Redefining "DAPPS STAKING"

  1. Introduction

I am just an ASTR holder, an ordinary user without knowledge of Web3 norms, blockchain technology, or specialized expertise.
However, I feel that the current DAPPS STAKING mechanism is not beneficial for ASTR.
This is a conceptual proposal, but I hope it can spark discussions and contribute, even a little, to the development of ASTR.

Also, I’m not fluent in English, so please forgive any mistakes.


  1. Problem Statement

The original purpose of DAPPS STAKING was to create a system that directly rewards DAPPS developers, provides incentives to choose ASTR as their development chain, and attracts and fosters numerous developers and DAPPS.

But what is the current reality?

  • DAPPS that don’t commit to ASTR
  • Dormant, zombie DAPPS
  • DAPPS operating across multiple chains

These types of DAPPS dominate, and there are very few flagship DAPPS for ASTR or innovative, engaging DAPPS that truly commit to ASTR. The leading DAPPS in terms of votes are part of the core team, which isn’t even a DAPP.

Shouldn’t the costs of attracting DAPPS already operating on other chains be covered by grants or treasury funds instead?

Why has this happened?

  1. The goal has shifted from “creating” DAPPS to simply “collecting” them.
  2. The absolute amount of rewards is so small that it cannot be considered meaningful development support.
  3. The ASTR brand is not compelling enough to attract developers.

Additionally, the current role of ASTR is to support Soneium in the background.
Given this reality, the nature and purpose of DAPPS STAKING should be reimagined as follows.


  1. Proposal

I propose transforming DAPPS STAKING into a venture capital-like mechanism that provides seed funding to new developers and teams.

Conceptual Framework

(1) Requirements for Funded Developers:**

  • Must be a startup creating something new.
  • Upon DAPP completion, must deploy it on either Substrate or Sonium.

(2) Operational Role Allocation:**

  • SONY/SONEIUM should handle promotion and advertising (Startrail and ASTR should not).
  • Use the same format as DOT’s parachain auction, where votes lock ASTR, and staking rewards are given to voting holders.

(3) Rewards:**

  • Rewards should be paid in ASTR tokens.
  • Rewards should be provided as a one-time lump sum for seed funding, not distributed daily.
  • The reward amount should be a minimum of $200,000 USD, comparable to seed or Series A funding levels.

(4) Expected Outcomes:

  • The SONY/Soneium brand will attract developers.
  • Many native DAPPS committed to ASTR will emerge.
  • ASTR will be used as a base currency.
  • ASTR holders will receive staking rewards through voting.
  • ASTR holders will be encouraged to participate in the ecosystem.

This approach could foster startups with the potential and passion seen in projects like NEROX that commit to ASTR. By combining Sony’s influence with ASTR’s unique mechanisms, it may unlock the original value of the chain as a platform.

Especially for ASTR, securing utility and an essential position within Sonium is critical. By using ASTR to fund developers gathered by Sonium and ensuring their commitment to ASTR, ASTR can become the base currency and establish itself as Sonium’s most critical partner.

4 Likes

First of all, thanks a lot for creating this post. I will use my time to answer most of your questions and comments about improving dApp Staking.

Just to add, there has been a discussion already going to improve the dApp Staking reward system here: dApp staking rewards changes; if any questions related to this, you can best merge it in that thread where you can directly interact with our core engineer around dApp Staking.

That’s correct but you also need to add the users in this statement without dApps community or community support, they can’t earn any awards. Thats why this system has attractive APR to attract users to stake on projects.

I agree this can be an addition source to attract dApps. We have an onchain treasury that can be used for these initiatives so it would be great if we can have an agency with the right intentions to apply for treasury funds to help us attract dApps. We currently are using our own runway for initiatives. @TAKUMAYU where are you from? Do you know good agency that would be interested to supporting devs in your region?

dApp Staking is not designed to support a developer team and being indepent from this. A good project should also have a solid treasury to survive and not be dependent on a protocols grant system, this doesn’t work in any ecosystem. I don’t know any project that can build out a project and be top tier only from a grant.

dApp Staking is a grant system that is infinitive for a project to use, it offer infinitive incentive for the contributions you deliver to Astar. Funds can be used to rewards community, support marketing campaign, use as incentive, bonus, etc… It’s not designed to fund a full team and project operations.

Thanks for sharing your proposal. I have read it completely, but it would be more beneficial if the community replied first to the proposal instead of me. I prefer not to influence with my reaction.

