Hi John
Nice to meet you. Transferability is already built-in into the NNS through following another neuron. If one bad actor wants to “buy” sufficient votes, he could set up a smart-contract of sorts that would require other neurons to follow a specific neuron for a specific time with the promise of “rewarding” such neurons. Am I mistaken?
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I have some non-technical thoughts on ICP tokenomics informed from a few friends I have in other crypto spaces and my own reading on how laypeople perceive tokenomics. There are two big buckets I’d like to bring up and hopefully whoever replies can cure my ignorance.
Firs I think what confuses me is how to quantify the gap between new ICP being created and ICP being burned for cycles. If you look at https://ic.rocks/charts, the rate of new ICP being burned vs minted isn’t even on the same planet The outlier best day in August is 600 ICP burned and the day with the least amount of ICP Minted was ~11,000. With some days being less than 1 ICP burned daily.
Even with the cherry picked best values so far for inflation, that’s an 18x amount of ICP that would need need to be burned daily to get to deflationary. However, that goal post will keep moving as more node providers come online. Because of that, part of me feels like fairly high inflation will happen forever. A lot of people in the crypto world are obsessed with inflation rates, they view cryptocurrency as a hedge to inflation and view it in opposition to fiat monetary policy. ICP does not appear to currently work this way, which I think turns off a lot of people. I say this as someone who is a big fan of ICP and thinks that 100x usage of the mainnet is realistic.
Even then, the numbers don’t add up one way or another. Are most rewards given to neurons or to data centers? How is the rate for rewards to data centers made? Is there an idea of what % of ICP will be minted from neurons vs rewards to data centers? I assume Dfinity has at least an estimate of that and could clarify the direction of new ICP being minted in the short-medium term. If it’s largely just from neurons then acceleration of minting will inevitably slow down and it’s not a concern, if it’s largely from data centers, then there should be more clear info on how they are rewarded and how those rewards will work over time.
The second bucket is the big elephant in the room for some people. The allocation of ICP tokens is kind of a mystery. Talking to a couple people I was able to find the Genesis allocation, but it seems clear that the current allocation is a big question mark. This big question mark is clear from messaging a few different people within the community, and I think where a large source of FUD is created from, and could be stopped with clearer communication/more transparency.
In a recent interview Dominic Williams stated “For the record, the Dfinity Foundation did not sell a single ICP for five weeks after Genesis. And in fact, founder and founder levels, employees were locked up for the first week, so clearly didn’t we cause the fall in price, or the rise.” This leads to even more confusion in my opinion. It’s not clear what percentage of ICP is held by the foundation or employees currently, and if so, what percentage is locked up in neurons and for how long of a delay? What happened after 5 weeks? I assume this is just an off the cuff statement, but it’s a pretty specific time frame and odd not to just say founders, founder levels and employees largely had/have their ICP staked away.
TLDR I think that it should be made clear what amount of ICP is held by the Foundation, the Association and from Founder level employees, otherwise it’s going to inevitably create FUD from misinformed or malicious people. Additionally, most people in the larger cryptospace view cryptocurrency in relation to fiat, and the way ICP does inflation and deflation, while quite brilliant in my opinion, doesn’t really give a clear signal to what inflation currently is and how it will go down, given it doesn’t seem transparent how new data centers get added, or their rewards. It’s easy to just say over time more ICP will be burned into cycles, but the math doesn’t add up as how I currently understand it. While I am not advocating some massive deflation, from my readings it is clear the larger crypto community prefers projects that are either deflationary in nature, or with an inflation rate below recent trends of USD.
Lastly, I’d like to just thank everyone at Dfinity and whoever reads this post. Diego and company have done an amazing job on the subreddit, but I felt since this post took quite a bit of time, it made sense to post it here. My apologies if this is pretty open ended, is says you can help by asking questions so I asked many!
