Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful replies so far. As a precursor, I understand that more rationale is required to outline the proposed changes surrounding the new VP system. I'll provide the added context to each line item of this BIP as I reply to everyone’s points.
narok Given the protocol design, lot of people have accumulated VP as a way of speculating on Botto growth and bigger success in the future.
I understand this line of thought. It has to be recognized that actively voting has been encouraged since Botto started: providing training data is aligned to improving Botto. Hoarding VP is a user choice and is rightly speculation as you put it. It's also not been actively discouraged - but surely those banking on Botto's success probably have far superior upside speculating on the token (holding or staking).
More pertinently, a VP reset with a grace period of 8 weeks still provides users with the ability to spend their VP while minimizing the ability for dormant accounts to come in and spam their VP - completely defeating the point of the majority of users who speculate by saving VP in the first place. A grace period lasting until the end of Interstice (or a few weeks beyond that if everyone feels strongly about this) rewards DAO members who are actively around and contributing, while mitigating the impact of dormant accounts resurfacing as they 'rediscover' Botto. One of the main reasons a weekly VP reset is proposed is to ensure active voters are rewarded for consistently showing up week after week. Extending the VPs to have no expiration is not in the spirit of a VP reset, nor is a 1 year grace period.
To add, data within most periods on artworks and fragments has remained mostly consistent (from a storytelling perspective) due to minimal VP system changes. Isolating a grace period to the end of Interstice may result in more expansive VP spending in the near term, but it would not have a trickle effect into the next.
narok This is hard to understand, as LP stakers have been over-rewarded this entire time. Solution for LP provision should not be through VP generation, but through acquiring POL promoting CEX listing, introducing 80/20 LP model or something else.
I don't think this is an either or choice. Incentivizing LPing here would be additive. For clarity, we'd be calculating the quantity of BOTTO and ETH in an LP share at the beginning of the round, calculating how many BOTTO's worth that is, then multiplying it at 2 (the incentive). We could also drop the multiplier, or continue at a static value. If we keep the 2x multiplier, we can very easily signal to the end user that they can get a "2x boost" on their VP. I think that's straightforward for a crypto-native. If this seems too contentious a point that might block other items on this proposal, we could simply retain the old LP calculations (150VP per LP share) and add the "2x boost" into a separate proposal for us to discuss. That's totally ok.
vanto However, to be able to compete a bit with high token/vp holders i would like to see Period resetting.
I think period resetting is more difficult to understand for an incoming user and is more skewed to those around longer throughout the period (not saying the latter is a bad thing but may discourage new entrants). When you disperse ETH based on labor contributions within any given round, I would believe that VP generation should also match the timeframe in which we reward users. Period resetting also encourages a "saving" behavior which, while it provides a user with more agency, is counterintuitive to the two reasons why we should be voting instead of saving VP at any given time. As a reminder to why we should be voting, these two reasons are 1) provide Botto with data on our preferences and 2) select the artwork we believe will perform best at auction.
vanto Have the numbers been checked on voting behavior of active voters high-regular-low vp? How long are people saving up.
Vero has some numbers at hand. Anecdotally I can tell you there are dormant accounts (who are aware of Botto, but haven't participated for a long time) that have mentioned to me that they are approaching 9 figures worth of voting points. If 8/9 figure VP dormant accounts that are disconnected from community discussion and don’t fully comprehend the weight of their vote come in to spam a vote here and there, it'll be detrimental to all small and medium-sized voters that show up week after week to help curate, but could also adversely impact the round as a whole (and what Botto mints). We're looking to drive active, consistent participation.
This ties into our initial line of thinking of providing a nominal grace period until the end of Interstice, as opposed to prolonging what I'm adamant is a much needed change.
vanto Second question are we keeping the 2k threshold for rev sharing? I hope so. I see it as a membership fee.
buffets (3) Comms on this change should also make clear that the 2000 $BOTTO threshold continues to apply for voters to receive a share of the revenue from the weekly sale.
thomahawk69 Is this proposal eliminating the minimum staked to earn rewards? Unclear whether this is impacted in this BIP
I understand why this was brought up - to clarify, we are not proposing changes to staking requirements or how rewards are distributed.
quimp Question : Why are we allocating Baseline VPs for All Accounts, 1 VP to non-connected users, etc.? If we're going to fight sybils, shouldn't we go all the way? Personally, I'd drop these.
1VP to all non-connected users probably causes alarm and confusion so I understand the need to contextualize: when a new user appears on the voting screen for the first time, and is forced to sign up or log in, we are preventing them from experiencing a simple "aha" moment. So allowing them to try voting before even creating an account is a measured move. For that, 1VP per cast vote for non-connected users is a requirement unless we don't want their vote to count. Gatekeeping the app through wallets hamstrings our ability to share a native experience with others, including relatives, gallerists, or anyone who may not be web3 native.
