Alternate Economic Proposal – Temporarily Disable Channeling

Proposals by Gotchi Gov'nuhs
1

Introduction

A good game economy aims to balance its sources (inflation) and sinks (deflation) and frequently adjusts mechanics to do so.

In a Web3 game, extra care must be taken to ensure that these balance changes do not significantly affect the developmental plans of the players involved.

Currently, the Gotchiverse has two main sources — Alchemical Channeling, and Farming. New supply added from Alchemical Channeling far outpaces that of Harvesting, and together combined, the sources outpace sinks by a ratio of roughly 10:1.

I believe it is necessary to take some action to bring these ratios closer back to equilibrium.

Note: This proposal would replace the current proposal by Mark/Fantasma.

Proposal

My proposal is as follows:

  1. Disable Alchemical Channeling completely, except for one full day during the week (likely Saturday, to coincide with hangouts). Spillover would be enabled for Alchemical channeling. This will drastically cut the inflation coming from Alchemical Channeling, immediately bringing the S-S equilibrium closer to 1. This would be re-visited in three months and adjusted accordingly.
  2. Enable spillover for Reservoirs 24/7. Alchemica stored inside parcels is limited and land owners should have a claim to the Alchemica stored inside.
  3. Allow 100% refund for demolishing Altars. Since this is a large adjustment, we should allow parcel owners to update their strategies accordingly with no penalty.
  4. Boost movement speed and hit points for high kinship Gotchis. Since high kinship is tied to Alchemical Channeling yield, without Alchemical Channeling this mechanism would no longer function. Additional movement speed and HP would allow high kinship Gotchis to excel at Alchemica gathering. This mechanic may or may not be permanent, but would be active during this three-month period.

As mentioned in the points above, this proposal would last for three months after being implemented, and the sources-to-sinks ratio would be monitored during this time. A proposal would be made during the last two weeks detailing the success or failure of the implementation, and steps to proceed after it expires.

Addressing some criticisms

What about gameplay? Without channeling, the Gotchiverse will be empty!

PVE / PVP gameplay is on the way frens. You can see the progress we are making after yesterday’s demo. We are not worried about the Gotchiverse becoming a “ghost town” at this point. When the time is right and conditions are optimal, it is easy to attract players.

Why 100% refund for Altars? Will that lead to a bank run?

A 100% refund for Altars is necessary because some players who planned their strategy around Alchemical Channeling on multiple parcels will be negatively affected by this patch. With such a drastic change in game rules, it makes sense to allow them to restructure without penalty.

As for the bank run scenario, if all the LE Golden Altars and Altars that have ever been minted were burned today, the total would be roughly 25M FUD, 19M FOMO, 11M ALPHA, and 3.3M KEK.

The REALM Diamond currently contains 83M FUD, 45M FOMO, 20M ALPHA, and 7M KEK, a large surplus over that total amount.

What about bots?

We recently implemented an API called Jigger that helps catch bots. Other P2E games are using it, and so far it has had pretty good results at catching bot daddies.

Addresses flagged by Jigger can use Proof of Humanity to get a SBT, similar to how GovernorDAO works. But you only need to verify if your address is flagged.

The cartridge contracts have also been completed and are waiting for Gotchiverse UI implementation. We are planning to deploy them within this three month period and monitor performance.

Final thoughts

I strongly believe that if the DAO wants to deploy a solution for bringing sinks and sources back into equilibrium, we should go to the root cause, which currently is Alchemical Channeling. It is clear that the demand side of our economy is not strong enough to support this mechanic yet, and we must maintain flexibility in this crucial time of the Gotchiverse. Minor changes such as those currently proposed do not address the root cause, and also sow division in the community without offering any olive branches.

Appendix: Some calculations

As a DAO we should strive to back up our proposals with onchain data. Here are the forecasted before/after effects of this proposal, if implemented today.