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@jwiegley @johan @diegop thank you for asking the community to offer ideas related to tokenomics. I think you are doing an excellent job of seeking feedback and responding to concerns.
In my opinion we should not make significant changes the tokenomics. I don’t really like the idea of making it easy to transfer neurons or allowing shorter unstake periods with penalties. The rules are clear in the Dfinity publications on this topic and every investor should DYOR to know what they are signing up for when they stake ICP. This project is way too young to be making those kinds of changes to the tokenomics and I would prefer to give it more time.
I think there are better ways to make it attractive to stake ICP. A stated goal is to achieve 90% staking. I would like to see metrics published by Dfinity foundation that can be tracked to understand progress toward that 90% goal. If we are not measurably moving in that direction, then think about what can be done to make it more attractive to stake ICP and participate in governance. Do this by rewarding existing participants in governance. Two examples of this come to mind.
First, there is a deadline for claiming ICP minted at genesis. Make a concerted effort to ensure that every genesis recipient has fair opportunity to claim their ICP. However, the ICP that remains unclaimed (which is currently significant) could be redistributed to investors who have already staked long term. Any current neuron with a dissolve delay more than 4 years means the investor has signaled intent for long term participation of governance, which is the stated goal of the tokenomics of ICP. Every neuron with a dissolve delay of more than 4 years was configured that way by individual investors after genesis. Reward those investors. Redistribute the ICP proportional to the existing voting power of neurons. Redistribute the ICP into locked and voting neurons with an 8 year dissolve delay. Set a deadline for when the redistribution will occur and publicize it widely well in advance. Generate a buzz. KYC, if needed. I think this will cause a sudden rush to stake liquid ICP and for investors to increase dissolve delay of their existing neurons.
The second example is related to the fact that the Dfinity foundation is a large holder of ICP. I don’t know how much of it is currently staked, but if some of it is not staked long term then consider staking it and redistributing the monthly rewards to other long term stakers. Do this every month for the next 4 years. Make it a significant perk for long term investors to participate in governance.
Both of these ideas accomplish multiple stated goals in the tokenomics without substantially changing the tokenomics. This is a way to make it significantly more attractive for investors to stake ICP and participate in governance. This accelerates the rate at which decentralization of the internet computer will occur. This takes liquid ICP off the market, which will cause a price increase. This moves us toward the 90% ICP staking goal faster.
I do not believe that the tokenomics need to change. I do believe that we need to give it more time for the tokenomics take effect as designed. If anything needs to be done, then make it more attractive to achieve the 90% staking goal faster.
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Shouldn’t the actual value/code running on ICP accomplish this? You need to burn ICP for cycles. Adoption will bring a natural deflationary side
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Agree with what you said. Regarding the second point, ic.rocks should be accurate. Although the neuron 4000-4000 is a mystery to me.
Seconding this. Tokenomics as designed and publicized were a big draw for me as an early investor, and all of the tokenomics parameters seem very nicely-calibrated for the IC in steady-state. As Wenzel notes, neuron transfer is worrisome for the security reasons outlined in previously published Dfinity materials.
If the goal is to get to 90% staking and encourage decentralization, then that’s where the focus should be - how do we make staking and participating in governance more attractive?
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Hi @wpb
I read carefully your post and agree for most part. I also, have expressed not to make any important changes as we got in with the actual rules.
My question to you is Why do you say the goal is to have 90% stake in the neurons?
If this is to create an artificial value to ICP by creating low ICP available supply, I do not think this is a good strategy.
With mass adoption and IC technical success that it should have, having many ICP in circulation, thus creating large volume for trading, is a better option on the long run. Have some ICP available for large institution to get in and hold long term.
Creating artificial value by locking the vast majority , on hype or whatever else, is never a good way on long term. And the way I see it, Dfinity (and yourself and myself) are looking for a very long term. So long that I have no intention to unlock my 8 years ever. This is how much I believe in the IC project.
