I agree that reducing inflation is critical for sustainability, and this proposal addresses that perfectly. However, I share @you425’s concern that while inflation mitigation is essential, it is only one side of the equation; the other side is the usage of the token. As mentioned by @you425, if we do not concurrently establish strong and robust mechanisms to increase demand for $ASTR, we will ultimately be heading toward our own downfall.
While I understand that your proposal focuses solely on inflation mitigation (taking it one step at a time), in my opinion, we should also work on the other aspect (mechanisms to increase demand) to ensure we are prepared, if not already operational, when we deploy Tokenomics V3 on the mainnet.
Additionally, @you425’s proposal to ultimately limit inflation to a very low rate (0.5%) instead of a fixed amount of tokens could be a viable alternative, provided we manage to implement mechanisms that generate enough BB&B to absorb the remaining inflation (similar to what was observed on Ethereum last year).
I would like to address a small misunderstanding between the two of you regarding LST dApps such as Neemo, Astake, and Algem.
LST protocols finance themselves by taking a percentage of the rewards generated by their interest-bearing tokens (the industry average is about 10% of the incurred interest). Therefore, their models are typically self-sustainable if sufficient adoption of their LSTs is achieved.
The CoC prohibits the use of dApp income as their primary or sole source of income. As you both can see, LST dApps do not conflict with this requirement since, in theory, their main source of income comes from the fees collected on user rewards generated by their LSTs.
Additionally, each LST token can be viewed as a combination of 1 ASTR plus its staking rewards since minting. Thus, whether the dApp is part of the dApp staking system or not does not change the fact that, ultimately, the yield on the LST token originate from the staking of user ASTRs, not from the dApp staking income’s.
It is worth noting that some LST protocols, such as Astake (I am not sure if Neemo or Algem do this as well), use a portion of their dApp staking income to slightly increase the interest rate of their interest-bearing tokens as an incentive for adoption. In the case of Astake, this portion was discussed beforehand with the ACC during the dApp staking program integration assessment and was deemed acceptable, as it promotes additional staking without hindering the dApp’s capacity to remain sustainable and develop.
@Adam_Astake please feel free to correct me if i’m missing or am mistaken on something
@Mouthmouth68 san. You are absolutely right. Astake is sustainable through fees taken from user-generated yield. We do not rely on dApp staking rewards as our primary or sole source of income.
And yes, our plan to allocate a portion of our dApp staking rewards to enhance APR is a deliberate incentive designed to attract more users and promote broader ASTR staking. This approach has been discussed with and approved by the ACC.
While changes in APR may influence user returns, they do not have a significant impact on our user base. LST projects remain attractive as they offer users greater flexibility and improved capital efficiency - and promote additional staking.
Since the day it was discussed on the forum, the change in tokenomics has been embraced by the Turkish community. Although there is no visible price movement (due to the general market situation and the high dominance of bitcoins), they are happy that the supply has been limited. For many years, many community members have been demanding a limit on supply. Apparently, this development has taken hold in the community. Thanks again for the suggestion!
Noting all the references to the code of conduct regarding the purpose of Dapp Staking rewards, I haven’t seen this question replied to in the thread.
Objectively, what is the unique selling point (USP) of Astar in the new proposed world vs building on other blockchains like Soneium, other OP chains, Moonbeam, or any other smart contract chain with integration to Ethereum and/or Polkadot?
This USP needs to be constantly repeated and aligned with so that every design decision is focused on a common goal, otherwise we are just hoping that Astar gets chosen for sentimental reasons. Hope is not a strategy.
Currently, I am participating in a discussion about community-driven development among people who want to develop dapps on Astar.
(The community name is “Neo Tokyo Punks.”)
They are not backed by any particular company, but are driven by a common dream of developing various dApps.
They are currently investigating Astar’s dApp staking, thinking that it might help them realize their dream.
However, due to lack of funding, there is no clear flow showing whether they can realistically develop their dApp with the current dApp staking model.
After checking the code of conduct, it seems almost impossible for them to proceed with development, and the discussion is at an impasse.
How can community-driven dApp developers like them, or talented individual developers, actually proceed with development by leveraging Astar’s dApp staking?
I think a model flow needs to be presented.
How should they make a living during the development period?
Also, when and by what criteria should the dApp be delisted after development is completed?
dApp staking is a great feature, but there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding it, which we believe is one of the main reasons why the Astar ecosystem has not expanded sufficiently.
To ensure the health of dApp Staking, Community Treasury and Astar Core Contributors should be delisted from the dApp Staking program.
The reason is simple: they are not actual dApps, and thus their presence undermines Astar’s original purpose—supporting dApp developers.
The fact that these entities remained in Tier 1 for three years may have been a major factor that hindered the growth of the Astar ecosystem.
