Imagining the Future of Protocol Rewards

Frens, being a project rooted in DeFi, it is no wonder everything currently feels in a state of flux, as basically it is but a reflection of how global markets at large are performing right now.

RF has many detractors, and as author of this post I want to clearly and unequivocally acknowledge that. A guideline that PC has recently provided is that RF seasons should generate more for the DAO/platform than it substracts, and I generally agree.

Credit goes to @Immaterial for coining the term “Protocol Rewards”.
As we aim to reimagine what these rewards can be, a name change will certainly help.

While I do have tons of ideas about potential directions for RF, I want to open the topic for people’s suggestions and contributions, as the idea is precisely to find out what kind of rewards paradigm moving forward would get more support, enthusiasm and economic momentum for the platform.

As such I will share some of the ideas I’ve had before, but will not expand on them beyond listing them. let them act more as inspirations for others than be taken as my particular plan for future rewards

Will greatly appreciate anyone and everyone to contribute with their thoughts on protocol rewards, and which direction they should/could take in the future.

My list of potential new rewards categories:

Visual Rarity
ARS
Bazaar tradoooors
Sigprop contributoooors
FAKES collectooors
Aagent missions
wearables design contest
delta boards
aarena leaders

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Thanks for opening this thread! After crunching some numbers and having several brainstorming sessions with @JG1 and @Machete, I would like to share some of our main conclusions as well as suggestions with the DAO community. Let’s start from the beginning:

Is the BRS leaderboard unbalanced?

Rarity Farming has been one of the pillars supporting the value of the overall Aavegotchi ecosystem. The BRS category is the star of the show since it captures 70% of the total rewards. There have been claims that it is an unbalanced system, but… is it? Looking at the rewards perceived per BRS, we clearly see a pretty consistent trend. Both axes are plotted in log scale since both the price of the wearable as well as their scarcity change (sort-of) exponentially.
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Evaluating the BRS of the entire population (snapshot taken on 18/02/2023), we can see a few gotchis standing above the rest (hinting a considerably higher investment), and especially after the rank #150, the trend is again really clear, smooth progression even beyond the top 7500 ranks.
image

Looking at the data from a different angle, we can even see the cut-off of rewards in the range of 525-530. Gotchis below that threshold are not encouraged to dress up, so the overall trend follows pretty much a normal distribution.
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So what’s the problem?

Although the reward distribution is consistent and well balanced, the reality is that there is no room for vertical growth without investing heavily into a high BRS gotchi and some rare wearables. This can be discouraging for newcomers who often describe the system as a “pay-to-win” designed to reward OGs (often disregarding that the current price of wearables and gotchis is very close to its all-time low, but that’s another story…)

A proposal to boost vertical mobility: a trait-based leaderboard

Besides the traditional BRS competition, we would like to propose an additional leaderboard that is dedicated to gotchi traits. In principle, we could assign a different trait for each of the 4 rounds of a regular rarity season. And since we want to spice things up, we could add a bit of randomness into the mix. For example, we could make a VRF call after the snapshot is taken to decide whether to reward gotchis really high or really low. Although some people may feel REKT if Sergey doesn’t play in their favor, that leaves room for increasing the rewards for gotchis with at least one extremely rare trait, allowing to flow funds towards certain people that otherwise would be completely disregarded. The main points of this proposal can be described as follows:

  • 70% of the rarity rewards that go to BRS could be divided into 50% (traditional system) + a new 20% trait-based leaderboard.
  • Each round is defined by a different trait, the first week is NRG, then AGG, SPK, and finally BRN. This allows for strategy, buying specific sets, and even activates the need for reset potions, adding additional sinks for the GLTR+alchemica economy.
  • At the time of the snapshot, a call is made to the VRF, and it is determined whether the ranking of that trait is ordered ascendingly (traits+) or descendingly, introducing the luck factor, giving good opportunities to Gotchis that would not normally compete for anything, indirectly boosting the wearables market.
  • The number of rewarded Gotchis can be reduced to maximize their prizes. Further effort is required to do some balancing calculations and distribution progression, but perhaps considering the top 1000 would be sufficient.

To sum up, what is this proposal trying to achieve?

Introducing a new way to compete, activating the market for clothing and sets, activating the market for gotchis that currently are ignored due to low overall BRS, and even creating a sink for GLTR+alchemica when creating reset potions. The added factor of luck plays a key role and can lead to last-minute excitement and a movement of funds toward new people, hopefully increasing the value of owning a gotchi. Indirectly, this change could increase the demand for clothing to dress more gotchis, and even forge clothing between rounds that can help to rank higher, acting in a deflationary manner.

