2nd Emissions Range Adjustment & Compensation for Emissions Committee

Temp Check Discussion
1

Summary

This Proposal is to both decrease the Lower Bound of MIN Emissions by 40% and the Upper Bound by 25%.

We also introduce the members of the Emissions committee, and a compensation structure linked to a series of outputs.

Introduction

Here is how MIN Emissions work currently: The Daily MIN Emissions Rate is adjusted dynamically every 2 weeks, with the maximum weekly change being a 10% variation from last MIN Emissions Rate. A Working Group of volunteers monitors and decides on the adjustment.

For the last 3 months, Emissions have remained stagnant. Emissions were progressively lowered since the introduction of the Emissions Range Adjustment Proposal in July 2023. Once they met the lower bound, they remained unchanged. After 3 months of no changes, it is clear there is room for adjustments.

1045×638 14.8 KB

Reasons for the Emissions Range Adjustment

Recently, a group of tokenomics experts (Deus Ex DAO) was hired by Minswap Labs to provide insights and a Report on Minswap for the year of 2023. You can read a summary of the author himself here. The whole report can be read here. One of the main conclusions was that the MIN/ADA Pool is being incentivized too much compared to how much liquidity is needed. There are many measures that can be taken to address this, such as incentivizing MIN staking more heavily. Another measure is decreasing MIN emissions overall, slowly and progressively, and to keep readjusting and tweaking MIN Emissions.

Minswap is no longer in a Bootstrapping Phase. The DEX has been on mainnet for more than 2 years! While emissions are important to incentivize and keep liquidity, when moving into a more sustainable phase, it is organic trading fees that have to gain priority. For the last months, several community members have been doing heavy research on the optimal trading fees, why Dynamic Fees make sense, and how organic yields for LPs can be increased. We look forward to releasing it soon!

Emissions are not the most sustainable way to attract liquidity. Recently, Minswap has seen some projects migrate Liquidity to other DEX because of functionality (for example, Minswap only offers 0.3% fees, while other DEXs allow for other types of Fees). While this will be at large addressed in Minswap V2, there are other plans and ideas for how Minswap can attract TVL and Volume, without depending on Emissions. Leveraging the Minswap Catalyst LP voting power, Partnerships, better functionality and features or Catalyst Proposals are some of the plans we are working on for it.

The proposed lowering amount are:

  • 40% for the Lower Bound: reduce from the minimum cap of 333,333 MIN a day, to 200,000 MIN a day.
  • 25% for the Upper Bound: reduce from the minimum cap of 666,666 MIN a day, to 500,000 MIN a day.

The numbers are high to avoid having to do another Proposal to adjust the range again soon. As a reminder, Emissions get lowered slowly, with a maximum variation of 10% per adjustment from the previous rate.

Emissions Management committee Introduction

The Emissions committee is made up of the following 4 community volunteers and 1 Minswap Labs member:

Marco: with a background in TradFi, Marco has been involved in Minswap since the launch. He helped devise the MIN Emissions Formula, and is one of the tokenomics experts in the community. He did major research prior to the Stableswap launch and co-authored the Minswap DAO Emissions and DAO treasury Report 2023 .

Chicken: one of the most active Minswap community members on X and Discord. He authored the $MIN Token Burn Proposal, and has been involved in any major strategic decisions the Minswap DAO takes for more than 1 year.

Elder Millenial: Elder is a gigabrain that has become an expert in Python through his day job. He has helped Minswap with simulations (such as for the Stableswap), and has done extensive work to model out the optimal fees with a view to Minswap V2. With his knowledge and expertise in crafting the best algorithms, he also started his DEX Aggregator project, Steelswap. He also co-authored the Minswap DAO Emissions and DAO treasury Report 2023.

Contra: the Minswap in-house yield farming expert, Contra is known to be a Real Yield/cashflow maxi and contributed towards guiding Minswap in that direction. He provides great insights to anyone looking to yield farm on Minswap, coupled with a snarky comment here and there. He also o-authored the Minswap DAO Emissions and DAO treasury Report 2023.