I appreciate the time you put into writing this thread and hope to see more of more members here soon. Community voice is key!

4 Likes

very, very, very interesting, congratulations and thank you for your proposal, given that even in my vision there is something that is absolutely limiting… I don’t have enough specific technical knowledge to be able to define your proposal as feasible, for now I’ll limit myself looking at the answers from those who know more than me, I’m very curious to see this discussion… thanks again

Welcome and hello!
Glad to see you here.

Yes, I understand this point, but the Community Council is currently developing new guidelines for dApp Staking. This will change the listing criteria significantly.

Maarten is correct, there is already a treasury from which the funds can come from. However, there is no clear documentation about the application, so you may want to do that maintenance.

I think most of what you describe that follows would be a possible guideline for a grant from the Treasury rather than dApp Staking.

If you still want to change the form of dApp Staking, I think you should draw a more specific ecosystem flow. I don’t think you have to be a technical person to come up with that to some extent.

I believe that dApp Staking originally started as a “developer support” aspect, but now it is more of an “additional incentive to developers” aspect. I think the more OGs in particular are feeling this discrepancy.
Tokenomics changed at the time of the v3 transition, which changed the nature of the system significantly.

However, to some extent, I think we can take a middle ground between v2 and v3 in terms of the amount of rewards. After the guidelines currently being established by the Community Council are finalized, I think it will be possible to increase rewards for projects with low tiers but that are doing a good job by adjusting various parameters.

Hello
I felt that your courageous words were very meaningful.

dApp staking has elements of technical, philosophical, and economic debate.
If you proceed with the discussion all at once, you may not know what conclusion to make.

Some of the issues you have pointed out have already been discussed, while others require further discussion, so I feel that there is a mix of issues.

In order to develop concrete discussions, I felt that it was necessary to highlight the points at issue regarding the issues raised.
Personally, I think the content is interesting, so I hope that the discussion on dApp staking will deepen and feature development will become more active.

Thank you all for your feedback.
After hearing your opinions, I realized that my assumptions differ from yours.
I should have clarified from the outset that my proposal aims not only to address the challenges of DAPPS STAKING but also to resolve other issues ASTR faces by fundamentally transforming the concept of DAPPS STAKING.

Here is a summary of my conceptual proposal:

  1. The Original Purpose of DAPPS STAKING (as I see it)
    To provide development funds as rewards for developers, incentivizing them to choose ASTR as their blockchain.

  2. Issues with DAPPS STAKING (as I see them)
    (1)The current reward amount is insufficient to serve as development funding, making it unlikely to incentivize developers to build on ASTR.
    (2)There are very few promising DAPPS in the ecosystem.

  3. Broader Challenges Facing ASTR (as I see them)
    (3)ASTR lacks sufficient sales and marketing capabilities to attract developers.
    (4)ASTR’s positioning within Sonium is weak.

  4. Proposal to Redefine DAPPS STAKING
    To address these four issues, I propose redefining DAPPS STAKING as a venture capital-like system.

For Issue (1): Transform the system to provide significant seed funding, thereby creating a strong incentive to attract promising startups to ASTR.
For Issue (2): If the focus shifts to solving Issue 1, supporting existing DAPPS may no longer be necessary (an extreme view).
For Issue (3): Utilize the brand and capabilities of Sonium and Sony to attract developers.
For Issue (4): Have Sonium host the initiative, ASTR manage it, and structure the rewards in ASTR tokens. This approach would enhance ASTR’s utility and role.
For example, adopting a voting system similar to DOT auctions, where participants vote using ASTR tokens and winners receive seed funding, would allow ASTR holders to earn staking rewards while also promoting ecosystem participation.

This is the conceptual proposal I shared.

  1. Differing Views on the Purpose of DAPPS STAKING
    While unrelated to my proposal, I felt that Martin and YOU have differing perceptions of DAPPS STAKING’s purpose.
    It is critical for the core team, ambassadors, community members, and DAPPS developers to align on a unified understanding of its purpose.

Martin’s comment: “It is not designed to support developer teams but rather as a grant they can use freely” suggests that the purpose is to attract or retain already self-sufficient teams on ASTR.
YOU’s comment: Emphasizing “supporting developers and providing additional incentives” implies that the purpose is to provide direct assistance to developers.
I believe that achieving a shared understanding of DAPPS STAKING’s purpose is vital for the ecosystem’s success.

