Tokenomics: $LUNAR & $VOX

General
#20

Honestly, the mechanism feels overly complex and a somewhat difficult to reason about.

Personally, I’d be much more inclined to go for a Nouns-style emission schedule, perhaps combined with Moloch-style rage-quit, rather than relying on liquidity incentives and locking.

The only potential drawback I see with this is that it implies a slower ramp-up, but this could also be seen as a positive.

Also worth noting that $VOX is described as non-transferable, but this is near impossible to enforce. It would be trivial to write a wrapper contract for it, or simply to mint it from a contract wallet that could swap owners (like a safe).

1 Like
#21

Hey @auryn and thank you for your input and proposals. I was searching for Nouns emission schedule but couldn’t find it. Would you be up to sharing a link? :hibiscus:

#22

TOKENOMICS FEEDBACK

We reached out to our allies for feedback on the tokenomics architecture. Based on the concerns we decided to PAUSE THE GENESIS LAUNCH and take more opinions into consideration. The communication is ongoing. Here are 3 surveys with crypto seniors who agreed to share their points.

The points are shortened as I promised not use a copy-paste quotation.

TL;DR

  1. Be more clear about the DAO being first and foremost an investment fund with providing extra materials and possibilities for education. Prevent people to misread the aims as a charity!

  2. Repeat the aims and mission again and again & be active in engaging others in the development!

  3. Make a minimum for the initial sale (genesis event) as a threshold. If not reached - the sale is canceled and investors redeem back their ETH. Proposal 666 ETH.

  4. Consider the other proposals, like Moloch etc

  5. Allow for dynamic emissions - not hard coded ones.

  6. Think about long term grow and architecture aligning the investment fund mission first of all.

Investor, VC advisor

  1. Consider bigger % for airdrops (~5%). Initiate smaller tasks with clear # $LUNAR for community participants to support needed tasks (not random giveaways) like PR drive, small of research or even light development work. Announce the amount of tokens to be airdropped and the qualifying criteria. The amount will be divided between eligible participants at the end. This supports committed members that are low on capital and gives an incentivize initiative.

  2. The fair launch is admirable. But consider to sell it in waves so the big amount of token is not sold “too cheap”. Alternative could be 2-4 waves in predetermined long time or based on community vote. This has another risks to be considered:

    • Supply injection of large part into a market can be seen as a massive dump as the token can be bought on the market anyway
    • Maybe consider instead this as a right to reserve tokens as a treasury exposure for future price growth
    • Another possibility would be to use TWAP sale price for future rounds: If the initial liquidity is low. People who want to buy in bigger volume will have an opportunity to do so at a potential discount if TWAP price is less than spot. Ofc the period is important to disincentivize manipulation with a reserve to choose timing as a community.
    • This entire point is complex and need a lot of thought if to be applied.

  3. Token emissions: Alternative take to linear over fixed halving schedule. Allows for semi or even fully dynamic release based on level of activity/ participation of the DAO.

    • Lower base emission level ramping up with increased demand - can be based on participation, trading volume, mcap, voting activity.
    • The main question is to determine a fair and reliable indicator for activity
    • Possible to solve this with the community as an element of control/influence over emission rate instead of hard-coded.
    • Needs a system preventing spiking up the activity to get bigger reward and dump it on the community.

  4. The fair launch may be rockier start (as it brings no pump marketing) but more fair and stable on the long run - try to make it without private rounds.

  5. Capped supply is healthier than infinite supply.

Pirate, BTC senior, legal hacker, digital rights designer, anon advocate

  1. Presentation seems very clear, but still for many it may not be obvious if the DAO is an investment fund and can be misunderstood as a charity.

  2. Large % of emissions going to stakers is good, it’s a model used by Cardano and Nym. Maybe consider a bit less still.

  3. The conditions are rough now. People do not want to invest in general.

  4. Combining what everyone in the community suggests without having a token is also difficult.

  5. Find a balanced and APR is also hard as people appreciate it and bigger investors do not.

  6. Make sure to well define and keep repeating (interviews, articles, TW) what will actually move the current community in a positive collaboration and give this collaboration a boost.