We've just integrated thirdweb with account abstraction, meaning users who may not understand what a wallet is are able to create their account - but the only thing blocking them from voting is a lack of voting points. This brings me to the next point on a baseline amount of VP. Providing a baseline amount of VP to all users is a streamlined way of encouraging participation of web2 users or web3 users who may not have the means to acquire tokens.
dencryptus New connected accounts receive 200VP on Sign Up - is this a bonus to encourage voting? Isn´t that achieved via access passes?
We could provide VP through access passes to all users as a baseline - but this costs the DAO money and has inherent limitations on our ability to scale any form of voting participation.
With regards to providing a 200VP signup bonus - it's a straightforward hook to encourage users to come in, create their account, and experience voting. The way this would function in the app would be:
- New user tries voting a few times
- They're gifted a nominal amount of VP and asked to create their account to claim it
- They claim this one time 200VP signup bonus.
dencryptus The possibility of bagging some vps to concentrate conviction will be over, and with it part of a game that was frankly engaging. Once this is done, and if the system dependencies allow to do so, I hope we can reconsider the proposal of "burning $botto for vps" (more on this here).
I think round resetting is more straightforward for any level of user. I totally get though that building up a VP stack over multiple rounds to be able to show conviction is attractive to some of us. We could definitely incentivize voters who do this with other ways of acquiring VP within or between rounds.
Ben Agree. I don't see how this is sybil-resistant.
Theoretically, it's not sybil resistant. And you have to ask the question why would somebody go through the effort of botting to spend VP with no financial incentive? They'd still need the 2,000 BOTTO staked to yield any form of reward. And if the reward is to affect the outcome of the round, they'd need to create tens of thousands of accounts to do so. I can guarantee that we would flag and stop this behavior. There is risk of it being an attack vector either because a reward is later introduced and we introduce additional unlockable value (incentive to sybil) or those care enough to attempt to affect voting outcomes (i.e. bad actors wanting Botto to perform poorly).
Ben If we want to increase voting access with max bang-for-the-buck and sybil-resistence I'd favor select, targeted airdrops over this sort of blanket protocol.
On targeted airdrops versus baseline VP here:
- Targeted airdrops has very little to do with optimizing the app experience to accommodate a much larger audience of users that Botto appeals to
- Providing for baseline VP for all users is free, target airdrops are not
- Providing for baseline VP is simple and allows us to accommodate any audience. Targeted airdrops do not.
- For the resources we put into piloting a targeted airdrop with JPG, it did not provide for resounding results.
Ben More broadly, this proposal packages a lot of different things together. It seems the soul of the proposal is the weekly VP reset. I think that most other items should be considered instead for future BIPs. Not just for governance clarity and ease of implementation but also for security.
I understand this is a qualm for quite a number of us. Briefly, these points are inherently interrelated. If we sought consensus with minimal effort, we could just post the VP reset. But the VP reset requires the point about proration and a grace period. This also requires the point about Pipes and VP generating collectibles not generating VP mid round. The point on proration requires clarifying the unstaking and disqualification mechanism (tl;dr we cannot provide VP once per round without this disqualification mechanism, otherwise we'd see sybilling). So what are the remaining line items we'd consider for a subsequent BIP:
- LP Staking generating more VP than before - totally, we can separate this and just continue with the old fixed 150LP per share and set this up for a separate discussion
- Spending 1 VP as a non-logged in user
- New connected accounts receiving a 200VP bonus
- Baseline 350VP to all accounts every round
I've attached rationale for 2,3, and 4 above, where tl;dr we have a clear opportunity to provide a better app experience for new users, and accommodate many more audiences with 3 and 4. We can also separate this into a separate BIP, or multiple BIPs - I understand why we'd want that, but I believe most of us wanted these line items separated into different BIPs because of a lack of clear rationale on some of the line items, which I hope has been adequately covered. If there’s little to no consensus on the above 4 points, we can look to separate. Simon proposed separating the snapshot votes as opposed to separating the BIPs (perhaps this is the way forward if we find it necessary, provided we can mitigate any confusion).
buffets (1) I'm not sure how meaningful the 1VP allocation for non-logged in users will be. If the intent is to let someone new to Botto have a go at voting (and hopefully convert into a more regular participant), the 200VP given to newly-accounted accounts should suffice.