PurritoGeneral: Miinswap Labs member with an inexplicable affinity for catgirls, waifus, and burritos.

Emissions Committee Expected Outputs

The Emissions committee decides bi-weekly on the lowering or increasing of Emissions. They have to provide at least a sentence of reasoning as to why they vote any certain way.

The Emissions committee will have the following Mandate: Optimize MIN emissions to maximize Minswap’s relative volume with efficient levels of TVL. The goal is to maximize Minswap’s share of overall volume traded on Cardano. This requires an efficient level of TVL where it’s high enough to promote low slippage but low enough that fees generated are a meaningful source of revenue for LPs.

If this Proposal passes, the Emissions committee will also be working on a Dashboard for major transparency and having better data for making decisions on emissions. This dashboard would include:

For every pool that receives MIN Emissions

  1. A dashboard of min emissions in MIN and in USD per day
  2. A dashboard of TVL per day
  3. A dashboard of daily volume (prolly average daily volume over previous 2 weeks or something)
  4. A dashboard of emissions per TVL(both min adjusted to ada price and unadjusted)
  5. A dashboard of emissions per ADV (both min adjusted to ada price and unadjusted)
  6. A dashboard of ADV/TVL
  7. A dashboard of MIN staking
  8. A dashboard of L = square root (k) a metric measuring liquidity

All of these would show time series so we can view how they evolve over time. It will be updated on a weekly or bi weekly basis.

Emissions Committee Expected Compensation and Rules

To keep the Emissions Committee engaged, and reward not only the future work but all the work that has been done for the last year (since the Minswap DAO Emissions and DAO treasury Report 2023), we propose the following compensation:

All members will be paid 100$ worth of MIN every month, except one member which will get the boosted comp of 200$ worth of MIN a month. This boosted comp will get voted on by the committee itself through a majority vote, close to the end of each month.

This compensation is to be paid at the end of each month, at the MIN price of that day. MIN will be withdrawn from the DAO Treasury every 6 months to cover all expenses for the next 6 months. It will be sent to a wallet controlled by Minswap Labs, which will handle the distribution to Emissions committee members. The compensation will remains long as the committee is active.

When it comes to the Rules, Committee members may choose to expell a member through a majority vote. There is a Mechanism for adding new members : so an addition of a new member must have an unanimous vote from the emissions committee. Only one new member can be added to the committee every 3 months. In case of a tie in a majority vote situation, it will be the vote from the PurritoGeneral that will serve as the tie-breaker.

(Post-Feedback Process additions)

After the feedback process, the following points have been added (through the Edit Post function) to the Proposal:

  1. The Emissions committee will have the following Mandate : Optimize MIN emissions to maximize Minswap’s relative volume with efficient levels of TVL. The goal is to maximize Minswap’s share of overall volume traded on Cardano. This requires an efficient level of TVL where it’s high enough to promote low slippage but low enough that fees generated are a meaningful source of revenue for LPs.

  2. Mechanism for adding new members : an addition of a new member must have an unanimous vote from the emissions committee. Only one new member can be added to the committee every 3 months.

  3. Payment : there are concerns about only one person handling payments. To avoid this here is an alternative measure: MIN will be withdrawn from the DAO Treasury every 6 months to cover all expenses for the next 6 months. It will be sent to a wallet controlled by Minswap Labs, which will handle the distribution to Emissions committee members.

  4. Addressing higher comp : all members will be paid 100$ worth of MIN every month, except one members which will get the boosted comp. This boosted comp will get voted on by the committee itself, close to the end of each month.

  5. Tie-breaker vote: In case of a tie in a majority vote situation, it will be the vote from the PurritoGeneral that will serve as the tie-breaker.