  7. On Moloch model: It seems interesting and may be more aligned with the investment fund mission of LunarDAO

  8. Asking around is good but also not asking is OK: “imagine if satoshi had made a survey to build Bitcoin :)))”

Crypto author, founder of Paralelna Polis, serial entrepreneur

  1. Not an expert about tokenomics and approaches most of the tokens to go to $0 at some point.

  2. APR point not important whether APR = 10% or 1000%, if you do not know if value from year from now will be 0.00001% or 10000% from the initial price

  3. Importance of a good research: The result of voting is usually bad. VCs have the opposite model - collect money of people who want to invest and leave the investment decisions to specialists.

  4. Consider building and using decision markets / prediction markets.

  5. Return in privacy as a value: Investor wants better privacy, the DAO invests in good projects that would deliver the goal, no need of $$ return, the privacy is the return on investment. Money is not the only nor the most important value the DAO can bring as a return.

  6. Emphasize more clearly the business model so it does not look like a charity donation

  7. Recommend you all this book: https://www.amazon.com/Paper-Belt-Fire-Fight-Progress/dp/164177245X

2 Likes
#23

I wanna thank everyone who participated in the discussion, it’s amazing to see community engagement and building. i’m very excited.

tonight we’ll for sure discuss tokenomics in community meeting, everyone is very welcome to join.
18utc, on irc channel. you’ll find instructions in the community meetings topic

have a great day!

#24

Thanks. I am sure it won’t matter, but it does help to have some sense of the core team because while not important now it might be in 1 or 2 years when people write the history of LunarDAO.

I agree with @lunar-mining that it would be best to simplify the tokenomics model. I would suggest steering away from DeFi protocols as your model. You should be able to explain your tokenomics model in 1 or 2 paragraphs.

2 Likes
#25

LunarDAO TokenomicsV2, Primitives & Roadmap

Based on the feedback from the growing LunarDAO Squad (the involved community), LunarDAO is revising its tokenomics to optimize for the main purpose of the DAO: an investment fund for privacy projects, anonymity tooling & associated research. Connected to the mission of education in the form of wiki: “How to achieve privacy now?” and the academy, decentralized cultivation of agorists, hackers, philosophers, economists & leaders, who will further scale up their skills and loop them back to the lunarpunk movement.

The token was never meant to be something for a small group of the people. The Squad needs to be not only the main owner of governance tokens, but also of the DAO structure itself. The way the tokenomics are structured now need to be changed to accomplish the DAOs objectives and echo the voice of the Squad!

Objectives

The primitives for LunarDAO tokenomics must follow the mission objectives: Investment Fund, be in line with the DAO Governance and to respect the mentioned objectives from the Tokenomics-v1 and all the concerns of the community:

  1. Squad Wealth - Build distributed treasury & decentralized community without private rounds
  2. Create an appropriate investment system & incentives, allowing for allocation in the supported projects
  3. Reward early participants without excluding or disabling the future Squad members
  4. Incentivize community
  5. Keep core team operational
  6. Allow for quality research & education
  7. Promote Lunarpunk mission and narrative values

Primitives

Based on the objectives, there are three main primitives on the roadmap to build anti-fragile incentive-aligned lunarpunk squad wealth. The DAO (and its tokenomics & governance), On-chain Agreements and AnonDAO.

1. Investment DAO

  • Token economics primitive fulfilling the objectives.
  • Robust but simple structure taking into account the concerns and proposed changes.
  • Deploying tested design over experimentation.

2. On-Chain Agreements

A primitive to create an on-chain SAFT, which ensures both counterparties: LunarDAO Squad (the investing community) and the supported project, following the contract without state legal structures involved. Such research needs a collaboration between LunarDAO allies, researchers, web3 devs and lawyers.

