We definitely disagree completely on this one. We have completely different views on what this proposal will do. You think it will help with the tokenomics, I think your solution will irrevocably break trust between the players and the SPL Team/DAO.
There are better ways to accomplish your goals while still not breaking trust and keeping our long term commitments.
Value in any currency is built over the long run by trust. Loss of trust = loss of value.
This proposal destroys trust because we are removing an entire asset class on a whim because it is convenient. What is to stop us from removing other asset classes in the future with this precedent? Assets like Grain, Research, Glad Cards, or even tokens themselves like DEC... they all could be done away with in the future if its decided to do away with them. How could we have any confidence that in the future it won't happen to any asset?
So while your intentions are trying to help shore up the token values, in reality what this proposal will do is destroy token values. As you said this is a controversial proposal, and it is so for a valid reason.
Trust is the main reason why this proposal is lacking, but there are many other flaws in this proposal too.
We remove permanent value from the system, so Nodes become the sum of the SPS they will earn and then they are rendered literally worthless. They each have about $97 worth of SPS to give out over the next 2 years, and then they will have NO rewards. So we are about to spend $500k on developing our Validator system and at the same time we are destroying the value of the investment in those same nodes to run the system? The consequences are not well thought out.
This proposal seeks to solve the problem of DEC going down by not addressing the real problem - creation of demand. We have had DEC to peg and it did burn SPS, that's how this works. But we have to create more demand if we want DEC to continue to stay at peg, otherwise it will just drop down again. Artificially pumping DEC back to peg will do the exact same thing in the future as it did in the past IF WE DON'T SOLVE THE DEMAND SIDE OF THE EQUATION. Our token drops in value are due to the fact that we have lost many players and not replaced them. This proposal, like others, codifies the narrative that we can escape doing what is necessary by tweaking our tokenomics - which I strongly disagree with.
Finally, the community passed a proposal more than 9 months ago to replace the DEC given out to leaderboards with Rebellion packs - it was 80% for. But the team did not implement it because it wasn't a big factor to the overall economy. To this day it still hasn't been implemented. And the $ amount of DEC given out each season in leaderboards is far higher than the amount of DEC replacement in this proposal.
I hope you take your "concern" about DEC getting to peg seriously and ask the team to implement the actual passed proposals that give out FAR more DEC than we are talking about here.
One thing I won't argue is your right to make this proposal and your intentions. I think you have good intentions and believe what you are proposing, but I simply disagree with your analysis. I also believe that you have bought the SPS and can influence this decision, and that is certainly your right. I wish everyone would understand that owning SPS gives them the power to influence the votes, and even though I really really don't like this proposal, I am appreciative of the fact that we can vote on it and decide.
I'm voting against this.
If you open the precedent to repurpose/remove vouchers player could expect it to happen to any other asset of the game...
Totally agree with this one, too. Especially that the focus is wrong, due to many bad decisions. This proposal stands for what is seemingly the way here - always forward, never backwards, meaning no critics of past decisions and revoking those. Every update to fix a bug creates more bugs, but going back on an update to fix the bugs? Never, not even thinkable.
You are, without a doubt, 100% backwards on everything you said.
This proposal is all about criticizing and revoking a past decision-
Creating and Issuing Vouchers.
Vouchers ARE a bug. Removing them is a very efficient way to fix the bug.
Sure, but that case could be made for everything since the creation of Splinterlands - everything was created once... Vouchers are part of SL for at least 4 years when I started. Based on that - no, it's not revoking a past decision. It's a distraction, leading away from the real problems that are not targeted. If the whole situation wasn't as dire as it is - sure, fix a minor issue that comes up with Vouchers by deleting them. But right now, the proposal just a waste of ressources that should be spent on fixing real issues.
Wow... so wrong on so many levels.
Vouchers aren't even 4 years old. Vouchers were created around the time CL was in pre-release. So, yes- it's revoking a past (bad) decision.
It's not a distraction- it's a trust building move that shows the team can look beyond personal gain to rebuild the foundation of the game.
Vouchers ARE one of the 'real' issues right now- they are worthless and they are being issued at the rate of 40K/day. Every Voucher burned is 50 DEC that isn't burned- screwing up the almighty 'wheel'.