To achieve Astar’s original mission of improving developer incentive structures, all issues related to dApp Staking must be resolved.
Unless this leads to a stronger Astar ecosystem and increased demand for ASTR, I believe there can be no true success for Astar.
A blockchain that has lost its vision has no place in this world.
Hello @AstarPunks and @priceylife, allow me to join this conversation to clarify the topic and help steer the discussion back to the main subject: Change ASTR Tokenomics to Fixed Supply, rather than underlying matters.
Astar dApp Staking was created with the goal of being an incentive system for developers interested in building on our Astar Network, and to support them in the development of their projects. This has been the case since the beginning and continues to be so. Broadly speaking, the system is simple: developers submit their projects, stakers support them, and both receive a basic incentive. As the developer improves their project, they attract new stakers. Simple and effective. With this system, we’ve supported dozens of projects that have participated since Astar’s early days.
In addition, from the Astar Foundation, we’ve created the UCG program, another system that understands the needs of projects and boosts them within Astar dApp Staking so they can receive a higher percentage of incentives during their early stages. With a staking grant of 25M ASTR tokens, this program helps move projects from Tier 4 to Tier 3. This system is available to any early-stage project, and many projects currently in higher tiers have used it, we’re glad to see it working effectively.
With all of this, I hope it’s clear that Astar has had a structured incentive system in place for years, one that continues to improve over time. We now have the Astar Community Council, a team dedicated to the sustainable growth of the Astar ecosystem, constantly exploring new ways to support projects and users.
Lastly, the Astar Financial Committee (AFC) will soon be activated to focus specifically on increasing the value of our treasury in order to support more projects, builders, and our community overall.
I hope this information has helped minimize as much uncertainty as possible. Now, let’s try to keep the conversation focused on the main proposal: Change ASTR Tokenomics to Fixed Supply.
It really reassuring me that core team responded that we have not lost our goal of improving developer incentives through Astar’s original purpose, Dapp Staking.
I would also like to thank the explanation of the UCG program related to Dapp Staking.
Based on the information provided, I would like to rethink the direction of this discussion within the community.
However, I do not think that discussing Dapp Staking is beyond the discussion of this proposal.
Ultimately, this proposal suggests a phase-out of Dapp Staking, and I understand that this argument is based on choosing to maintain Dapp staking or move a fixed supply of tokens.
Thanks for the detail and links with respect to Dapp staking, but I’m not sure you replied to my main point about what the USP of Astar is going to be in the new world being proposed by this tokenomics change.
What is the objective (ie non-sentimental) reason for developers to choose Astar over other smart contract chains?
What do you get with Astar that you don’t get elsewhere, and does these tokenomics proposals help enhance these factors?
Astar is a collective driving Web3 adoption by connecting people through blockchain technology, business innovation, decentralized applications, and seamless digital experiences. To a large extent, we are achieving this through the growing adoption of the ASTR token, we’re seeing more and more applications integrating our token and giving it diverse use cases.
The Astar Collective, through Soneium, enables more users to adopt crypto and have a first interaction with blockchain through gaming, consumer apps, and more, all using the ASTR token. This is adoption.
If this proposal is positively approved by the community, our value proposition will remain the same, but even stronger: Astar will be further established as the layer for staking and governance with a strong, widely adopted token, while Soneium will grow stronger in user acquisition.
This is our greatest value: the Astar Collective itself.
In my opinion the benefits are many. Through Astar you have access to several tools for developers to facilitate the realization of your project. Several partnerships obtained in the previous months are of a very high level such as Chainlink, Sequence, Thirdweb, Alchemy, Altlayer and many many others.
Not only that, Astar remains mainly the Parachain and goes hand in hand with the developments of Polkadot which I consider an environment focused even more on developers.
Talking about what they would find on Astar compared to other ecosystems, both Startale and Sony Block Solutions immediately come to mind. Visibility and support in a nascent ecosystem that has already demonstrated impressive growth in just 6 months.
Sony’s efforts in the crypto market will not go unnoticed, and having an updated tokenomics aligned with the progress of blockchain technology adoption can only benefit it.
Plus dApp staking
Again I appreciate you taking the time to reply, but you again haven’t explained the USP of Astar. You’ve just described some of things Astar does which aren’t unique; like having staking, governance and a token.
You also mention Soneium a lot, but that only launched recently and Astar was around for years prior.
I accept that maybe anything pre-Soneium was all a trial and user-base growth for the eventual Sony entrance to web3, but talking about Soneium is not talking about Astar.
I presume a developer can build on Soneium directly, accept ETH for gas, and never really need to deal with ASTR or Astar Network at all. There are probably other ways to bridge to Polkadot eco that don’t involve going through Astar as well.
