide which concepts and products inevitably make it to the marketplace. Every one is an artist and all artists are equally empowered and rewarded as decided by the community.

In terms of economic rewards, $ROBOT should act as the primary unit of account and incentive in the system. However, if we find that this creates unnecessary sell pressure (artists selling $ROBOT profits to cover costs) then a dual ETH / FIAT and ROBOT approach may make sense. This also becomes complicated from a tax perspective since MF accepts traditional payment methods in addition to crypto.