TBH- I don't think there's any appetite for fixing any of the 'real' issues. Too many people are too invested in keeping things broken @davemccoy
Thanks for clarifying that 40k thing - I didn't know that vouchers came out of thin air. Still, if I do the math - that's around $1300 a day (in a 10Mio+ total marketcap), even if you can get 50 DEC per Voucher (market price is around 21 DEC, as stated in the post) - that's around 3,6% dilution per year. Not great, I agree, but considerung the dilution and market price drop in SPS and DEC, that just doesn't seem a "real" issue to me. But I might be wrong on that, too, maybe some comma went the wrong way in my calculations :-)
I can't see why this is rebuilding the foundation of the game. Maybe it is, but if so - the proposal and your argumentation really aren't making the case for that. And hence, it seems like a distraction to me. Instead of focussing on why nobody wants to play anymore, they focus on a minor thing. It's not like a newbie comes into the game, sees the voucher system and says "boy, that's too complicated and too much dilution, I'm outta here."
You're right about the time - it's 3 years. Still, since I started playing :-D
I hope you can think into that, even though I have the feeling that you're kind of stuck on being right about everything... So, even if not, I do hope you're right and that it's a great move :-D Have a good night :-)
There are a lot of different ways you could calculate this. Some seem less important and some seem more impactful. Here's one of many that shows it more impactful.
1 voucher = 50 DEC in game. 40k vouchers pre day coming out of thin air * 50 is 2 million DEC created every day. Let's ignore that we typically burn less than 2 million DEC per day across the entire platform and figure how it compares to SPS inflation.
If you look at how much SPS you need to burn right now to create 2 million DEC, its 326,000 SPS. Currenly, our daily SPS emissions are between 600-700k SPS. That means daily voucher print adds the equivalent of 50% more SPS inflation every day to our ecosystem.
So between that and the fact vouchers have complicated pricing, confused players, have been a sore point in the community and our narrative for 3 years as they go down, and they've been burned in place of what is likely billions of DEC over the years, Vouchers are a major issue imo. Just last week I sent vouchers to a player because he couldn't figure out how to get money onto hive engine to buy vouchers and was ready to quit because he wanted to buy more energy but couldn't.
What if we reduce VOUCHER emissions and see what the results will be. It will barely take any time to implement and if we cut down emissions drastically, it will achieve a considerable portion of what this Proposal tries to achieve while taking very little efforts.
Thank you for a comprehensive, not condescending reply! :-)
You are right about one thing: I misspoke when I said "Rebuild the Foundation of the game". Vouchers have nothing to do with "the game".
Getting rid of Vouchers would rebuild the foundation of the economy of Splinterlands, which is completely different. As @imno so eloquently stated- Vouchers have been an issue since they were first created and they continue to play havoc with the economics of the game.
Same, I'd prefer a like-for-like situation if at all. Set a price for glint and peg vouchers to that, continue to pay out what you did before in glint instead of vouchers. Glint takes over the utility of vouchers but is soulbound. DEC-B can be sunset as well as far as I'm concerned once it is all spent.
The validator pool expiring in 2 years definitely needs to be addressed....
To me, it seems very obvious that any validator network NEEDS a permanent reward pool to incentivize the stability of the network.
However, validators usually pay in their own token - so I'm not sure why vouchers are needed instead of just "right-sizing" the SPS reward pool for validators going forward?
I DO agree with Cryptoeater that the current use-cases of vouchers are essentially just a reduction of DEC demand, while simultaneously complicating the experience for players that just want to buy things.
Your concern about Trust in the project and tokens is important. But Trust is a strange beast, when the very existence of a DAO that, on a supermajority SPS vote, can change ANY aspect of it's own white paper and any token of the related game, - this means that we must be prepared to accept some flexibility on what we are putting that Trust in.
(And I do feel your concern - I can sense that this type of change would shake the trust of validator owners in much the same way that the changes to ranked leagues shook the trust of players that committed resources in expectation of no fundamental changes to the Ranked status quo.)
What I'm finally coming to realize is that ultimately the real Trust we should realistically expect is that:
I look forward to having a new DAO structure and trust your ability to steward it.
Correct me if I'm wrong BUT
I didn't see anything in the proposal regarding "Validators"- just lessening payouts to License holders. Wouldn't nodes/validators continue to be paid in the same way that they have always been?
Hey axrho - I think we are talking the same thing - I see they are called "Validator Node Licenses" on the shop page but all those names get used pretty interchangeably
Yes, they do get used interchangeably and it's very frustrating.
When Licenses originally came out- they were a way to allow people to run Validator Nodes, which would be a way to earn Tokens.
Now, if I understand correctly, License holders get Distributions- whether or not they run a Node. Which is, of course, NOT the way it was supposed to be and totally not fair to those who run Nodes.
IF I understand the economics of running Nodes correctly- they should be paid in relation to the amount of traffic they handle?
