As the title says, I’m making this post because community sentiment is at rock bottom; personally, within my online social circle, and within the astroport discord and other telegram groups. I’m witnessing long standing astroport supporters jumping ship due to the radio silence of the team around future commitments, the lack of a road map, the shocking price action- brought about by poor volumes and hence APRs- and lack of engagement with the community (barring the excellent discord mods who help out at any hour of the day.)
I dont have any concrete ideas on how to solve this, but want to brainstorm with the community around how to ameliorate this situation.
I’m very aware that the team have internal legal advice that keeps them from making future commitments, but does this really prevent any road maps being created? Even if they were published specifying they are non binding? I dont know the answer, thats why i ask.
In terms of low volumes and APRs- would it be best to commit to a ‘minimum yield’ for gov staking ASTRO, whereby in times of low volume, the assembly uses astro to prop up the APR? Are there any obvious flaws with this idea? Is there a better alternative? Being an astro staker is currently a very unattractive value proposition; you stake a token with an ever decreasing price, to earn sub 4% most of the time, to participate in governance that relies mostly on contributer wallets to pass quorum. Stakers and participators are barely rewarded in the slightest and this should be addressed imo.
I would love to see team members comment on these points and hopefully offer solutions. If people don’t agree with my sentiment then that is understandable, but i personally do not know of- or speak to- a single astro holder/staker/participator that is happy with the state of team comms, APRs, and lack of clarity around protocol ambitions
Even as we cheer on the impressive developments and expansion of ASTRO across multiple chains, we find ourselves nodding in agreement with JagerMaster. There’s a pressing need to address the current dynamic around the ASTRO token and enrich its utility to incentivize users to hold it, rather than simply farm and dump it. The current reward/buyback ratio of 10/1, if not reassessed, could unfortunately drive the token’s value towards zero, making even rewards we are distributing worthless.
Being part of the Astroport community from the start, our desire to see this project succeed is deeply rooted. Recognizing the concerns voiced and sharing the sentiment, we’ve contemplated some ideas that could potentially help alleviate the issues we’re collectively grappling with.
Here are a few initial ideas we can discuss:
Introducing a 21-day lock-up period for staking.
Tiered staking rewards for longer lock-up periods. The longer you stake, the higher the APY.
Implementing a governance model that incentivizes token holders to vote on key decisions (this would encourage more holders to vote).
Implementing a governance model that gives more power to the voters who locked the tokens for a longer period of time. The more tokens they hold and the longer they hold them, the more influence they have over key decisions about the platform’s future.
Tiered Services/Access: Provide different tiers of services or benefits to holders of ASTRO token based on the amount they hold. Higher tiers could unlock exclusive benefits, reduced fees, etc.
ASTROwars (fight for liquidity) on Terra V2 just like on Terra V1 just before the UST depeg and its collapse. With ASTRO going multichain, the implementation of the ASTROwars makes a lot of sense.
Appreciate the reply and support of sentiment Diversitas!
Definitely think a lockup period is a no-brainer for staking, although the staking ratio doesnt change too much, so wont make a huge dent in astro sell-offs. VxASTRO will also help towards many of your other suggestions, so hopefully that is well under way.
Fully agree with your suggestions, and think it would be important for ethos around comms to change along side potential token alterations, in an attempt to show the team ‘care’ and listen to the community more than anything. Many members feeling the radio silence from team instills anxiety as opposed to confidence. It would be great to hear a grand-picture vision as for where astroport could be years down the line, and with that what volumes/APRs and advantages astro stakers could look forward to. As much as the team is hard working, they also need to communicate this to potential and existing token holders for it to feel like a collaborative venture
I do understand the sentiment, but volumes are arguably poor across all of Cosmos right now. I think there will always be periodic bursts, of course, but this is a bear market (esp. for DeFi). There are 0 new users coming into crypto right now, and for over a year now, unfortunately. That said, I don’t think anyone should sit on their hands and wait. I personally think building, ironing out bugs, and making the product ready for the masses should just be the main focus right now.
That’s not a bad idea, and it could help those that stick around for long-term build their positions in other ways besides farming. However, I would feel better if any staking incentives were gated behind a lockup period of some sort. I am no dev, so not sure what is technically feasible, but a ~7 day lockup period would compliment incentives I would think.
Disclaimer: I am a community moderator for Astroport and my opinion is my own.
Appreciate you weighing in on the conversation mate. I do agree that we are in a bear market and that trading volumes- and therefore APRs- are hindered as a result. My personal sentiment is a consequence of prolonged low APRs/price decline, in conjuction with hearing/reading no contributors/team members even address avenues for rewarding active participators/stakers.
There have been quite a few discussions on discord and twitter, and there’s only so much you mods can respond to- it would be great to hear from Gabriel himself regarding what can and cannot be shared from a team perspective. Or hearing from Jose about the big picture ambitions for astroport and mainly, the evolution of utlity/attractiveness of ASTRO as a result.