A proposal is to create a primitive of a template SAFT in the form of an NFT. Such contract would contain all the points mentioned in the investment & raise, in particular *:


Project X offers to bring a ticket of # of T tokens or any other value to the ecosystem in exchange for LunarDAO support. The project is evaluated by the research team and proposed to submit an investment LIP in which it must be clearly defined:

* Name of the project
* Date
* Value for to the ecosystem (new primitives, tools, knowledge, monetary etc)
* Requested size of support in USD terms
* Offered amount of Project X tokens T and price per USD (if the project is monetary based)
* Trigger event - Tokens T will be send to LunarDAO treasury: Time period needed for execution or expected time of launch (when T becomes liquid)
* Is the team X supported by private investors or VCs, other DAOs (or plans to) or just LunarDAO?
* If yes: In which size and what is the price of token T to other supporting subjects?
* If project X is token based: T tokenomics
* Project X wallet address to recieve the support
* LunarDAO treasury wallet address to recieve token T in agreed time, amount and price

* These points are illustrative and can change as the tokenomics are under construction.

This primitive needs to have a tool to enforce the contracts to help build a robust incentive system and ensure the DAO receives the promised tokens to its treasury.

3. AnonDAO

LunarDAO Stewards (core team) explained in detail the philosophy, choices and trade-offs behind remaining anonymous in this essay. The contradiction of anonymity vs Ethereum was mentioned in this thread. The AnonDAO primitive does not exist on any mainnet yet and we have to start somewhere.

LunarDAO aims to invest into such primitives and create a solution when the community can migrate to a completely anon DAO: LunarDAO 1:1. This needs a research on teams developing the primitive and implementation of such migration, token bridge and of course a lot of community discussions and voting.

LunarDAO tokenomics design: Concerns, references, proposals

Tokenomics based on $LUNAR/$VOX was not accepted - for reference and possible usage of parts of that architecture see tokenomicsV1. To understand all the input, read tokenomics forum channel.

Summary of the concerns

  • The DAO purpose - investment fund - may be misread. Make it more clear!
  • v1 is not the best design for longevity of the DAO
  • The De-Fi based protocol can distract from the privacy investment fund goal
  • Tokenomics design shall be discussed and not imposed by the core-team
  • LUNAR/VOX may be exposed to a fragile price-positive feedback loop
  • Introducing external incentive, not focusing enough on the treasury growth
  • The De-Fi protocol is too complicated - simplify!
  • v1 design rewards newcomers at the expense of late adopters and over values early participation at the expence of long-term vision
  • Missing the incentive to pursue new investments
  • v1 is exposed to the risk of engineering a monopoly
  • The focus on the value beyond token needs to be better clarified
  • $VOX non transferable nature is near to impossible to enforce
  • Missing minimum ETH threshold to evaluate the initial sale as successful or not
  • v1 Does not consider dynamic emission; all hard-coded

Alternatives, References & Advices

Look into other investment funds and their structure:

  1. MolochV2 - investment DAO primitive, used by Metacartel
  2. Metacartel Venture; shares with rage quit mechanism
  3. PleasrDAO - Fractionalized ownership of investment
  4. BadgerDAO fair launch + badger docs

Check out web3 accelerators currently developed:

  1. Web3 Accelerators: LongHash Ventures,
  2. tachyon.xyz

Governance, addressing problems of 1 token = 1 vote vs anonymity:

  1. Aragon DAO Discord discussion about new voting models
  2. zk-Voting
  3. Reources on voting question in DAOs:
  1. Quadratic voting: It is not known how to implement quadratic voting in a fully anonymous way (just pseudonomously at the moment) - this is a concern for the future roadmap.

Ideas:

  1. Index token issued for prediction markets. The X amount can be burned into the DAO governance token. Example: Indexcoop
  2. Allow dynamic emissions based on the activity in the DAO and or the community decision

Advices:

  1. Allocate bigger % for airdrops and make incentivized system for smaller tasks, supporting squad members with less entry funds.
  2. Setup a minimal raise amount to evaluate if the initial raise was successful or not
  3. Nouns-style emission or proto-DAO before token launch nouns.build
  4. Implement management fee to reward Stewards
  5. Setup a multisig for donations until a more robust incentive structure for investment DAOs has been figured out

Roadmap

The 3 primitives in steps

1. LunarDAO tokenomics & governance design, meeting the objectives, as democratically as possible:

a) Write an announcement (article + social media call)

