Cancel all future V2 & V3 staking rewards and unlock all V2 stakers

Discussions
1

Title

Cancel all future V2 & V3 staking rewards and unlock all V2 stakers

Authors and contributors

Me

Status

First stage proposal before moving to a vote depending on community support.

Summary

  • Cancel remaining V2 staking program. Accrued rewards will not be affected.
  • No further staking programs will be implemented.
  • All stakers will be unlocked from their current positions.
  • Possible rewards to be set up through revenue sharing and Beam node validators.

Specification of the proposal

Further to the discussions in the telegram groups, I think that the community needs to vote on a proposal to cancel the current V2 staking rewards and future V3 staking programs. With the extensive rewards in V1 (100M tokens) and the current V2 (30M tokens), I believe that enough rewards have been given out to stakers and that we should cancel future V2 staking rewards immediately (or at the earliest opportunity depending on smart contract).

The main aim of this proposal is to stop the selling pressure that the staking program has created and allow the possibility for price appreciation. As we know we have been in a bear market for a while but the shoots of positive news is beginning to appear and BTC & ETH have rallied significantly from the lows. Cancelling all future V2 staking rewards will reduce the selling pressure (although not immediately) and hopefully allow for greater price appreciation when the ā€˜goodā€™ times return.

For clarity, all existing rewards accrued in V2 will remain and no further rewards will be available should this proposal pass. Should this proposal pass then it would also ā€˜unlockā€™ everyone from their chosen lock periods and they would be free to do what they wish with their funds. This may create immediate selling pressure but I think it is better to get the pain over with than the slow bleed that it is at the moment.

This does not stop a proposal to re-start V2 at some point in the future or another staking program but sufficient rewards have been paid to date and we now need other options. This could be rewards are paid out as part of a revenue sharing program or with validator nodes on Beam (exciting!) This will mean that rewards are more sustainable as they are not being paid out of treasury $MC and active supporters will be greater rewarded.

Motivation

The price performance of $MC has been very disappointing and the current market cap is below the amount we have in the DAOā€™s treasury. Stakers have up until this point been selling rewards and this has weighed heavily on the $MC price. They have been sufficiently rewarded and we do not need to continue to give away tokens for minimal effort and contribution to the DAO.

Staking rewards will continue to weigh heavily unless we stop V2 immediately and unlock everyone so they can decide whether they want to really support the DAO or sell and leave. Rewards will be available shortly through Beam and hopefully through a revenue sharing program which can be looked at when it will be sustainable.

It could be thought that it is unfair that 4 year stakers will have had a greater multiple APR than 1 year stakers, and while that may be true the stakers that locked for 4 years showed a greater degree of support to the DAO so they deserve the extra rewards they will have accrued.

Rationale

The cons of this proposal is that we may see high volatility and people ā€˜dumpingā€™ once they are unlocked, this could result in $MC performing badly in the short term but as I stated before, I think it is better to get any pain out of the way quickly rather than the slow bleed we have experienced up to this point.

The pros are that selling pressure will reduce and that hopefully when the market returns to a more bullish sentiment then the $MC tokenomics are in a better place for price appreciation.

Budget

No budget apart from the devs spending time to cease staking and unlock everyone.

Poll

Please comment with your thoughts on any changes that need to be made to the proposal. If this idea gets enough support then it can be moved onto a proposal.

I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts.

Thanks,

Josh

5 Likes
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For clarity - do you propose to immediately unlock also the existing V2 rewards (~19M MC) or are they still vested for one year ?

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It would be something to get the community thoughts on and is a very good point. My preference would be to immediately unlock the existing V2 rewards. May result in pain in the short term but better overall in the long term and stops the constant selling of staking rewards.

Again would be happy to leave them vested for a year if that is what the community would prefer.

Immediate aim is to stop rewards being distributed as soon as possible. Other details could then be discussed once this has been doneā€¦

3 Likes
5

Thanks for starting the discussion!

Couple of thoughts. (Disclaimer: I have two LP stakes, the biggest was 4 years from the 1st day of V2.)

  1. I never understood the sense of single-side staking (wrote comment about that when V2 was preliminary discussed) but the LP staking has utility - it provides the liquidity on Uniswap. Currently we have about 241K LP tokens from which 55K are staked in V1, 142K are staked in V2, remaining ~44K are not staked (from which 34K are owned by MC DAO, other 10K - no ideas).

If we cancel staking we should expect LP amount to go down to 34K-44K - something like $1.5M with current prices.

Iā€™m afraid that lowering Uniswap liquidity will make MC token less attractive (higher slippage on buying and selling). Especially now when Binance which makes the most of MC volume is under some regulatory risks. One way to mitigate would be to increase amount of LP owned by DAO.

