Bi-Weekly MIN Farm Allocation [Week 1]

Hey Contra, thanks very much for the input, it has made us think a lot! I have edited the proposal now following yours and other peoples input. But, let me address your points:

  1. DANA. I dont see why you say the best place to trade the DANA token will be the concomitant protocol (Ardana). Ardana is a stablecoin hub, and as such, it is meant to trade only stablecoins and other similar assets. Using the Curve stableswap formula for non-stable assets can be pretty dangerous, because at one point in the formula slippage becomes huge. If Ardana wants/does succeed, it will need a CPMM (Constant Product Market Maker) with a deep and reliable DANA pool for the token to trade in. This is what we aim to become and thus we want to scale that DANA liquidity thru the MIN Farm. Also, have a look at current DANA/ADA APR, its pretty low now hehe.

  2. It is a good point yes. Tbh, we are looking mostly at APRs right now, and at how much MIN we are spending per pool to get TVL + Volume, thats why we wanted to scale back a bit the Kitty Farms. Going forward, we need to start taking into account more quantitative data/metrics for the adjustment. Ideally, we have a hybrid model that combines quantitative and qualitative analysis. For now, however, this seems difficult to implement, but we are working on it already with some community members. The problem with Sundae is that they exclusively look at TVL, we should consider other factors as well (volume, partnership, new farm…).

  3. On accountability: no proposal is being passed unanimously, there are 26 people who voted on this allocation including the Minswap team. We have published the rebalance to the public before it is implemented and just 1 day after we came to this new allocation. We are also actively monitoring the Forum for feedback, in fact we decided to extend the implementation one week till the 29th of March to ensure we take as much feedback as possible, and we are still open to make adjustments. I, personally, am against any sort of “personal disclusure of biases”, because we have made it clear that we will be looking and adjusting the allocations according to the feedback from the Forum. I believe we should look exclusively at the strength of arguments, instead of who is laying them out. Thats why I am aiming to respond to every comment. If you disagree with my points, kindly lmk, and we could readjust the entire proposal if what you propose makes more sense :slight_smile:

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Hi there so as I laid out here some arguments that I think address your points Bi-Weekly MIN Farm Allocation [Week 1] - #21 by PGSargent

But so regarding the “wallet contents of the kitty farmers”, I personally think this souldnt matter as long as we can have meaningful discussions around the allocations and the moment you think our arguments arent making sense then Ill be the first one to change my opinion. But, I dont think its fair to make the KFs disclose their holdings for this (plus it would be very difficult to really to reliably do this, as u say this is blockchain and wallets are anonymous).

Lemme ask, do you think it would be better if the Minswap Team were deciding these allocations on our own then, instead of taking input from these trusted community members? Cause we could do that as well.

I addressed the DANA argument in the answer to Contra, if you still feel like we rather give the extra point to DANA to MIN, then let me know.

Eventually, these votes could happen on-chain and be done by MIN holders. For now, it is the Minswap Team and Kitty Farmers (who always will aim to benefit Minswap as muc as possible) the ones debating on the allocation.

How is this insider trading? We are openly laying out an allocaiton and asking for feedback.

I agree, it was too rushed, we have decided to extend the discussion/implementation of new points till March 29th (so 1 more week).

It is difficult to have any meaningful discussion with someone when your only argument is that this is insider trading. We have said from the beginning, that farms will be adjusted weekly/bi-weekly, and we believe we have made a strong case of why we want to rebalance it this way.

Can you please explain what you find so disturbing of the new allocation?

Thats a good point, and yes many protocols such as Trader Joe on Avalanche do the big re-allocations monthly. But on early stages, we do feel like balancing might have to be done quicker. We have extended this proposal to a week however, so we ahve till the 29th of March to discuss. How does bi-weekly rebalancing sound though?