15 Likes
2

Seems good, I however have some thoughts on the matter:

  • I think the committee should have some mandate so that we know what their objective is, and what they try to achieve at all times. I know it may be cosmetic, but I think is good to know their objective, could be something like: Maximize the value of the MIN token emissions while ensuring sustainable liquidity and trading volume on the platform.
  • I think a yearly report to to analyse if the committee’s objectives are being met and a post-mortem could give some accountability and would give a much appreciated feedback to the community.
  • Given the added responsibilities I mention, seems also fair to increase the number of members to the committee from 5 to 7. This is because of several points, as mentioned one is the added responsibilities, the second is that according to the Condorcet Jury Theorem more members, provided there is no peer influence (which I think can be assumed in such a a distant and diverse group) improves the possibility that majority decision making is better, and finally I think it could increase the diversity.
6 Likes
3

Thanks a lot for your comments, good stuff!

  1. Absolutely, sounds like a good mandate and should be included in the Proposal. I can tell you have experience with the ECB and their mandates XD

  2. Yes, so far every year in March we did a report to analyze the emissions and the treasury. You can view them here. I think accountability and retrospective analysis are incredibly important. If you have any more ideas on this let us know.

  3. I understand this point. Have raised it with other committee members. But to be frank, we had issues in the past where some members were not being active. Especially now that we are proposing implementing a compensation, we cannot have that happen. The current 5 members have been extremely commitment and demonstrated to be there through think and thin. Do you have any other suggestions as to who could be added?

4 Likes
4

Your first point is an excellent one and i am not sure that there can be one “at all times”. Last year we were hyper focused on transitioning min from bootstrap liquidity phase with high emissions to rolling that back as the fee switch came online and became the main value driver. There were a lot of unknowns and we were very concerned things might blow up but we had a “sticky liquidity hypothesis” that so far has proven pretty good, which is encouraging. I like your suggestion. tho i would offer “optimize” rather than “maximize”

3 Likes
5

Agreed nice suggestions. Maybe the objective is something like… Optimize MIN emissions to maximize Minswap’s relative volume with efficient levels of TVL. Or something like that. To me, the goal is to maximize Minswap’s share of overall volume traded on Cardano. This requires an efficient level of TVL where it’s high enough to promote low slippage but low enough that fees generated are a meaningful source of revenue for LPs.

3 Likes
6

Your first two comments are spot on and things we have discussed within the emissions committee. Some of us on the committee tend to be creative, which leads to scope creep (the willingness to investigate related topics of interest that are not explicitly a part of the primary goal). Having a very well defined objective or mission would vastly help with this. We also actively want to be held accountable, for better or worse, by the community. Are we actually acting in a way that is in alignment with the community? We can only know with community feedback.

Regarding the last comment about increasing the number of members…if you could be a fly on the wall of our emissions conversations, you would see we are already pretty diverse and often conversations/negotiations are needed to come to a consensus. I think for now, the size of the committee is fine given the current scope of what we are trying to accomplish. However, I do see the scope of the committee potentially increasing if we start turning the emissions committee into a Minswap sustainability committee, or a committee designed to not only look at emissions but the totality of Minswap costs and revenue. Then I think that would merit a larger group. The trouble with adding new people right now is that (as other have suggested), finding good members to be active and good participants can be challenging. If the current scope of the committee was more impactful, we did not already have large diversity of opinion, and adding two more people did not bare such a high coordination cost, I would be completely on board with a 7 person committee.

Apart from all of this, I want to say that I’m super excited to see what happens in the coming year regarding emissions with the impending release of v2. I think making hard and fast decisions right now about emissions are premature. However, making the decision to change the range is the best way to prepare for it. That in combination with the tokenomics review with the reduction in MIN TVL is setting up Minswap to be long term sustainable. I can’t wait to work with these guys to break down all the data as it starts coming in.

4 Likes
7

It’s true that it could mainly be exactly that, maybe just add some analysis mentioning the appropiateness of the decisions made, with the benefit of knowing what happened after. I dunno, maybe its indeed to much to ask, since the analysis wouldn’t e straightforward, as it would need benchmarks and stuff.