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Good question. Dfinity stated the goal in the article linked below in the section toward the end titled Calculating Voting Rewards. In my opinion, this goal is foundational to the tokenomics design. This article had the biggest influence on my decision to invest and stake because it lays out the tokenomics rules and goals in detail.
“Calculating Voting Rewards, Overview
We begin by deciding that 90 percent of the total supply of ICP should be locked in neurons. Then we estimate what returns, in the form of newly minted ICP, must be provided to those locking their ICP to incentivize 90 percent participation. This allows us to calculate the total rewards that must be paid if we are successful. We then decide to distribute this quantity of newly minted ICP regardless of the current level of participation, such that participants will receive larger rewards until participation reaches 90 percent, allowing the markets to persuade those who are not currently participating to participate.”
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I, also have read that document before investing. I think we have 2 different interpretation for the 90%.
As they wrote “We begin by deciding that 90 percent of the total supply of ICP should be locked in neurons”. I read it as they have made their calculation while thinking the probability that 90% of ICP will be locked at some time. But I do not read it as this is a goal. It was an assumption to me. But I can be wrong.
Still, I think having a good supply for the market is good for stability and avoid manipulation. If only 10% of the supply is available on the market and 2 or 3 whales are part of that 10%, they will do whatever they want with the price.
Market will decide at the end. Will be interesting to see in 2 - 3 years
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Hmmm. I suppose you are right. I hadn’t considered that idea previously and I would not want that to happen. Vote following through liquid democracy should be a personal and independent decision, not a contractual obligation for some service provided. I suppose this is a good reason it should not be visible which neurons are following which neurons, which is not possible today. I believe this is why ic.rocks and others cannot determine the liquid voting power of specific neurons.
This is a good place to introduce another request for the Dfinity foundation. I don’t know if anyone else has already defined a term for this yet, but for now I will call it liquid voting power. Liquid voting power is the overall total voting power of a neuron inclusive of its own voting power and the total voting power it obtains from all vote followers in the liquid democracy model.
I think it is important to be able to track the liquid voting power of neurons. I think only Dfinity foundation can/should make this metric visible. The stated goal is decentralization over time. This will happen. The only time in IC history that individual neurons should have greater than 51% liquid voting power should be Dfinity foundation in the early days. As decentralization occurs, we will need metrics that enable visibility to which neurons are gaining enough liquid voting power to control the NNS.
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Seconding this. I came here thinking I wanted neurons to be freely traded, but after reading some of the other comments I agree that the security concerns make sense. I don’t like the idea of being able to unlock staked neurons early, even for a penalty. I would much prefer to see a streamlined way to transfer ownership of an existing neuron to a beneficiary in the event of a death, sickness, etc. I think many people in the community, myself included, are not planning to dissolve our neurons ever. We definitely do not want to rely on passing down Yubi keys.
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Just wanted to add my support for Wenzel’s proposal. I think being able to monitor the Liquid Voting Power (LVP?) of a neuron would be useful for a lot of reasons.
It would be really interesting to watch an organization’s LVP move up or down in real time. Especially as the network matures and more influencers become active in the community.
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Agree with measuring “liquid voting power” - makes a lot of sense.
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I had bought it to this forum about airdrops for investors who hold for more than 5 years+
This will woo more people to be invested in the nns…
Airdrops is a thing that attracts the market. ICP has everything in it, However right now what ICP needs is big quality investors locking in for long term which will enhance the project and also lift up the morale of all developers at the same😊
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Make neurons transferable (as NFT) and then you can sell them on secondary markets at a discount, where the future ICP will be discounted via the market’s time-value of money.
If the protocol forbids neuron transferability, people will have canisters own neurons that can be transfered like NFT (“wrapped neuron”). If IC prevents canisters from owning neurons, external blockchains will implement chain key crypto where smart contracts will wrap the neurons into NFTs (similar to how IC plans to control native Bitcoin with canisters).