While I am personally a huge HOSKY fan, I think sadly the majority of the KFC (Kitty Farmer Committee) agrees with you on HOSKY :frowning: . So yes, maybe we do progressively lower the points on this farm if this sentiment is also the same for the greater Minswap community.

Regarding the other points. I agree, many people say it feels too rushed. So, we have decided to do it bi-weekly for now, and extend the current allocation and feedback process until the 29th of March.

Regarding DANA, apologies, we dont think we made a strong enough case in the original post. We have edited it since to reflect the thinking behind it more, and I have also done another comment where I touch on it a bit as well Bi-Weekly MIN Farm Allocation [Week 1] - #21 by PGSargent . Lmk if u disagree.

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Hi Minswappers, JWolfish, kitty farmer reporting in. I would like to present some of the numbers we looked at while making the (very mild) week 1 yield farming adjustments.The first set of point allocations was set rather arbitrarily by the Minswap team alone, and it was obvious almost immediately that there were some over-allocations to the smaller marketcap tokens.

Let’s look at the weekly TVL and trading volume for last week.These numbers go through Saturday, March 19.

Screenshot 2022-03-21 193056

I have highlighted in green some of the trading pairs that we have proposed decreased the point allocation on. As you can see, they are some of the least efficient pairs for us right now–we are paying out a lot of MIN for the amount of locked liquidity that is in those trading pools. Additionally, some (not all), are somewhat expensive on the volume front as well…AADA and VYFI we were paying a lot of MIN for a relatively low amount of trading volume. A dex survives mainly on two things (three, but I’ll get to that next): Trading volume, which brings in fees, and Total Value Locked, which is how deep and how liquid your trading pools are. You want to incentivize people to bring their liquidity to Minswap, but you don’t want to waste MIN (which is essentially a finite resource) paying for a small amount of liquidity with low trading volume.

Now, these pairs are important to the dex, do not misunderstand me! It is why they are getting MIN right now at all. A minor adjustment of a half point in CNETA, AADA, VYFI, and CLAP is a pretty minor adjustment. In terms of PAVIA we do propose removing a full point. This is about a 15% reduction to all four pairs.

Then, there is HOSKY. Honestly, Minswap attempted to capitalize on the meme potential of the token to draw in liquidity. And, in my opinion, to attempt to teach the large amount of HOSKY holders something about how defi works, with the hope that in the future they might also want to hold other Cardano tokens, participate in other defi projects, and of course, continue to trade on Minswap. Obviously, it has not attracted a huge pool, and trading volume is low there. So, we reduced HOSKY point allocation by a HOSKY-appropriate meme number. This will probably continue, as it’s true that we really don’t want to spend a lot of MIN on a dog. :kissing_heart:

So where do we put the points we have freed up? Again, we made two minor changes. As the liquidity of the DANA pool had recently increased massively (and that wallet or wallets have now staked, as I write this the APR of that pool is 60%), we proposed adding 1 point to DANA. Ardana is a key project for Cardano, and we wish to be the main dex to trade their governance token. The remaining points we added to the ADA/MIN pool. Yes, it is already somewhat expensive in terms of MIN to liquidity based on this chart. But since Saturday, an additional 33 million in ADA/MIN TVL has been added to the pool. Additionally, we thought slightly cushioning the loss of the LBE boost would be a nice gesture to the community of MIN holders. Remember that third component of a DEX survival? It is maintaining a reasonable way to compensate its liquidity providers. Currently, we do that by providing MIN rewards, and offering a way to get MIN rewards by providing further ADA/MIN liquidity.

Finally, let’s look at the MIN/TVL scores with the new points!

Screenshot 2022-03-21 195106

Again, these numbers are from last Saturday! TVL on many of these pools is much higher right now, but this is what we were looking at when we were making our proposals. As you can see, these minor changes still leave the kitty farms and cNETA as some of the best-compensated trading pairs on the dex, although I feel that it is more in line with the higher marketcap pairs. We are still paying kitty farm holders extremely well for locking their liquidity with Minswap! MIN remains the top, but again…right now it has over 90 million in TVL, where this sheet just accounts for 57.8 million.