I feel that even if there is some compensation members have their jobs, I think we cannot expect members to shape their lives around this, and by that I mean that if they want to go on a holiday I think they should be able to. Some times the decision will be quite straight forward, but others it may require some thinking analysis and putting ideas together. I would hope that members always are there to do that, but I also think some flexibility is to be understood since we have like desconecting on vacations, we all have been sick some week, and we all had some isssues that were more serious than this and just did not have the time. I suggest having more members because I think this flexibility is important, and more members also allow for that. However your point on absentism is also very fair, maybe it could be wise to introduce a mechanism to “expel” members. I don’t think it should be like only about absentism though, I think we could leave it to other members, so that they can decide if a person is not doing their due diligence and just showing up to vote, since that is the same imo. So it would be adding a responsability to the comitee to do a vote of no confidence or something.

Regarding the 7 members I think the Labs may be underrepresented, so maybe we could have 6 members, but give Purrito (or whomever the labs decide) a vote of quality, so if there is a tie, his vote counts double. This is what is done is jurys in my country and many others (even though there are 5 members, but you know they can not vote), so it should be a proven method.

And regarding the suggestions it may sound greedy or something cause it’s my own proposal to add more members but I would be willing. Also I don’t know if they would be willing but I would think CWS could a nice member, and Halo could provide some cynicism that may be useful.

1 Like
8

massively echoing the sentiment at the end of this wall of text !

10

It seems to me that this needs much more specific details about how the makeup of the committee. Are the current members appointed for life, or do there terms expire? What happens of someone decides to resign or simply ghosts the committee? If a vacancy DOES come up, how is a replacement chosen? If the committee votes to expel a member, does it have to be unanimous? Does the member who would be expelled get to vote, and if not what of there is a 2-2 tie amongst the other members?
If 6 months worth of payments are sent to Purrito’s wallet then what happens if he dies in a fiery plane crash… is there a way to get those payments back? Does the DAO have to pay up a second time?
This says Marco gets paid more because he does more… what happens if he suddenly is unable or unwilling to do more? Does he still get paid more? If someone else takes up the slack, do they also get paid more?
If members just stop participating, do they stll get paid? Who decides if they are participating “enough” to get paid?
If the emissions reach the new minimum and just stay there, does the committee still get paid every month just for deciding to do nothing?

5 Likes
11

Read all the comments. Glad to be part of such a passionate DAO.

@calles brilliant points. The FED has a mandate to keep inflation and jobs in check. Even when they have to make tough decisions they justify it by having a concrete mandate.

As for that mandate, we are a dex before all else and I agree with @marco_112358 that we should seek to optimize the trading volumes of the dex with efficient tvl metrics regardless of macro conditions.

I would propose and agree with Marco that a good mandate would be to “Optimize min emissions to maximize Minswap’s share of overall volume traded on Cardano while maintaining efficient levels of TVL”.

As for the second point I believe we are already releasing reports so that is being handled.

And for the 3rd point I agree with what @theeldermillenial said, but also echo the sentiment of what @PurritoGeneral says. We need to ensure that there are participants who not only show up and remain super active, but also are knowledgable and have the DAOs best interests in mind while sticking to a mandate.

As for now I too agree that these voices are some of the most active in the space and if we were to find 2 more that meet this criteria, I see no reason as to why they cannot be added (however we would need to wait till we find two and not just one for the sake of having odd numbers).

With all that being said. It is truly an honor to be a part of this committee and I vow to give my best as long as I remain on it and work with some of the smartest minds in defi to achieve optimal Min emissions at all times to the best of our collective abilities.

