I don’t have the full visibility on the numbers, but with the current prices of sICX and BALN the DAO fund should be at around ~2,5M USD as the current 5% allocation is the same as you mention for the Emergency Reserve fund which “currently has ~743k sICX and and ~558k BALN” according to you post.
Taking those numbers into account the Teams that contribute to Balanced have received 4x as much as they are at 20% allocation which means ~10M USD which is extreme in my view and is the place which needs to be cut. BALANCED is a great product, but you can hire a lot of tech resources for that amount of money.
In my view I would do 2 changes:
The emergency fund of ~2,5M USD (and growing unless its being capped t at that amount now) is very excessive. This is basically non revenue generating money which could be better utilized to one or more of the following: Increase marketing, new coins listing on BALANCED and CEX listings for the BALN token, higher yield for longer lock up periods, airdrops, increase pool rewards and/or staking rewards or buy back BALN or ICX to burn. There should of-course be an emergency fund, but 2,5M and growing as massive compared to the size of the company/business compared to the balance sheet of any similar start up/SME.
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.
Why I would make those changes:
To make a successful product we need users. I’ve used Balanced since launch and UX/UI it’s clearly one of the best products in the market. The fact that it’s not nr 1 is because traders/investors make more money elsewhere. If I can get better yield elsewhere, trade more coins, get better staking options etc I don’t really care about the usability that much.
The more users and TVL locked, the more fees are generated, and more money the BALN token holders are making.
You mention “accumulating more BALN/value to the DAO fund means that BALN genuinely has more value” which I see as a short term solution as this will lead BALN value down to the ground. Accumulating BALN is not the same as accumulating more value as giving less BALN/financial rewards to the users will decrease the demand of using BALANCED so the fees will drop as well as the DAO fund value as a result.
Both Devs and DAO has a lot of BALN tokens already and the goal should be to increase the value of the tokens first, and getting more tokens second
Your proposal is taking Balanced the opposite direction for the DAO fund and it’s just binding up non revenue generating capital when at this stage of the business should spend “every single dollar” for growth, customer acquisition and product feature production.
With a declining BALN token price over time I would not provide liquidity to the pools and with a very limited Borrow reward I would rather look into other projects as I use Balanced to keep a solid ICX stack locked while taking up loan when I feel the market is bullish. With both features gone I don’t see the same upside using Balanced or holding ICX which I hold because of this great platform.
I will therefor vote a clear no and I hope this proposal doesn’t go through.
Bot likes the idea of reallocation, but decreasing borrowers 5% which goes to the DAO, and decreasing the 20% the teams get by 2.5% which go to BALN stakers. Staking rewards are weak and this will add the incentive to hold and stake VS sell.
For those that are asking for rewards to BALN stakers I have to say I’m a bit confused. Have you guys taken a look at BIP4 @Verocknode@Balnmax@Bot123456789?
We all just voted on that proposal which gives a clear incentive to stake + lock BALN for long periods of time. It has recently passed and will be a major focus of smart contract development. If choose to change the structure of BIP4, I would at least prefer to wait to see the effects of the proposal that was just passed a few hours ago. Here is the link.
@Moen82 thanks for the detailed response. I’ll share my thoughts with you later tonight as it requires more time than quickly pointing these folks to the recent BALN staking vote.
Thank for your reply . The BIP 4 doesnt mentioned on the BALN reward allocation, that why i highlight here since the reward for Baln staker really insignificant at the moment. We just want more clarify how much % of Baln reward will incentive to Baln Staker to prevent Baln selling.
@Bot123456789@Balnmax I can see how you would be confused and apologize for that, but BIP4 was indeed about the reward structure of staking BALN. I shared a quote below from the original proposal, and it would have been helpful to share your opinion on the BIP4 proposal to be included in the previous vote.