I hope this addresses some of the questions about why we are proposing what we are, and I hope that looking at the actual MIN spend helps you see that we aren’t cheating any token holder out of just rewards, we are just looking to optimize where best to spend MIN to attract the liquidity we want to have in this dex. Thank you for reading this book, and I’ll see you in Discord!

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One point of clarification. The ADA/MIN TVL on Saturday March 19 was actually about 83 million. In my spreadsheet, I had removed the 25,200,000 worth of Minswap-owned ADA/MIN LP pairs that exist from the LBE. Minswap is not farming with that liquidity, so I just wanted to account for the liquidity that had potential to be yield farmed. Sorry for any confusion…I wasn’t looking at my reminder note that I had made that subtraction when I pulled those screenshots!

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Thank you, this was a good move and gives the community ample time to react. Appreciate the second thought here!

Hi guys, we just posted a proposal to add Revuto (ADA-REVU) to MIN Farms in order to incentivize our community to use Minswap.

Is there anything else we should do at the moment?

We strongly believe every Cardano project should be included in this, not just few projects, and especially projects with a large community and strong supporters of the Cardano ecosystem like Revuto.

It’s is so clear from the original post about what the intent of the rebalancing is. It’s just sad that some people can’t separate themselves from their personal investments and the impact on them vs. the greater good of the community.

Hat’s off to the kitty farmers for your though leadership and transparent strategy!

Thankyou for taking the time to provide this insight.

It’s been really helpful.

You may not thank me for it… but I think this level of summary report would be idea with each “re-balancing” :+1:

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I understand you are propably not informed about the roadmap or the main idea of this project. Please spent some time to study the whitepaper. As far as I know there is no other dex that in fact even talks to the communitee for the yield farmign rewards ratio or to which project there should be given rewards as the govering daos are still in the implementation stage (that is in the roadmap). The plan for now is the core team to decide and us, the kitty farmers commitee and the forum to give our opinions to them until the dao is fully working and an on chain vote can take place so as to be a secure procidure. For better or worse someone needs to decide for now how things should be done and I am proud to say that this team always decided having people’s interest in the heart and that is proven by actions allready taken.

Never the less I am sure that as soon as you study the whitepaper of the project and otherr projects like this one you will see the exact same things, governance from the team at first and then governane from the dao as soon as it is implemented.

We are asked of our opinion as the team wants to hear us, we are not rulling the dex until the on chain vote is implemented.

Thank you for your courteous and professional engagement with my concerns.

  1. DANA. You’re right that Ardana is not a conventional DEX, and that pushback is warmly received. Nevertheless the majority of Dana is preserved for users of the protocol, that is, liquidity providers just of a different sort. My concern then becomes, ironically, MinSwap is in danger of effectively competing with Ardana for Liquidity Providers in an effort to buttress Ardana’s success. This requires deep analysis beyond my capabilities.

Similarly, since the team has provided 15 Million of the TVL on MinSwap (some 53%) then that is a strategic move on their part, one taking the rewards already on display for granted, and not in anticipation of greater rewards. They have already accepted the rewards as satisfactory, otherwise they would not have contributed liquidity. Since they receive such a lions share of the min rewards already, the marginal utility of those rewards is less than for the vast majority of LPers contributing to smaller TVL pools at almost negligible shares. Though you may have some stats that pushback at this assumption.

The bottom line is I don’t see how rewarding the Dana Dev team LPers is fair, especially when they make up the majority of the pool and they had privileged access to the Dana token by virtue of their membership on the dev team. Meanwhile, punishing negligible LP participants reacting to market signals by saying that their rational moves are no longer rational because we’re moving the goal posts on them.