:pray::heart::chicken:

2 Likes
12

good points @calles. I agree with you in this 6 comittee members with you included. Your are constantly participating in minswaps discord shraing some good ideas and proposals for the protocol

2 Likes
13

these edge cases are important for consideration to be fair…

2 Likes
14

Điều quan trọng để tăng tính thanh khoản, tvl và volume là tăng trường hợp sử dụng của MIN tokens lên như:

  1. Giảm phí giao dịch xuống theo bực thang theo thời gian và lượng MIN nắm giữ.
  2. nền tảng minswap giao dịch phải nhanh và rẻ để tăng tính cạnh tranh so dex và cex khác. Tăng nhiều tính năng trên nền tảng minswap.
  3. Sử dụng MIN làm tuỳ chọn phí giao dịch và các trò chơi trực tuyến khác , cũng như dịch vụ mua bán khác.
  4. Holder MIN được hưởng nhiều đặc quyền như sàn binance (hãy học cách đi của sàn binance)
  5. Chọn dự án đầu tư có chất lượng(LBE) và phân tích chủ quan những thông tin của dự án. Và những holders MIN theo số lượng và thời gian nắm MIN được quyền yêu đãi hơn so với nhà đầu tư khác.(đây chích bảo vệ túi tiền nhà đầu tư và holders MIN trung thành. Cũng là bảo vệ nền tảng và uy tín của minswap đối với cộng đồng cardano. Tránh sảy ra teams dạng gọi vốn rồi không làm hay làm kém chất lượng, khiến nhà đầu tư mắt tiền.
  6. Các yếu tố các quỹ chưa có sự đầu tư công sứ và tiền bạc vào các dự án. tạo sự đột phá về công nghệ để giải quyết bài toán về thanh khoản và lợi nhuận ròng của thị trường mang lại.
1 Like
15

Yeah, GT went to the concreteness needed in the proposal, I think he could be a better addition than me if he has the time :slight_smile:

Also I think this is a very nice step (if done with all the suggestions by GT) of a better governance. But we need clear and well though out rules, I think we are there and this is a nice platform to do it. I say this because personally I don’t like 2 aspects of our current rules, and would think with more input it could have been different (especially the second point):

  • 5 days seems to low of a time frame IMO.
  • If you don’t something to go forth as of today its better not to vote than voting NO.
16

Thanks for the nice words, if your don’t mind doxxing it what is Discord handle? I feel like we must have talked…

17

Honestly, while I totally agree with GTs sentiments, there is no way to actually enforce them should they be formalized, at least not in the short term. Would you be open to something like a memorandum of understanding of some kind. And just totally rip into us if we fuck it up bad? I feel like we are frontrunning a lot of governance principles “in principle” before any actual mechanisms to enforce them are in place. In the meantime, we just have good old fashioned handshakes, honesty and transparency/disclosure. Speaking for myself, I have some idea of what I want but my impostor syndrome is so strong that I will always default to asking for second opinions within and without this working group. You, chicken and Halo are top of that “without” list. I respect the hell out of you lot.

18

we need a translation asap.

19

This is vietnamese, can someone from min team translate this?

20

Maybe not all, but voting out someone that is not putting in the work can be contemplated, and wherever the governance is not there yet (which I agree that having elections or whatever may be too soon) we delegate on the labs. But introducing some elements seems a nice idea to me. I feel like the Labs are underrepresented in this committee, that is why I wanted to give @PurritoGeneral a vote of quality, I say that because I think we can let the Labs fill the void, meaning them appointing a new member if someone quits/is kicked out.

21

summary translation using google translate.

  1. reduce tx fees on a time weighted basis as well as the amount held [interesting, the time weighted part, was part of RoaR prop]
  2. more features focussing on speed and cheapness [I take this for granted with v2 and ongoing iterations]
  3. use min as gas for services such as tx fees and partners [interesting but limited by base layer capbilities]
  4. maximize min holder (stakers?) privileges [i take this for granted]
  5. gatekeep LBE to maximize quality projects. Prefer longer time weighted min stakers to receive rewards from such projects.[Cost benefit analysis of incentivizing a expert panel to assess such projects vs just taking a share of trading fees via switch agnoistically]

my summary from google translate

1 Like