  • Share the final version of this document with the call out to build and discuss tokenomics together
  • Share about the primitives
  • Align incentives for investment

b) Research all the proposed options for the tokenomics mentioned above in “LunarDAO tokenomics design”

c) Submit & discuss the points from the feedback & research:

  • Constructive & Advancing vs not fitting (doxxing, not aligning with the lunarpunk aims etc)
  • Capped vs Infinite supply
  • Permissionless vs Restricted membership
  • Token weighted vs Alternatives governance
    – Liquidity lock up
    – Quadratic voting
    – Rage quit
    – Shares slashing
    – Diluting Bonds
  • Size of the DAO: small & controlled vs open & growing
  • Shares vs Tokens (tokenized shares)
  • Emission style, hard code vs DAO vote dynamic vs other metric dynamic

d) Create final tokenomics draft + discuss details & decide

e) Decide on the launch strategy with as fair distribution as possible

f) Announce, Deploy & Launch token

2. Build On-Chain agreements primitive

a) Research committee leads the research for existing protocols (@0xQ, @saliveja, @serinko)

b) Encourage the community to join or give input about the existing protocols which can be used

  • Make an announcement to encourage others to participate

c) Communicate with the lawyers about the legal issues of the SAFT

d) Implement programming knowledge to draft the SAFT NFT contract

e) Propose the final version

  • Use LIP template
  • If #1 is finished: Use the DAO to vote and

f) Deploy the SAFT template

3. AnonDAO

a) Research team that most likely delivers the primitive

  • DarkFi dev team presented the AnonDAO primitive on HCPP22 - Contact them and see where they are at with the development
  • Look into other teams working
  • Choose the best team whose proposal align with DAO goals

b) Discuss the conditions of support

c) Submit a LIP and vote on the development support (raise for the developing team)

d) Test the primitive properly - run the DAO on testnet

e) Discuss migration in LunarDAO

  • How to deal with 1:1 treasury/token migration
  • Governance concerns
  • Address all risks

f) Submit a proposal to migrate if there is support in LunarDAO Squad

g) Vote and execute the decision

However the points #1, #2 and #3 are numbered according to priority, they are interconnected parts of the same development. Step #1 is a top priority and the main focus of the entire core team (Stewards) to grow and encourage the entire community to join and together build LunarDAO token economics in line with the aims and as democratically as possible. Meanwhile this work is ongoing, the research team can start to work on #2 (and open the door to more professionals to join). Besides these two points, the initial communication on #3 (particularly 3.a and 3.b) shall progress alongside.

Operational Costs

The works on the DAO has been ongoing for several months. There are six Stewards (that number includes Media committee as well as the initial research). The Stewards work has been:

  • Initiate the DAO
  • Coordinate operations
  • Coordinate administration
  • Coordinate legal questions
  • Coordinate development
  • Media
  • Allies Reach out
  • Community Management
  • Initial Governance & Tokenomics
  • Research & wiki

There are several externals helping with development, graphic design, sys-administration, legal issues and translation who coordinate with the Stewards but are not part of the core team.

We want to prevent selling the DAO community to private investors or VCs. Until now all the Stewards work for free and some of the externals were paid from the savings or will be paidlater from core-team budget. The agreement is to pay all the externals first before any Stewards.

A good point which was raised in the discussion, is to keep in mind the sunk-cost fallacy and make sure that’s not dictating any of the decisions. The decision to halt the sale and slow down to democratize the process was a good one. The question of the ongoing costs need to be addressed. It would be valuable to hear opinions from the community to ensure that further steps taken are in the benefit with the entire DAO community.

Proposals addressing operational budget before launch

  1. Share the primitive roadmap and accept donation to the core team multi-sig wallet so the decisions aren’t in stress due to operational costs.
  2. Consider Nouns, proto-LunarDAO raise to keep the work operational before the main raise
  3. Consider submission for a grant: MolochDAO, Gitcoin, MetaCartel, CultDAO
  4. Any other ideas?

Option #1 seems the easiest and straight forward. Please share what you think about these options.

Conclusion

The main focus of the upcoming discussion shall be on the questions and dilemmas in the point The 3 primitives in steps, #1, c) . Besides that we would like to encourage everyone to share an opinion on all the primitives and the budget concern mentioned in the previous point.