This is just my gut reaction, and I know that point reallocation was always up for debate, and the market will move quickly to adjust their positions in the new paradigm. However, my argument is that the Dana Devs provided the majority of the liquidity at the rate offered, and accepted the inordinate amount of rewards by virtue of collective majority as satisfactory and are therefore are not ipso facto entitled to greater rewards. The reduced APR on their liquidity is a discount on the marginal utility of their rewards in the context of their collective greater share. Conversely, the minority of LPers, the 47%, will rationally leave for greater returns in other pools, thus boosting the 53% shareholders’ respective APRs in the process. Let the market find the balance according to the rules already laid out.

If the same criteria of increase in TVL leads to greater Min rewards were applied across the board, disregarding the extenuating motivation to be a deep liquidity provider for Dana, more Min should be provided for any increase in TVL, then it will lead to an unsustainable chain reaction of greater rewards > greater TVL > greater IL > greater rewards and so on and so on. Thus we return to the Shrodinger’s Cat conundrum. My key concern is fairness. For me, the situation as it stands, with the rewards that are on offer for the majority of Dana LPers (the dev team and early investors) are satisfactory enough, given their marginal utility, to not warrant extra rewards. I appreciate the sentiment to reward their good faith, but know that it in turn punishes other not so privileged DEX participants.

As for the other two points I look forward to your innovations on fair reward allocations, and I did not mean to insinuate any foul play on the part of the Kitty Farmer Committee, only to point out how their proposal may insinuate some suspicion that they may do well to front run and dispel.

MASSIVE EDIT! I have since learned, courtesy of @MrTeaThyme in the #temperature-check channel on the MinSwap discord, that the Dana team are not Yield Farming their liquidity, and so are not drawing the lion share of the Min rewards as they are allocated now. If true, this would basically nullify my entire argument. Confirmation on this point would go greatly to clarifying the lay of land.

MASSIVE EDIT 2.0!! According to @MrTeaThyme there has indeed been inordinate amount of LP tokens staked,

"So if you go to the website on the farm page the total lp value (name could be wrong working off memory because the ui isn’t loading rn) is the amount that is staked in the farm not the total amount minted So if you compare that with the amount of lp tokens in circulating supply you get the deviation between lp tvl and staked tvl

From what I’m seeing the 20m ada of tvl that wasn’t staked suddenly got staked"

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I think this rebalance proposal is very well rounded. I agree.

And i think one of the most important things is there, it is a gradual change, in respect of people with low capital, I think all proposals should strive to be like that, shoving every two weeks little points. This way people with low capital can afford to reallocate capital every month or so, without paying too much fees.

So, I think this reallocation is a nice careful first step.

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This is a good point, low capital individuals can always reallocate to where they are best treated.

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And keeping the MIN-ADA farming with good APR benefits everyone since this brings stability to MIN price that is good for everyone receiving their rewards in MIN.

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This is the quality that I am looking for, blind impartial rewards for pools based purely on the merits of the protocols and not distorted by the YF incentive. Manually reallocating is a controversial business, unless you can justify it purely on the data, as you have done ser. Well done thank you

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You are very welcome. As I am tracking these numbers daily right now, and this is one of the things we looked at when we had the reallocation meeting, it wasn’t too hard to put this post together. One of us can certainly do it going forward each time.

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My one concern is that impermanent loss should be a factor when considering the re-allocation of rewards. Both the cNETA and AADA tokens have surged in the last week, and paired with a reduction of rewards, the risk in these pools might have been increased in an un-balanced way.

Certainly a valid concern. However the devs are not responsible for others’ financial decisions. Though I agree, constantly moving the rewards incentives is distorting the market structure. Nevertheless, I am not in favor of extra rewards for IL sufferers. Informed and rational market participants must act according to the information in their possession, and the signals were that the rewards would outpace any IL given a certain period of time. We must assume, in the aggregate, that LPers are willing to maintain their positions in anticipation of the rewards allocated. A .5% reduction in rewards hardly influences this calculus, see Wolfish’s spreadsheets.

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