Extremely well said Doc! Ever since last DAO call I had become disillusioned with how the spirit of the forge had been completely missed by key participants, and interpreted to be a way to further devalue original protocol assets by tying them now to alchemica. The idea of using alloys and frames is to instill an intrinsic sense and mechanism of awareness towards dilution in our process of minting wearables.
Instead of heading to forums and DAO to argue that others need to be diluted because you want a specific werable (current process), you could just craft it and pay your “dilution dues” through the smol alloy burn.
Usually debates on whether to dilute or not come down to those with financial interest in dilution arguing against those who will be diluted without clear benefits. A deflationary alloy allows those in favor of dilution to print as many wearables as they want, but the alloy burn will make THEM conscious and responsible of the inflation/debasement that is happening (perfectly abstracted into the alloy burn). This instead of the current model where we dilute to create profits and entertainment for “Peter” at the expense of “Paul”. I’ll probably get a response that dilution is offset by RF, yet you can simply head over to the current debate on season 5 or look at the runaway raffle inflation (with no deposits to RF pool) that’s happened, to realize RF hasn’t been sufficiently or properly implemented to counteract inflation. Another common argument is “why protect OGs/whales?” its not about that and it has never been about that- to be competitive, we need to offer a product that is A) reliable and B) attractive. Our wearables have not been either of those things for a very long time, because we deal with nerf culture, lack of utility, constant economic modifications, and a dilutionary spirit- the end result can be seen in the languishing bazaar any given day.
Another argument/response might be that if we control inflation via frames, there is no need for alloy. While this could be true, doing it only via frames poses a few challenges, such as making the whole process of the forge pointless, if supply of frames is too tightly guarded because of current market conditions, the dilution debate will just be the same thing, with or without the Forge. The beauty of abstracting the different reasons to dilute into 3 parts, is the real gem of this initiative, because we can tackle specific problems without debasing the entire economy. Example: We determine that more GL face items are needed as well as legendary and common pets. In the current paradigm, this smol/specific need leads us to do massive raffles and sales of all kinds of wearables, diluting and devaluing the entire ecosystem because a single slot needed more items. This could have been addressed instead by simply introducing a few new schematics.
Moving forward, alloy would be a lever for price/affordability, whereas frames would address specific slot/utility supply, and finally schematics would address marketing needs and stat coverage. Any of these 3 ingredients could be released (together with full/pre-crafted wearables) when there is real and actual demand for them. Looking back, most the times we have diluted in the project’s history, has been out of the need for just one of the elements (like more schematics for different stats) while supply has already been saturated.
If implemented properly, the Forge+ Framework would allow people to buy or craft wearables with a better sense of lasting value, instead of the current paradigm of clear & relentless downward path in valuations of the assets.