  1. Right after unlock it may become ugly. Of course many will want to sell (because they will think that others will sell) and it will not just send the price much lower (which is acceptable - we know it should happen) but also will create crazy races who sells first. A lot of people will make stupid things and become unhappy - even though it is their fault it may create negative sentiment around DAO which we donā€™t need. So if we decide to unlock - if possible I would make it gradual (like 10% of all stakes per day).

  2. If we decide to stop staking - the sooner the better. Right now the market cup is not so far from treasury size, that means price is ā€œprotectedā€. If we do it on a later stage of bull market the consequences will be worse.

Conclusion: I still think that in a long term only the treasury performance influence the price and all the games around tokenomics are of low importance. Still - I would not oppose V2 cancellation if:

  • Stakes unlocked
  • Existing rewards not cancelled (might be vested)
  • Uniswap liquidity added by DAO (maybe we should define formal rule about TVL)
  • Some measures against sell-off races are implemented (sell-off is OK, want to avoid races)
7 Likes
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If the community decides to go through with the proposal, I think we should think about what will happen with the remaining $MC tokens that were reserved for staking rewards.

Best thing IMO would be to burn all of them immediately once the staking rewards stop. By doing this we stop them from entering the circulating supply at any point which benefits all $MC holders.

4 Likes
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I hear you and understand itā€™s not easy to see this consistent market sell pressure from staking rewards.

While I do not understand much on tokenomics, I see why LP providers could have been incetivised to keep their risk by locking LP stake. However I donā€™t see much of added benefit to the single side MC staking.

Personally I have LP position locked for 4 years, but Iā€™m happy for that to be unlocked and currently accured rewards redistributed in accelerated timeframe, say ower next month or two.

Iā€™m happy to go through with this proposal if:

  • all v2 staking positions get unlocked at once
  • all accured staking rewards are kept and redistributed over 1 or max 2 month vesting
  • remaining v2 rewards are burned
4 Likes
8

One more thing, if the decision is to cancel V2 - need to do the same with remaining V1 (they share the same rewards pool). Question is would it be technically possible to unlock V1 stakes before expiration (and rewards before vesting ends).

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Thank you for this proposal @JGdog23. I think this is a important proposal for the future of MC and also a good way to bring this topic under the attention of the bigger community instead of just discussing it in the TG chats.

Like some other people here, Iā€™m also a 4 year locked LP staker. I support this proposal and hopefully we can also do something with the vested seed mc tokens at the same time.

A key of attention, like mentioned above here already a couple of times, is how to we keep enough liquidity on Uniswap.

Looking forward to read more responses here from the rest of the community and/or team.

5 Likes
10

No problem, happy to start this process!

I agree that the Uniswap liquidity would need to remain sufficient especially with the Binance risks. Not sure what the answer to this would be, maybe DAO could use remaining tokens to provide sufficient liquidity. Would need to defer this to the team though as they are the specialists.

Also understand the issue with avoiding a races selloff. I donā€™t know if this is completely avoidable to be honest, if we stagger over days then people who want to sell will still sell as soon as they are able to. The proposal is for stakes to be unlocked and existing rewards will NOT be cancelled.

Tokenomics are not everything but we donā€™t need any excessive selling pressure imo.

My understanding is that V1 contract is fixed where as changes can be made to V2. I thought that V1 was pretty much finished at this point.

3 Likes
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Yep that is certainly an option but we may need the tokens for additional liquidity. Iā€™m not certain on this point but the proposal does not cover this at the moment, it is certainly something that needs some thought though.

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Hi Carl,

Yes I agree that accrued staking rewards that are currently vesting should be distributed in an accelerated timeframe otherwise we will continue this slow bleed after November when V2 rewards being to become available.

With the remanining rewards in V2 the consensous at the moment seems to be to burn, which I am in favour off if they are not needed for liquidity on Uniswap.

3 Likes
13

I thought that V1 was pretty much finished at this point.

Not exactly. We still have:

  • ~56M EMC (rewards from V1 100M MC pool which are still vested - latest should unvest somewhere around V2 anniversary in November)
  • ~17M MC staked with V1 contract (before V2 started) but sharing rewards from 30M V2 pool.
  • ~55K LP staked with V1 contract (before V2 started) but sharing rewards from 30M V2 pool.

Ideally it should be treated same as V2 to avoid inequality but I have no idea if it is technically possible. If not - the only way would be to stop everything altogether in November.

I donā€™t know if this is completely avoidable to be honest, if we stagger over days then people who want to sell will still sell as soon as they are able to.