I’m genuinely curious about whether the legal advice/guidelines in place at Delphi do prohibit all talk of future plans, or if a non binding road map or at least short and long term goals is legally unadvisable/unfeasible.
Definitely on board with exploring a lockup mechanism for staking ASTRO and ‘unlocking’ a hier tiered APR; its extremely important to show that stakers/participators will and should be rewarded imo. Contributors obviously deserve all the plaudits and payment for the work they do, but stakers and community members, and voters, do play their role too in voting and assuming risk because they see merit in the common goal of astroport as a tech/platform
I think ASTROPORT is building goodly, but I agree with communications lacking.
It would be great if we could have some clarity on what we can expect and what we can NOT expect to hear. And maybe if we can sneak in a plan for “guessing whats being built”. Or something…
I think another part of this is getting some confirmation that things ARE being done - which if you were a new supporter at Astro Village, you might assume nothing new is being built and that it is largely abandoned.
While we are unsure there’s life in the universe - please help us confirm the IS LIFE at Astroport.
Yoo, what’s up guys. I hear the feedback on legal. It’s a very tricky environment but I think there is light at the end of the tunnel, including in the U.S. where Congress is working on a lot of ideas for bills that would enable builders to make public disclosures in compliance with the law. I’ve put a lot of volunteer hours into that to try to overcome the current regulatory hurdles. We’re also in a horrific bear market. The name of the game is survival.
I’m brainstorming with builders on ways they can communicate more, on a decentralized, personal basis, without creating undue risks for themselves or our community. What I picture is an approach similar to ETH Magicians, where contributors discuss their own ideas, visions research, etc. instead of speaking for “the team” or a “company” or “the project”, as it were.
I also think those convos could be used as springboards for community grants etc to build cool new Astroport stuff on a decentralized basis. It’s just a matter of the right talent stepping up from the community…
I do share the exact same concerns around token price action, not because of the price movement itself, but rather the utility of the token. Before the Terra crash, it was pretty clear which solution would potentially make its utility go through the roof. After that, everything kind of crumbled, and we have been trying to weather the storm.
A lot of the ideas shared have been discussed between builders, and maybe that is part of the general problem. We should be sharing more of those discussions with the community, as if I’m correct, they do not represent any promises on future features, just merely tech talk, @lex_node will correct me if I’m wrong.
It is and was clear from the start that emissions should have its own mechanism to be distributed. Doing it through governance isn’t the optimal path, which means there is an opportunity to improve how emissions get distributed in a more democratic, balanced, and representative of the ASTRO holders vs. being a YES or NO proposal through governance. Also, there isn’t really a real-time adjustment to market conditions, and some pools might end up getting more emissions than they “should” have, as well as the other way around. Pools also end up being gated by governance.
With all this context in mind, we have been discussing the best path to move forward to solve all the problems I mentioned above, which we believe will add more utility to ASTRO.
Also, I’ll share some of my opinions on some of the suggestions floating around:
Staking tiers
This alone would not solve the token’s utility problem. I also don’t see why someone would stake for longer to receive a bigger APY when the current market sentiment isn’t really bullish, which means you are locking up liquidity for a future value, but if the sentiment is that the token is getting dragged to the ground, why would you risk it? I think this could be a cool idea when conditions are a bit more optimistic, maybe doing something with NFTs.
Better trading fees for stakers
This is already what’s happening, since when you stake, you will get a share of the protocol fees. This means whenever you swap, your trading fees are flowing back to you, which effectively means reduced fees. Adding to what I mentioned previously about the staking tiers, fees would flow more to the biggest staked tier.
Some burn mechanism
I’m generally not really in favor of burn mechanisms, especially when we have an “inflationary” system. If the idea is to burn so the token value increases by reducing supply, then don’t create a big supply in the first place. Maybe for some protocols this needs to happen (algo stables), but generally it feels like a gimmick to me. I also don’t like burning because, just like in democracy, if you reduce Senator seats you end up reducing representativeness, and if we were to improve the emissions’ mechanism, in turn improving ASTRO’s utility, I think burning it serves no purpose.
Great stuff @afsardo. Agree with all of it except the burn mechanism being a gimmick… I would love to see a small portion of the ASTRO that’s getting sent to the staking pool get burnt (i.e. 10%). In my view, it doesn’t reduce access to governance because your ownership/ability to participate is proportional to the outstanding supply.
Even if there was only 1 ASTRO token in the world, the same number of governors could own slivers of that single token. Burns do however, increase the scarcity of the token, which can help offset falling prices from mercenary farmers. Any burn set today could be altered by governance in the future if it became problematic.
I also think that burning is such a simple/apparent mechanism whereas advanced tokenomics are too complex for your average user to model out. That means a burn could help attract more stakers/governance participants. The potential for an increase in price could encourage all stakers to stake/participate far longer than they might otherwise, too.
I am no dev, so not sure what is technically feasible, but a ~7 day lockup period would compliment incentives I would think.