The long term security of the protocol cannot assume neurons will never be transferable. The irony is IC’s chain key crypto has forever destroyed non-transferability for all crypto assets. Everything will be transferable and liquid in the future.
Therefore we should just accept this reality and model security based on neurons being transferable, and make them transferable ASAP rather than waste time with early unlock penalties that force the protocol to determine the time-value of money, when that is a job for markets.
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Seconding this. The stated inflation rate is 10% annually for the first 8 years. So each day reward is 10%/365*current_total_supply if I understand this code correctly ic/rs/nns/governance/src/governance.rs at e362530172c44679313b1b7fca1e90d8967545d8 · dfinity/ic · GitHub. That means reward for each day increase if the total supply is increasing. What I don’t know is whether the 10% rewards include node provider reward. I hope the foundation could make the reward info for node provider a public info, which might also incentivize people to become node prioviders.
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I support the idea of “liquid voting power”. It would serve as a leaderboard to incentivize independent parties to gain followers.
In addition, I would like to request neuron naming (perhaps the NNS team is tracking this issue).
Related:
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After reading the entire thread I have to say thank you to all of the people putting some serious time into thinking through their ideas and presenting them here. Also thank you to the Dfinity Team for demonstrating that they want to move in the direction of the community driving the future of the IC.
Given the current discussion above, this is a summary of my current stance on tokenomics:
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Like @wpb and some others have said I agree that we should not make any changes to the current programmatic mechanics of the tokenomics. I think more time should be given to capture some metrics to determine how the tokenomics are actually playing out. Without some metrics on the key variables, making changes is somewhat uninformed (if not completely random). This is dangerous because the “levers” and the strength of those levers aren’t fully understood.
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I agree that more metrics should be made transparent. The primary ones being:
a. Percent of ICP locked up over varying time periods (this would answer some of the behavioral
questions that @lastmjs has asked above),
b. A measurement of neuron liquid voting power so that a “take over” of the IC can be defended
against.
c. Some analysis should be completed to confirm whether it is possible to reach ICP price appreciation
(or even stable) state through the mechanics of the deflationary/inflationary mechanics. @Trevor
asks some good questions on this above. -
I’m really on the fence regarding unclaimed ICP. I can’t decide if it should just be left alone, burned, or re-distributed. This is a really tough one that probably has some legal issues that vary by country/jurisdiction.
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Due to the security reasons expressed, I think we should do whatever we can to avoid the creation of a Neuron trading market.
These are some really tough concepts that will take a lot of smart people debating in order to come to the best possible outcome.
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I fully agree with this. I think the tokenomics model is working just fine
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How do people still think it’s good token economics. I was just reading for days but could not resist anymore ICP has terrible token economics.
First, let’s look at this;
Dscvr thread: here you go fools .
and, now the current situation is for a 4 years seeds (the ones bought each 0.03$) going to dump on current buyers. It’s like a leaking boat and if there is not any investment coming people going to lose 70% of their money at the end of 4 years. Besides any gain, it’s really risky, and when more people learn this they are going to avoid investment on icp, without the help of the community, icp is going to leak more like a snowball effect. Even after 4 years foundation etc is going to mint 300M coins? is it like a joke? nothing is transparent about token economics since day1 its understandable with that much-broken level. I believe that ICP not going to survive well with that broken token economics people are not blind as creators of this thinks.
Honestly, I have no idea how to fix this but maybe stopping the aging of seed neurons and increasing the maturity rate of neurons created after launch as 2-3x maybe can lead to a bit equal distribution.
There should be 75-80% of coins on exchanges, not 10%. It was a broken launch, who launches with 0.005% coin on the first day and make their coin on the top 3 as there was 40$B investment on it at the first day (probably the real market cap was around 200M$) and with showing circulating supply 127M and dump other 10-20M coins weeks later. It’s has terrible token economics and with this level of tech, it could be in the top 3 for real atm. Really sad these happened to ICP.
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