So what do you think frens?

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions

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:clap:t3: Sounds very interesting and i would love to try it. However imho the percentage is too high and we would be asking players to take a 20% cut in their payoffs . Since as you pointed out, a majority of them would not normally qualify for any rewards i think 5% to 10% would be better.
Also if the “lowest of the low” receives the same as the “highest of the high”, would there be two (2) separate leaderboards of 500 each?

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BaseRrarityS is pretty blunt. I think we should move into AbsoluteRarityScore and would love to see more work towards that direction;

Same distribution principles you proposing can be used in ARS

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it seems pretty impossible to get rid of the overall sentiment of rarity farming being an unfair system so long as it only rewards top gotchis. the only solution i see is to make it overall more inclusive all the way down the rarity curve. it doesn’t have to be as substantial but only having a small set of gotchis be part of it is a negative for me personally and i would imagine most fresh ecosystem entrants.

It’s rarity farming not communism. We have channeling for that, and look what its done to our economy… free lunch for everyone? We broke.

We can take care of “all gotchis” by making contests where differently abled gotchis shine. Really, gotchis have a bunch of features, that get rewarded at different levels, with the ultimate floor being an unpes yfi 0 kin 0 xp. For example - if we were to make eyes affect forging in any way, then all of a sudden there IS a reason to own a 50,50,50,50,0,0, possibly reason to own all possible combos of those.

ARS became a lot more important to implement the moment we made the forge. Think about it for a sec… almost no items are going to be at max quantity any more. items that get smelted a lot because they were unpopular, will grow in absolute rarity(what I’ve been calling uniqueness).

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heres a question we ought to ask.

is “farming” our nfts ever going to be sustainable.

should protocol rewards not come in game rewards not attached to the monetary value of our nfts and token? maybe i am going against the on-chain maxism from the greater community.

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I’d love to have this idea implemented when the respec potions have launched. I think the idea is pretty fun and a nice sink for alchemica as people can just respec into trying to have ‘spookiest’ gotchi for a while and would have to use a respec potion again to set things back to prior distribution.

Also like the idea simply as it would shake the leaderboards and market conditions, increasing demand for unusual combinations of wearables and as it was put in your post, give a chance for relatively low brs gotchis to compete in one trait’s rarity if the stars align for them.

I’m all in favor of the idea, thanks for the brain storming!

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A diversification of the rewards to include new smaller investors shall stimulate the game play to be inclusive to a greater population. II like the idea of randomness, and adding some of the rewards to this category I believe would increase participation. I love the idea of rewarding for FAKE investments.

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I think that most people basically understand that whales who have invested a lot deserve to get the lions share… that’s clear with BRS farming… but XP/Kinship have a few more arguments going against them… but still, there is room for a bunch of rewards.

But we should just add other, smaller rewards and change them up regularly. That takes some smallish % away from traditional rarity farming. I feel like some whales need to see the big picture and understand that a potential 100X involves the little guys feeling included at having a shot at getting ‘free monies’.

I also think that a little more ‘surprise and delight’ would go a long way, which really has not been a thing so far (there has really been zero airdrops, apart from some fake gotchis to certain folk).

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Blockquote
It’s rarity farming not communism. We have channeling for that, and look what its done to our economy… free lunch for everyone? We broke.

I do think that it’s important to note that there are so many variables going on in such a complex economy… for example, if it was during a bull market and the “channelling for free monies” narrative took off, it might have helped enormously for the whole ecosystem. It’s not long term sustainable, but rarity farming isn’t particularly, either. Just thought it worth pointing out. Basically I think it’ll be very beneficial to include the smaller players in some form of rewards, and it can be something that constantly changes and is randomised in some way, etc.

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This is a really cool idea! I believe it, along with other fun mechanics, can bring new life to RF.

As a fun aside, I was commissioned for the respec potion artwork and it is already complete. Bottoms up!

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Blockquote
A proposal to boost vertical mobility: a trait-based leaderboard

I really like the basic idea behind this. A slightly different approach could be that we reward only gotchis with godlike traits (below 0 or above 99) to make sure wearables and/or deliberate skilling (potions) are being used. I personally wouldn´t randomize if gotchis with high or low traits are getting rewarded. I would randomize the trait that´s being rewarded. Therefore you only need 4 or less gotchis to be well positioned in contrast to 8 or less.

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We really just need the community games actively rewarding, arena tournaments, tons of small things you could win at.

We have all the things, they are either closr or ready, we just have to put them together into a proper carnival.

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