Either way, adding rewards simply for staking BALN would indeed require additional dev effort, not something that’s as easily switched like the current pools. Let’s focus on what can be more easily changed for this proposal, then you can have a separate proposal to add a new reward pool for staking BALN (something small seems fine to me, no strong feelings here). After a new reward pool is approved, then we can decide how much to add to it. That would be a good process.
Just want to thow an additional thought regarding all the peple that want some allocation to stakers, funds in the DAO fund are directly property of the DAO, which stakers(voters) are.
I know its not 100% the same, but it still is kind of the same thing.
Other than that I think its pretty good idea.
One suggestion on the presentation of the breakdown of the distribution, perhaps it would be clearer if they were segemented into groups, like all the LP incentives together, with a total, and the ‘DAO controlled funds’ which is the DAO fund + Emergency Reserve. Or maybe seperate the ones that cause ‘dilution’ of stakers, like various rewards, versus things like the DAO fund, or in the future any allocations to stakers
I’d also prefer if stakers get a portion of the daily allocation. So far its still underwhelming compared to their value in bnUSD. Yes, I have read up on the previous BIP but it only incentivise long-term holders vs short term holders and their activity (providing LP) and it does not address the poor returns from just purely staking BALN. Personally, I’ll be voting “no” as it still does little right for the BALN stakers. I’m all for allocating more to DAO fund but it still does not address to the stakers.
People are going to compare it BALN to ICX staking when it comes to returns. At the moment, the variable returns are largely base on minting bnUSD. Without heaving minting of bnUSD, its approximately 3-5% APY of the total value of BALN. With ‘heavy’ minting over the last few days, its around 8-10% APY.
I’d suggest increasing the allocation for BALN stakers from 0% to a small percentage (~5%). I’d suggest allocating DAO fund to 15% and let stakers have 5% of it.
That will complement very well with the previous BIP proposed on bBALN. It’ll be a good floor for BALN to have some allocation and predictable rewards + variable rewards from network fees.
I’m going to put a poll. I believe majority of the BALN stakers will feel that there is little that is done for the last few months with the poor incentives of BALN stakers. This will be felt even more when users have their tokens locked for 4 years. Without a fixed daily allocation, and in a bear market (with less trading activity) and where there is less minting, its going to be very bad. We should nail this first (in terms of implementation) before coming up with the bBALN BIP implementation.
EDIT: 1 more point to add on, for bBALN to be successful and for more people to be comfortable with voting for the full 4 years, its hard just to rely on a variable incentives. There should be another incentives thats more stable. I believe that is when the daily allocation of BALN comes in. It does not need to be a huge allocation. If it is too much/too little, I believe we can do another vote to adjust the allocation of it again.
I’d prefer to maintain a higher rewards for borrowing, atleast for the short term. Because with the launch of OMM the demand for stable coin is high.
The more borrowing, the more origination fees!
As far as BALN stakers receiving BALN emissions. I’d prefer to see how the bBALN goes first.
This will boost your BALN rewards anyway! And also support the BALN price, with more incentive to HODL rather than sell.
As for reducing the emissions to the sICX/ICX pool, I’m against this. With the current APY around 12%, it’s a great alternative for ICX stakers to participate in Balanced rather than staking on the network. I’d rather see the APY maintained to be similar to ICON network rewards.
I too think that it would be good to increase the rewards for BALN stakers somewhat. Currently it does seem a bit underwhelming and if our longterm goal is to encourage BALN staking, in my view this is something we should do.
As a related topic, it would be great if the current staking APY was visible in the Wallet → Stake view next to the Balance and Value rows. It’s a biy hazy at the moment what current APY’a are.
Thank you for listening Benny!
Based on the network fee split more than 50% of the fees seems to come from people paying to borrow against their collateral. Benny would have the exact split/numbers as a % here over the last 30days. If the rewards for Borrowing is cut I’m afraid this will lead to a lot of people moving their tokens elsewhere or away from ICX and it will hurt the BALN valuation even more if we start cutting into the biggest revenue stream for the BALN token.