We canā€™t avoid that completely. But we can smooth. Letā€™s imagine we have just two sellers A and B. A is smart and wins all the races. If we unlock everything in one shot A sells 100% of what he wanted, then B sells his tokens (for worse price). If we unlock 10% for 10 days we will get:
(1st day) A sells 10% ā†’ B sells 10% ā†’ (2nd day) A sells 10% ā†’ B sells 10%ā€¦ - significantly more equal distribution.

Tokenomics are not everything but we donā€™t need any excessive selling pressure imo.

Here the big question is what is better - bleeding (more till November because 100M/365 is distributed each day, less after when just 30M/365 is distributed) or one meganuke. Psychologically I suppose one nuke is better - thatā€™s why many people would prefer it. But for price action (letā€™s say after one year) - I have no ideas and no solid opinion.

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I have a lot of questions.

But first of all, this proposal is about V2, not about V1, so can we stop cluttering the forum?

1 Like
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Then further questions.

  1. How many V2 staked assets are now staked? How much MC, how much MC-ETH.
  2. Can we keep the lockups of V2 but unlock the rewards all in one go?
  3. Do we have a list of per wallet stakes of V2?
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No we really donā€™t thatā€™s not true. And thatā€™s not what the proposal says. This is about V2 and not V1ā€¦

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My position has been that In the long term MC price will be a result of Treasury performance, not some tokenomics tricks,
However after following the discussion on TG, If we have to save MC price in the short term (before 2025) it makes sense to go ahead with this proposal.

I will be voting yes provided we discuss some nuances in the proposal as mentioned below :-

Can agree to these. will vote yes for both. Reasons have been covered by others in the thread

Like @timour pointed out , we need to address 2 things before we do this. :-

  • ALL LP locks can be unlocked immediately. As a result, MC liquidity will go down drastically . DAO should vote to fill in more liquidity here (assuming it will be couple million) .

  • Existing Rewards should be unlocked over time. 45-60 days sounds good enough we can debate on that.

Am Excited for BEAM node staking but letā€™s not repeat the same mistake of rewarding stakers with more than the revenue generated by BEAM. Else it will be similar to current staking
BEAM node rewards should be in proportional to revenue generated by BEAM gas fees. In the short run they might not be significant enough and so DAO should commit to running majority nodes till fees picks up substantially.

4 Likes
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Hi, locked LP staker here. Thank you for this interesting proposal.

I understand the rationale for this, slow bleed in price is unsettling. Will a more rapid nuke to much lower levels be betterā€¦ I donā€™t know, and how long/will it take to recover?

Big concern is drop in liquidity, as others have pointed out, this will discourage new investment and make wild price swings. I am in favour of halting the staking program and releasing rewards, we just need to ensure liquidity is maintained

Cheers

crunch

1 Like
19

Agree with stopping staking immediately, and I also like your idea to not unlock everything all at once, and rather have it be phased out (something like 12.5% every other day would get it done in a matter of 2 weeks, not fussed about the exact numbers as long as its unlocked in the next month or so).

3 Likes
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Weā€™ve all seen the problems caused by constant reward dumping since we started the staking v1 reward unlocks. Itā€™s clear to me that our current staking program isnā€™t working anymore, as itā€™s mainly being used to dump rewards.

Iā€™m looking forward to the new Beam Subnet & Validator Nodes. This seems like a much better way to reward people who support our network.

My position on the proposed measures is as follows:

  1. Terminate Staking V2: I agree with the proposal to halt the V2 staking program promptly. The existing system appears to be more detrimental than beneficial to our project.

  2. Unlock All Stakes: Following the termination, all stakes should be unlocked irrespective of their original lock period.

  3. Distribute or Make Accrued Rewards Claimable: All accrued rewards should be either distributed immediately or made claimable at the stakerā€™s convenience. While thereā€™s room for discussion around implementing a short vesting period, I believe this should be dictated by the communityā€™s preference.

  4. Return Unused Rewards: Upon the early cessation of the V2 program, the unused rewards should be reverted back to their originating wallet. These resources could potentially serve as incentives for Beam Validator Nodes in the future, thus promoting active contribution to our ecosystem.

For those curious about the amount of MC & MC/ETH LP still locked in the staking v1, Iā€™ve attached two screenshots with monthly unlock dates.

staking-v1-MC-unlock
staking-v1-MC-unlock1915Ɨ265 9.13 KB

staking-v1-lp-unlock

7 Likes
21

Completely agree that the current staking system is doing far more harm than good for mc in the long run; much more in favour of flushing out those who are already intending to sell.

So long as the DAO has been given enough time to think/discuss about the best way forward regarding liquidity and unlocks (definitely agree spreading this out over 3-6 weeks is preferred), I will be voting yes.

If there are no solutions to the liquidity, or if the majority decide they are too concerned with liquidity plummeting, single side staking at the very least should still be halted / unlocked.

2 Likes