Current

  • Channeling (spillover deducted):

    • 616,000 FUD
    • 308,000 FOMO
    • 154,000 ALPHA
    • 61,600 KEK

  • Channeling (including spillover):

    • 919,214 FUD
    • 459,607 FOMO
    • 229,804 ALPHA
    • 91,922 KEK

  • Harvesting (not deducting spillover):

    • 236681 FUD total generated
    • 151832 FOMO total generated
    • 53720 ALPHA total generated
    • 12722 KEK total generated

  • Actual Harvesting (Spillover deducted)

    • 182851 FUD (23% spillover)
    • 115051 FOMO (25% spillover)
    • 39101 ALPHA (28% spillover)
    • 10116 KEK (21% spillover)

  • Total Daily Inflation

    • 798,851 FUD
    • 423,051 FOMO
    • 193,101 ALPHA
    • 71,716 KEK

After Proposal Implementation (Forecasted)

Assuming no new Altars, Harvesters, Reservoirs built

  • Channeling (original values divided by 7)

    • 131316 FUD
    • 65658 FOMO
    • 32,829 ALPHA
    • 13,131 KEK

  • Harvesting (including spillover)

    • 236681 FUD
    • 151832 FOMO
    • 53720 ALPHA
    • 12722 KEK

  • Total Daily Inflation After Changes (Forecast)

    • 367,997 FUD ( -54%)
    • 217,490 FOMO (-49%)
    • 86549 ALPHA (-56%)
    • 25853 KEK (-64%)

The Bottom Line

Daily new supply would be reduced by 54%, 49%, 56%, and 64% for FUD, FOMO, ALPHA, KEK respectively if this proposal were implemented.

17 Likes
2

we don’t need to do this if market will be kind to us :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

this is also -85% for the gotchis ROI
you help alchemica but kill gotchis

5 Likes
4

Completely support this. Maybe this should continue as an 8-12 week cycle? Would also bring a new aspect of strategy to the game - Dao votes on how best to stimulate Gotchiverse economy 2 weeks before the end of each cycle, everyone adjusts as a result…

3 Likes
5

I’d support 1 and 2 as long as there’s effective bot protection and hotzones.

3 should be dependent on the amount that has been channelled through that aaltar, would be mad to give 100% refund on those aaltars that have already paid for themselves 10x over.

4 could be a thing but less urgent and could have a longer discussion without delaying 1 and 2.

6

This isn’t about “helping Alchemica” or “killing Gotchis” (which it won’t, btw.). It’s about balancing the economy from a sources/sinks perspective. We simply don’t have enough demand to support the level of yield being doled out via Gotchi UBI right now, which is why new supply is dramatically outpacing the burn rate.

3 Likes
7

Hotzones can definitely be enabled. As for bot protection, the combination of Jigger API and cartridges (social gating) should help a lot.

I think that would be difficult to calculate as parcels may trade hands, Altars may be used by different owners, etc. But open to running some numbers on it.

4 is an olive branch extended to those who have fewer parcels but many Gotchis. Essentially maintaining the kinship advantage that Gotchis have in yield farming.

But I agree, if the proposal can pass without 4 that would be fine too.

8

any gotchi that was summoned by the start of channeling, has surely made it’s ROI back already. Selling that same gotchi to someone else, doesn’t earn it a reset on the ROI… there’s no new money there, just a new owner. The economic activity starts at the summons or purchase of the portal.

If you bought a kin gotchi a few months ago, it’s previous owner already extracted most of the ROI. If you bought a kin gotchis before channeling… they had plenty of value, but BRS was actually worth something. For six months, BRS and wearables and all strategies that involve buying better stuff to get a better result, have been thoroughly thwarted by people simply listing their current assets and getting their GHST delivered. If you for a moment thought kin gotchis were going to be king forever… I would love to show you this nice bridge I’m trying to arrange an OTC deal on.

Wait, aren’t hotzones already enabled?

9

We have to do better than a flat 100% discount, even a flat 75% would be better but ideally a smarter way to calculate it would be best.

I’m so glad this discussion has brought to light the problems with our current issuance.

There is a sense of urgency with this as the damage is being done to the economy every day. If this gets good consesus what is the quickest timeframe it can be acted on?

10

For channeling, yes. Not sure about Reservoirs but I think probably yes there too.

11
  1. What I love about the proposal:
    Enabling spill-over for Reservoirs 24/7 will re-introduce a game-mechanic, that was very much celebrated some months ago.

I love to hear and I share the optimism/conviction that the attraction of new players will be easy at the right time and that PVP is palpably near.
Super to hear that the Caartridges-Contraact is on its way!

  1. Clarification of 100% refund for Aaltars:
    Isn‘t it the case, that a demolishing of an Aaltar entails the demolishing of all other installations on that paarcel?