No Node= No Traffic= No Payment
Validator Nodes should, IMHO, be paid in this manner and there should be some mechanism built to provide for Node operators- whether through LPs, tolls, fees, SPL, DAO, or some other mechanism.
I totally agree with you: Validator Nodes need some ongoing funding mechanism- the 'pool' paying out to all License holders is inherently wrong and destructive. How can it be 'decent' when a central authority determines your earnings?
This point is easily fixable and not something we have had control of. But I'm positive there are solutions to solve this issue that don't require getting rid of vouchers. (see linked Alternative Proposal below for an example)
So I really dislike this argument: "we have to get rid of vouchers because the team elects to use them as a DEC replacement vehicle". I'm perfectly fine with getting rid of any case where vouchers replace DEC, but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to provide value to the people that stake their SPS or own Nodes.
Regarding the trust point, I agree that every decision can be passed by a super majority, thus everything in theory is subject to change/elimination. And for this reason I find it super important that we consider the implications of removing an asset entirely.
For me, I understand it is possible to do so, but it will cause me concern about what else could happen in the future. For instance, I have over 100m grain, will that get nerfed one day - is the meta play to sell it before it loses all value and utility in the future? How about research, I am in the top 10, will that be subject to removal if we decide in the future that it took us so long to make a usecase for it and thus it became overproduced? These are concerns that will continue to grow with each decision to remove/alter assets.
In my opinion, we should ALWAYS go out of our way to NOT remove or alter assets if it is at all possible. And if we must do so, then I think it should be done in a way that mitigates the damage in a thoughtful and reasonable manner.
In this case, there are alternative solutions that are far less negative and still achieve the objective stated (to remove the Vouchers replacing DEC). Here's an example of one from @bjangles that has also been floating around: Alternative Proposal
There are many different possibilities to solving the objectives in this prop (ie...stopping the Vouchers from replacing DEC), but I feel that removing/changing an asset should be a last resort. We can and should do better in my opinion, otherwise we are destroying an asset on a whim and that to me will be a breach of trust for all future decisions because how can we tell what will be next to get destroyed. I know I won't be able to figure it out, and that makes me very nervous when it comes to making decisions.
Thanks Dave for the reply.
Agree that alternatives exist - and bjangle's alternative proposal to discontinue voucher discounts could also achieve a similar end through creating voucher-specific sales.
But I guess the next question is:
If each voucher was valued at a mere fraction of an SPS, instead of multiple SPS, I expect there would be less resistance to sunsetting.
I guess the challenge is balancing the incentive to make "desirable assets" that would give vouchers the value you are seeking to preserve. Perhaps it's possible. But a reasonable plan to sunsetting would take away some "mental overhead" for the team in trying to give value to a token that was an interesting idea (proof of time staked) but ultimately hasn't worked out. How long should the team anchor to a concept if it's not successful?
To me it's prudent to offer an exchange to consolidate two underused tokens (vouchers and DEC-B)
I'm more onboard with the @bjangles Proposal and I think it could be a good idea to reduce the emission of VOUCHERs. During the early days VOUCHERs acted as a way to guarantee yourself a spot in Presale events because VOUCHERs were very scarce. That should be the utility for VOUCHERs. It was almost like a decentralized version of a whitelist. We need to go back to that and reducing emissions and having exclusive use cases is the best way forward IMHO.
The very fact that Dave opposes this makes m 100% support the proposal. Dave is just a cheerleader for SPL and really his ideas have always been terrible. Vote for this. I would but I've already unstaked my SPS because of all of the originally horrible decisions by the SPL team. The game is dead. Kudos to whoever proposed it to try and revive a dead corpse. Your belief and commitment to a horrible game and leadership is admirable. I salute you.
lol yes SPL is over. You should all go home. Shut it down. Only a delusional person would hold on to such a ridiculous idea that there is a path forward. 😆 just look at the score board. Sps down, dec down. Card values down. Active players. I would even say new players down lol but can go lower than zero 😂 keep hanging in there Matty boy.
keep in mind that us as a dao can only vote on the changes of tokens of the dao such as SPS and Vouchers. I dont think we can make the decision of removing tokens such as grain, research or dec because they are not part of the dao.
This is a no from me as well.
Great points, well presented. Upvoted for visibility.
I'm for this proposal overall, as complexity is such a blocker.
Doing both (replacing leaderboard DEC with Rebellion packs AND converting to vouchers to DEC-B) would really drive value to DEC, and therefore to SPS.
I'd also like to see DEC-B grandfathered too, eventually.