The 1VP allocation for non-logged in users is more of a technicality if we want the user's vote to count. If we don't want to include this, we can either "fake" their vote (meh), or, we'd still be gatekeeping the experience with a login screen, which is bad user experience and discouraging to most users. Prompting users to sign up after they have committed various actions would be more sensible. The 200VP to newly-created accounts is additive, and gives them something to do / explore their own behavior with a 'finite', regenerative resource.
buffets (2) I'm guessing the 350VP baseline allocation per week for any connected account is to make voting more accessible, i.e. one does not need to spend any money upfront to buy $BOTTO to participate. While I'm all for making voting more accessible, I suggest we can do this as a temporary initiative rather than a permanent feature. This will give the team time to assess whether there is a significant number of accounts making use of the feature with no $BOTTO staked (which we can perhaps call "casual voters"). And there isn't much demand, we can drop this easily.
350VP baseline gives us opportunity to build continuity in any new user who wants to participate but a) does not have the means to pay-to-play, b) isn't ready to commit, c) doesn't quite get it yet but finds the concept appealing, or all of the above. I am sure there are many other reasons here to provide baseline VP other than the ones I've mentioned. And yep - if this isn't used, it's code bloat and we should remove it. But we may as well try, right? I would say we could slap on a review date to discuss whether to keep the 350 baseline VP after it’s piloted.
buffets Another key point is that this dilutes the narrative of 1 $BOTTO = 1 vote a little bit, and that it is in our interest to funnel such casual voters to eventually purchase some $BOTTO to continue voting.
I think I may take us on a tangent here, but my thoughts on 1$BOTTO = 1 vote is that this is already not true, and never has been from the moment we introduced pipes or access passes. It actually wasn't true since we introduced logarithmic voting (I believe, prior to pipes) and then reverted to a linear 1:1 for governance stakers. What I do see is true is that we have a system where a user has to manage a finite resource that they earn over a given timeframe, and that the opportunity at our feet is that we can be more liberal in the way in which a user acquires VP. Here are some examples off the top of my head:
- We could reward the most active users in the period with VP boosts so that they can earn more ETH if they keep up their activity (a form of retroactive reward)
- We could introduce a form of streaks (I think ralgo mentioned this one), where a user accrues more VP based on their activity
- We could reward VP based on ownership of a badge (imagine winning the curation competition allows you to get more VP for a few weeks)
- We could reward VP for correctly voting on the minted artwork on the first day of the new round
- We could reward VP for tastemaking (curating what appears most on other people's voting experience)
- People could acquire VP or VP boosts by burning nominal amounts of BOTTO ( @dencryptus )
There are probably hundreds of ways to reward VP. We've spoken about gamifying aspects of Botto, VP is the most straightforward mechanism to gamify. But if we want to default to 1 token 1 vote, IMO we're minimizing our ability to appeal to more passionate, consistent voting behavior by enhancing their ability to accrue rewards.
buffets E.g. an allocation of 350VP each round for new users for 12 weeks, and beyond that, no further baseline VP allocation. At the end of this 12 weeks (or whatever relevant period), an email or some sort of correspondence can be sent to these users to check in with them on their experience (e.g. a simple survey) and also nudge them to buy some $BOTTO to continue getting VP. This approach won't negate the Sybil issue, but I think it can balance the risk of that against the benefit of providing a wider funnel to convert people into staking $BOTTO.
Yes, aligned with you here! While I'm not keen on putting a time limit on their experience at this at this stage (I would much rather just see how many accounts we activate and their behaviors), encouraging them to move down the funnel (buy BOTTO, get an access pass) as well as the survey ideas are great additions we'd want to do. This is definitely a move to accommodate a wider top of funnel.
thomahawk69 Agree with everyone that the 1VP for non-logged users doesn't make sense
1VP is required if we want non-connected users votes to legitimately count as a first experience of the app. As mentioned in my response to @buffets we can fake it or append these votes after they sign up.
thomahawk69 Is the intention for the 200VPs for new signups to attract new users/voters so they can participate without having any $BOTTO, but can participate/try it out by simply connecting their wallet?
The 200VP to newly-created accounts is additive, and gives them something to do / explore their own behavior with a 'finite', regenerative resource.
thomahawk69 What does the 350 VP actually achieve? What is this incentivizing exactly - don't really understand.
This allows us to engage a user after they've exhausted their 200VP. If they enjoy the experience, we can re-engage the user at the beginning of the new round. It introduces a repeat touchpoint which we currently don't have.
thomahawk69 Existing VPs should have a Grace Period that is at least 12 week (1 Period) post go-live, ending it at the end of this current Period is a bit short, esp factoring into implementation time + voting time
While implementation time has no impact on your ability to spend your current VP, I understand this point and it's echoed by @narok. We saw the end of the period as a "clean cut-off" but we can adjust this if there's any consensus. At the same time, I would recommend shifting to the round reset sooner rather than later.
Can we show the baseline stats of active users of this Period and the last Period?
Vero is aggregating this for us!
Hopefully this helps clarify a lot of the questions raised so far and some of the thinking behind the included points in this proposal.