So again this takes us back to my original question, what is the USP of Astar?
Thanks for this, it seems that your answer to the question about Astar’s USP is twofold:
developer tooling on the polkadot side
resources and reach provided by Soneium
I’m still worried that there isn’t an organic enough reason to buy ASTR for anything beyond marketing gimmicks, and that blockchains will increasingly accept stable coins for payment natively which means the need for additional tokens goes down further.
Already on Polkadot there are examples of gasless transactions involving stable coins, which is great UX for the end user.
With Polkadot requiring DOT for core time and relay chain transactions, and Soneium requiring ETH for gas when settling back up to the L1, I’m less optimistic on the future for other tokens unless customers/users are forced or incentivised to transact with them, and that the friction this creates in the UX is made worthwhile by the product/service they get in exchange. So far I haven’t seen any of this except for Defi yields as part of ACS campaigns, although these rewards are meaningless is ASTR loses value vs other tokens.
Sony is acting based on its own strategy, and there is no doubt that it is supporting Astar. However, it is unlikely that Sony would sacrifice its own interests for the sake of Astar.
This fact is clear from the decision of Soneium to reject becoming an Astar L2 and instead choose to become an Ethereum L2.
Furthermore, if this proposal moves forward, Dapp Staking will be gradually phased out, and as a result, Dapp Staking will likely become increasingly worthless — not only for Sony, but for anyone else as well.
Losing one of Astar’s key features, Dapp Staking, for contributing to Sony is not partnership. It’s submission.
It is true that there are currently various challenges with dApp staking.
However, giving up on the development of the Astar ecosystem and dApp staking before these issues are resolved and tangible results are observed is clearly premature.
Because it seems like a solvable problem.
I believe that the development of the Astar ecosystem should take priority over the value of the ASTR token.
After all, only the token value that results from a Astar ecosystem holds true value, doesn’t it?
Here we can see a bit of the centralization needed to optimize the project. With this I would like to underline the fact that as already happened before Startale asks for a primary use of the ASTR token in new applications made by developers.
Even if Polkadot allows this type of gasless/stable paid transactions I don’t see why with the progress of developments also on ethereum ASTR can’t be used as an underlying token for 2 situations:
Payment of fees (Account Abstraction and payments with customizable tokens)
Used as an underlying for the transfer of value.
example: user A sends 1$ to user B, user interface shows 1$ the app moves the equivalent in astr. The example only includes payments for services and not transactions to increase your capital like dApp staking or DeFi. I imagine it as a payment for Your daily coffee or any other need You might have during the day.
We cannot forget that having a usable product, Startale Cloud and other services to implement BC in companies, the resulting profits can be safely used for buyback & burn, also increasing the interest of investors.
The possibilities are many also because the technology is getting closer and closer to a level of interaction where the end user does not even know that he is using the blockchain, it will only be up to Astar / Startale / Soneium to make space and be the leader of the Asian sector and till now I’m really confident they are going into the right direction.
I partially agree. Sony is also exploring something unknown and advice from experts like Startale is needed to avoid making them take missteps that can lead to losses of image and capital.
Frankly I don’t even see the point of becoming a layer 2 of Astar. Sony is a giant and has enough money to go on any blockchain or any layer if they want. My opinion here is based on the guarantees and trust of the chosen project and Ethereum is the majority of Web3 as far as daily use is concerned.
Here too I see sense in emphasizing the centralization necessary to advance Astar. If teams will have to implement ASTR in dApps, interest in dApp staking comes immediately as a next step.
Now in my opinion we look at dApp staking as a not very useful program and I believe that it also depends on tokenomics and the price of the token. In the imaginary case where a team manages to easily support the developments I believe that the idea of dApp Staking would be appreciated much more. This comes from optimizing the guidelines and especially the tokenomics.
I also partially agree with you.
And I appreciate that you provided me with a new perspective.
Currently, the Soneium For All project is underway, which, as you might expect, will provide opportunities to develop dApps on Soneium that use ASTR, ultimately helping to foster interest in dApp Staking.
But for this to happen, dApp staking must be attractive to developers.
I agree that optimization of the guidelines is necessary.
As I have already stated, the Community Treasury and Astar Core Contributors should be excluded from the dApp Staking program.
Funds collected from stakers should be passed directly from the stakers to the developers.
What I don’t agree with is the claim that this Tokenomics 3.0 proposal improves the functionality of dApp staking.
I would appreciate it if you could elaborate further.
Also, I am strongly drawn to Astar because I support the decentralization proposed by Gavin Wood.
I would also appreciate it if you could explain your argument that centralization is necessary for Astar.
Has Web3’s original vision of “giving power back to the individual from organizational structures” already been lost?