This document serves as an overview and a foundation for ongoing discussion. Any opinions, feedback, proposals and ideas on the questions raised in this document are welcome.

Let’s build together!

2 Likes
SAFT NFT Discussion
#26

Im only addressing the Rage quit function here: This mechanic for LunarDAO seems applicable. One key aspect that is inherent with democracy is the rule of the majority.

Rage-quit offers a mechanism to prove your dislike for a vote and also not be affected by potential negative decision of the outcome of the prospective vote.

You can easily exit the system.

I would support a rage-quit function unless others see unseen issues with this:

1 Like
#27

During the time of governance development there were a lot of discussions in regards to the voting system. It is important that a governance system is aiming for trustlessness through on-chain governance which ensures the immediate execution of squad decisions. Because on-chain voting directly executes the decision of the DAO, there are concerns relating to 51% attacks. Any malicious actor could gain voting majority and push through a decision even if everyone else would disagree. Game over. Multi-sig with possibility to reject malicious proposals is a way to protect against that.

The proposal on ragequit, because of it’s unique characteristics, is also an ongoing discussion. In a DAO which has restricted membership, connected to an known identity, if a member ragequits, everyone will know who did it and the person would have to re-apply to enter the DAO again, which others might not be so keen on after exiting in this manner. If LunarDAO is permissionless, it is possible to ragequit and re-enter without any difficulties. Does it matter to the community that this possibility exists? With Moloch’s architechture, which includes grace period and dilution bond, ragequit can be a powerful protection against malicious attacks. It gives agency to the squad to take action and protect treasury resources if needed. Do we see this as possible to combined with a permissionless DAO? We can rely on the dilution bonds to ensure that proposals are automatically rejected if a large percentage on the squad ragequit at once. An assumption is that the squad, because of connection to mission will not abuse this option and if single accounts ragequit it won’t have a big impact anyway. This would speak for this combination.

Strategies like Quadratic voting is being discussed as a possibility so that no single account effortlessly can assume voting majority, however this cannot be used with full anon governance. It is not sybil resistant, and if implemented without identity, then anyone can just split their governance token into several accounts, or have multiple accounts, and we return to the previously mentioned problem.
@sadar you were saying that due to the extra time and on-chain fees needed to maintain the separate participants, it does make it more difficult with quadratic voting even without kyc. I appreciated this input and wonder if you’d be up for sharing more of your perspectives and proposals for governance?

1 Like
#28

I have been reading through Moloch, MolochV2 and continuing through the whitepaper of Metacartel Venture. Want to reach out to some people involved in Metacartel as well as Moloch and talk about these important points, their experience and possibilities to use that primitive (Moloch2) in a setup which values anonymity as #1 priority.

What were the main arguments against liquidity lock up btw?

I think the proposal by @lunar-mining, @anon and @sadar are good and I like the approach of using tested and pro-profit design. The critique on restricted DAO needs to be addressed. Both from the point of anonymity but also the philosophy of the DAO and the squat we want to build.

We can think also about an option to keep the two levels: Community and Squad. Where the community is everyone who gets a basic token (what would be it’s function?) or is active on the forum, Squad (originally based on liquidity lock up) would be in this case anyone who has the shares and is somehow accepted. But still, it’s tricky and we shall first answer the question before thinking on how to apply it.

1 Like
#29

Options 1 and 3 for operational budget makes sense to me. We should do both

1 Like
#30

I agree with @dcat, 1+3 for operational budget, I would rather it go live when ready, and use whatever other means we have available to us(be it grants or donations until then)

#31

In reagrds to quadratic voting, I mentioned that theres still a cost for a potential malicious party to maintain many different accounts. This cost is time + on-chain fees. This cost isn’t the same kind of dilution as quadratic voting, but it forces participants to consider and potentially alter their behavior.

In regards to rage-quitting, where is the concern If a user leaves after a proposal is passed, and then re-enters LunarDAO soon after, and then quits again? I only see that the continual rage-quitter is not contributing to the actual process but aren’t taking anything away from the rest of the participants.