  2. Against the complete disabling of Alchemical Channeling:
    Indeed the proposal is not a complete disabling, but the stretching of the time to a one-week period.
    I think the olive branch, that has not been picked up yet, is indeed the extension of Channeling-Times, that is: the doubling (multiplying) of the Aaltar-Cooldown-Period.
    Wouldn‘t a doubling of the period already bring a reduction of inflation in the double-digits?

I concur that the main knob for adjusting inflation is Alchemical Channeling, but a whole week seems too much for me.
I would agree to an Aaltar-Cooldown-Time-Multiplyer up to 4.

The idea of improving speed and firepower of high-kin Gotchis is a very nice one, that would add a whole new exciting dimension to game-play and its economics.

In the context of inflation-reduction it is of course a concession of the fact, that the value of high Kinship is reduced proportionally to the reduction of the Alchemical-Channeling-frequency.

4 Likes
12

Parcels that only have altars on them were designed to be used for channeling, so they would be the main ones using this feature. But yes you are correct that if a parcel with harvs, reservs, etc. wanted to remove the altar, the owner would need to remove all of them before removing the altar.

No I do not believe it would because there is plenty of unused Altar capacity in the Vault or unused parcels. If you lengthen the cooldown, those Altars will come into play and the overall amount of Channeling will remain the same.

2 Likes
13

I aim to make a Sigprop by mid next week if there are no major arguments. So we’re probably looking at mid-November to have an implementation live.

14

I don’t really like the fact that we have to do such drastic change, but why not…
Just one question, will it still be required to upgrade my altaar to lvl X before upgrading harvesters / reservoirs to that same level ?

15

Might aswell close the whole project down.

2 Likes
16

Yes, of course. That mechanic has not changed

17

Other issue I see is regarding numbers if we reactivate spillover.
Just looking at Fud your estimates are :

  • 236681 harvested incl spillover (23%) so spillover = 54436
  • 131316 fud from channeling incl spillover (32%) so spillover = 42021

So in total we have:

  • 367997 FUD on daily inclation
  • Including 96458 FUD splilled over.

Spillover = return of the scholars all day long, so we can assume a majority of the spillover will be dump everyday. Let’s assume 60% of the spillover will get dumped, that’s 57874 over 367997, so 15%
So if some land owners keep dumping as they actually do, even if overall inflation numbers are reduced, i’m not sure it will make alchemica bleeding less.

This plus the fact that we have no idea what is going to happen if people get full payback on their altaar. Here too dump might be massive.

Your proposal is a bit radical, maybe that’s what we need but I see some unpredictability behind the numbers. At least people that are paid back in full for destroying their altaars should get vested alchemicas, that is locked to be used only in the gotchiverse for some time.

2 Likes
18

Lastly I don’t like the fact that land owners that played the game, invested in altaars and harvesters + reservoirs and upgraded along the way have to keep their altaar.
Altaar value is divided by 7 in terms of revenue. And some will be able to get a “refund” while others that invested more, took bigger risk to play the game and support the ecosystem gets no refund

1 Like
19

What is your reason for such a big reduction all at once? Similar to the other proposal, a titration tactic would seem more useful to me. Define a target inflation rate for alch prices (e.g. ±0) and start by disabling channeling for 1 day a week. One week later, compare inflation to target rate, if higher, disable a total of 2 days a week. and so on. This would have the following benefits:

  • Instead of one huge change that we can’t predict the consequences off, we’d be able to collect data each week to see how channeling behavior changes. That data would be valuable, and can help us in future models.

  • We’d have much finer control over what is happening.

  • Since users would feel the consequences of their actions each week, this would be very much like parenting, and could foster a much more responsible channeling behavior. “Dump it, and I’ll take even more of it away”.

Just to be clear, I’m not proposing that we have a new proposal for every day that get’s slashed, but instead putting that whole strategy in one proposal and than acting on it after it passed.

5 Likes
20

My proposal does not aim to prevent Alchemica from being sold. The aim is to balance sources and sinks from an economic perspective by reducing new supply and stimulating demand. Only by balancing those two sides of the equations do we create a path forward to sustainability.

That kind of solution would require much heavier dev support and adds considerable complexity to all aspects of the player experience.

Previously @Immaterial had a nice idea of deploying some GHST to incentivize building. I think something like that could be used to incentivize land owners to farm their land, instead of demolishing the Altar.

4 Likes