BALN Reward Allocation Adjustments - DAO Fund increase

Hey Matt - the way it works is that I post on the forum (anybody can do this part of it) to start discussion then another Balanced contributor submits a vote on-chain for the community to vote on. In our coming update, anybody that meets certain criteria (has 0.1% of total BALN supply staked + pays a 100 bnUSD fee) will be able to submit a proposal on-chain for the community to vote on.

Looks good Scott. Let’s do it! Thanks for allocating some emissions to the stablecoin pair.

3 Likes

But as Scott says, it provides more flexibility later to utilise those funds better at a later stage. Let’s not be short sighted and rather look at the long-term impacts. Once they’ve been distributed as rewards, we can’t get them back. I think having a healthy DAO is massively beneficial as it allows us to promote Balanced more and to spend money on attracting new users which will increase the fees generated and and and. Its a virtuous cycle.

3 Likes

Excited to get this voted on. Having a larger DAO fund will add intrinsic value to BALN token since the governance rights around the BALN token will be more valuable because BALN token holders will be able to direct these funds as they please. I think this is a positive adjustment for everyone.

2 Likes

[quote=“benny_options, post:39, topic:227”]
this proposal,
[/quote] I don’t agree with the change to the icx only pool, it is already the lowest APY and is barely competitive with other platforms

Hi, I’d like to reiterate on what @Moen82 stated earlier

  1. A full overhaul of how payouts to developers are being structured. At the current rate the developers are taking in close to $50K daily which is unreal. Developers should have a big stake in the game and have a hefty payout if the product/project succeed, but now it seems structured like they have their payday right away without any or little skin in the game. The community doesn’t have any visibility on how many people/what type of roles this money is divided amongst which increases the dissatisfaction.

Would it be possible to have more transparency around how these dev funds are being allocated? I think 20% is quite a large amount for dev, and some of that could definitely be provided as more incentive instead (as DAO funds could also be used to fund future developments for example). But happy to hear your opinion on it @benny_options, just like to get more visibility on this. Thanks!

2 Likes

Without going into the dollar values of the value of their work, I think we should remember they are also equity holders and essentially angel investors.

Omm worker distribution is 30%.
Non inflationary Uniswap retained 40% total supply for dev + ‘early investors’.

Just as a raw opinion, I don’t have an issue with the founders of a startup retaining 20% ownship, in fact that feels low personally, they don’t even have a natural veto total of voting weight, unlike in OMM.

With regards to compensation, personally the portion that I feel needs to be improved is the inability to direct the voting of the sICX, I do feel that does disproportionally favours the founder P-reps.

2 Likes

Is it?

If I was part of the group that had this great idea, gathered a bunch of talented people together, and delivered on creating a remarkable product/platform, then you’d be hard pressed to get me and my team to give up such a portion of control.

Originally, the teams got 22.2% of new circulating BALN (DAO and ERF funds don’t really count).

This change brings it to 25.8% of new circulating BALN.

I don’t know what other projects/teams get, but I am happy with the performance of the team so far.

3 Likes

Hey @smok I’m happy to comment on it and I appreciate your respect and professionalism. @arch and @AwaxJago have also made good points that I’d like to second, and I appreciate their unbiased opinions. Here are a few other points:

Comparison to other projects
In comparison to other major projects in the industry, Balanced core contributors maintain a lower or in-line allocation of tokens:

Anchor Protocol (LUNA’s flagship product): 30% (team + investors, but investors buy from team)

Chainlink ($LINK): Owns over 50% of supply with off-chain agreements based on trust (assuming based on circulating vs total supply on CMC)

Terra ($LUNA): Owns over 50% of supply with off-chain agreements based on trust (assuming based on circulating vs total supply on CMC)

Uniswap ($UNI): ~22% to team + ~18% to investors = ~40%

The list goes on, and I wouldn’t say that there is any data to show that lowering allocations to core contributors leads to more successful projects, but I’m of course open to examples if you’ve found a project that has become a greater success as a result of lowering the allocation to the core contributors to below 20%.

Pre-mine vs Worker Token Model
We could have done a pre-mine like many other blockchain projects, where the team gets all tokens up front and just abides by promises in a white paper and off-chain agreements to not sell, which in the end, are entirely trust-based. Instead, we have the worker token model, where tokens are slowly given to contributors over time at the same rate of community participants.

Another way of looking at the current structure is that the team has ~5.8M tokens (20% of the ~29M supply after 10 years) that vest a very small amount every day at the same rate of the community emissions. This would be more relatable to existing projects that have significant pre-mines, but Balanced has a built-in vesting schedule.

The worker-token model is not perfect, but it brings a bit more trustlessness to a project compared to massive pre-mines managed with off-chain agreements and pie charts in white papers.

DAO Structure from the Start
As it stands, there is no one single team working on Balanced that gets 20% of supply, while most other projects we’re comparing to have one entity that holds the “team” portion.

From the start of the project, there were 4 teams involved, each with 5% of total supply, all of which worked for 1.5 years+ without any payment or incentive other than bringing this vision to reality. We have since added two more teams and a few individuals.

The funds are split between 6 teams and individuals that contribute to Balanced regularly. You can see each of the teams here if you scroll down. You can also look at the blockchain to see Balanced Worker Tokens and which wallets hold them. Funding is of course used to incentivize all teams involved to continue working hard on Balanced long into the future as well as various other initiatives to grow Balanced.

3 Likes

Thanks so much for the detailed response and making it more clear, all the while you guys were debugging an issue on balanced too!

2 Likes

I think the 20% allocation owned by the team should have a lock-in period and then be unlocked on a quarterly basis, which might give people more confidence in balanced long-term growth.

The BALN stake reward should be increased in my opinion, because the incentive to provide LP is to get BALN, if BALN does not capture the value well and the price falls, it will cause the reward for LP become low and the incentive for people to provide LP will fall, then it may affect the growth of the project.

It is locked… they get them as the emmissions happen.

You mean the daily distribution ?

The Workers Tokens are distributed to them daily. They aren’t allocated X amount of tokens. They are incentivised to make Balanced succeed, if BALN price drops so does their income. If Balanced succeeds BALN will hold good value long term. And therefor the workers income is worth more.

The more I think about about the DAO being allocated 20% of the emissions daily. I have to think Scott was on the money saying once it’s gone we can’t get those tokens back.

It’s a huge positive for us investors to have the DAO and the workers well incentivised.

Win, win for everyone!

2 Likes

There’s no risk of impermanent loss on the ICX only pool. So it’s effectively the same ROI as staking (almost)

I 100% agree with you @BigBen. We want the teams working on the project to be correctly incentivised and aligned with investors interested.

I think @benny_options proposal makes sense and I support it.

1 Like

hi,

I get the feeling that somebody sold a lot of BALN in anticipation of this going through, as we had a temporary decline.

I would rather have people engage more with the platform rather than the minimum of waiting for their Baln rewards to come in with their 0% interest loan → incentivized already

Also, the DAO will need more of the allocation as it is the foundation of this platform. Let’s give it some room to breath. I am in support of the Vote.

2 Likes

Sorry for not being more specific with what my issues were, in the future I will engage more in these conversations

I think we will see how the BALN staking rewards from BIP work and if needed, we can look at something like this next. Great input

1 Like