I may be missing something though. Also there could be the option to deduct X% from rage-quitters and send to treasury for example (this shouldn’t be used to stop people from rage-quitting, but more as an incentive to prevent continual rage quits)

#32

When you say liquidity lockup, do you mean locking up ETH in return for a token? If this is what you mean, I don’t think I saw any arguments against.

I would say If anyone wants to participate, they can lock up eth and get tokens in return. We can discuss how these shares are determined.

This may give some more insight. MolochDAO has SHARES & LOOT. Shares and loot both represent a claim on the tokens in the DAO. Shares allows members to vote, and Loot is non-voting shares in the DAO. Members | MolochDAO

#33

I think to deduct a % is a good incentive for ppl to think more before ragequitting. Moloch’s approach is good and prevents harm for the squad with dilution bonds and still there is the benefit of treasury protection with mass ragequitting if there is a malicious proposal. The discussions and perspectives have been helpful. Without Moloch overall approach to ragequitting, including grace period and dilution bonds i don’t think it’s a viable solution so it comes with all of this imo. Appreciate your input @sadar

#34

Do we want to adopt Moloch architecture entirely or use it together with LUNAR and VOX?

#35

I am re-reading MCV to see how they applied that. There is an obvious difference in between LunarDAO and MCV as they run a legal entity.

It would be good to get in touch with Ameen on Moloch questions/contradictions on permissioned DAO vs too high threshold vs anonymity.

@sadar: By liquidity lock up I meant the stake to earn VOX to vote model. Like what is the main disadvantage of it?

I guess in the Moloch way this can be exchanged by a model when we have a permissionless community: forum, chats, video-conf (lunarpunk future) etc and possibly a token (= LunarDAO COMMUNITY) and we have a permissioned membership of the investors, who can propose investment LIP, vote, ragequit - hold the shares (= LunarDAO Squad).

This is just an idea as reading to all your thoughts, many essential details would have to be addressed if this is the path to go.

#36

I see some pros on the architecture of Moloch and MCV with the permissioned investor membership. The question is though how to to make this and still maintain the open gate for a growth of a lunarpunk movement which is not for quite small group of people. For the community to have any agency.

Another question is to include people who put in commitment and value and do not have a big income, which in ie MCV is quite high in order to be able to join. Ie everyone here now puts months of unpaid work to develop the mission, how would that play into question if membership is based on a financial threshold?

#37

I agree dilution bounds helps with dealing with a mass exit.

There is mention here of the concern around ragequitting:

Readers may note that an attack vector exists where participants can repeatedly Ragequit to either avoid dilution or grief the guild. This would be an effective method to avoid paying the cost of a single proposal. However, if the member wanted to avoid paying they would have to Ragequit the entirety of their shares, completely removing them from the guild.

Avoiding the cost of a single proposal with continual ragequits is an issue, with a fee on ragequitting, this should help prevent abuse.

But… In Moloch V3, Baal | Moloch v3 there is a distinct point made on never charging a penalty for leaving. This would be an exit tax. I’m not sure the reasoning for suggesting to not charge but they have a measure in place to prevent multiple ragequits (the application process) If entry is permissionless, then the application process isn’t available to us.

#38

https://summon.daohaus.fun/

There is some nice UI tooling for Moloch V3

I would suggest we use a good portion of the architecture but there will likely be slight changes considering Moloch is permissioned and we want to be permissionless. We will need to figure out how shares are distributed and and at what rate , since this would be an issue if voting members are coming in at different times

#39

I don’t see an issue with liquidity locking and think its a good option still available to us. I know there was the mention of a certain percentage to be made available after the first few days of the pool going live, and it seems like the concern was focused on this percentage being released over a short period of time.

We can consider using this same method but alter the amount of time for the genesis sale and alter the % that is made available. This should address the concerns listed above

Moving on to your other points
This is an investment DAO and all members don’t need to participate in every vote, as theyre trusting in the LunarDAO infrastructure and research team to find solid projects. I like the ability though for anyone to be able to participate if given the option.

You mention a SQUAD token (can propose investment LIP, vote, ragequit - hold the shares ) and COMMUNITY (We would need to figure out what abilities this token offers - this could potentially be similar to LOOT - non-voting shares Members | MolochDAO )