1 Like

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding. My and Maartin’s current perceptions of dApp Staking are in agreement. I perceived it as “developer support” in v2 and the current v3 as “incentive to developers”. I believe that the current amount of money is not enough to support developers, so it stands only as an additional incentive.

Going forward, I will comment according to what you think the concept (developer support) is, not according to the current definition of dApp Staking.

For Issue(1)

This requires thinking with Tokenomics as a whole, not just the dApp Staking system. If dApp Staking were to be changed as you propose, the way it would be funded would be to provide the current developer fee allocation as seed funding (13% of inflation).
In this case, approximately 75M ASTR per year ($4M at current prices) would be available for budgeting.
However, there is no budget for this at the beginning of the system change, so it would need to accumulate for some time.

Alternatively, you can decide to accumulate all the money in the treasury and contribute as needed. In this case, funds can be provided immediately after a system change.

For Issue(2)

I don’t know if issue (1) can be solved. Because there are plenty of blockchains that have more funding and can attract more (Monad, MegaETH, etc.). If the only incentive is to get initial development funding, they may not do sustained development.

For Issue(3)&(4)

Yes, I think it is important to formulate a strategy aligned to Soneium in the current situation. That is why Astar Surge and ACS. Also, just yesterday it was announced that ASTR will be used to protect Soneium. Soneium has only just launched and I am sure that many campaigns will be launched in the future.

This is close to the dApp Staking so far, but we recognize that if we adapt to what you want to do from what you have described so far, we will have the following differences from the current system.

  • Concentrate rewards on specific dApps by time period rather than passing rewards to multiple dApps
  • Rewards are passed on collectively, rather than per ERA

At this time, problems arise on various fronts.

  • What if there are no new projects seeking funding? (Staker staking location)
  • If you receive a lump sum of funding, it may disappear without being developed. In many cases, grants are milestone-based or have contractual restrictions on their use.
  • If there are few participants, the vote may be skewed by malicious projects or interested parties, making it easier to obtain funding.
  • How do you register and list eligible projects?

As such, I feel that this is not compatible with a system like dApp Staking that runs automatically.

Of course, I understand what you want to do, but I still think that if you are going to give some large sum of money to a project, it should be given carefully under on-chain governance. Treasury is a good source of funding for this, and also UCG using dApp Staking.

If you want to strengthen dApp Staking’s role as a developer support, it would be better to change the parameters of the system, as I have previously written in the Forum.

If you want to increase the frequency of seed funding, you could also change the inflation allocation to match the above parameter changes and reduce the current developer and staker fees and increase the treasury’s share.

4 Likes

I am of the opinion that there must be some changes to dApp staking, both to attract more developers and to ensure that developers funded by ASTR bring real value to ASTR. However, having said that, I wanted to focus on this point. If I have to be honest, I really like it, perhaps being able to integrate the system on soneium, in my opinion this point could be interesting if well studied, @Maarten what do you think?

You have good ideas, but the concept of redefining dApp staking from scratch has direct impacts on what Astar was designed to be.

Maarten explained that dApp staking is not a grant program. To address issue 1, Astar’s treasury is available to fund concrete proposals that make sense.

As a former member of Astar SpaceLabs, a bizdev collective aimed at onboarding dApps to Astar, I report that 100% of established dApps will only deploy on new chains if there are aggressive grants. On the other hand, very early-stage projects do not have a defined MVP that can guarantee ROI on the grants they request. Therefore, with a treasury that is not as abundant as leading L1s, only top-tier projects with defined ROIs for Astar should be eligible to receive grants (IMO).

UCG + dApp staking are interesting alternatives for builders starting their projects. However, the lack of interest from teams stems from their expectation of receiving enough funding to develop their projects relying solely on UCG + dApp staking revenue streams (ideally, teams should also seek alternative sources of revenue).

Regarding issues 3 and 4, it is essential for the ASTR community to become the Soneium community. This movement must originate from the ASTR community itself. Otherwise, another community and another token will dominate the ecosystem, and we will be left in the background. For this reason, I believe it is important that the ACS campaign is approved and succeeds to materialize these issues, 3 and 4.

(Treasury Proposal for ACS Campaign - #93 by Gaius_sama)

Thank you for participating, and welcome.

I completely agree with this point and feel a strong sense of urgency.

““it is essential for the ASTR community to become the Soneium community. This movement must originate from the ASTR community itself. Otherwise, another community and another token will dominate the ecosystem, and we will be left in the background””

To fully grasp this premise, I believe it is crucial to clarify:
What roles have Soneium and ASTR agreed upon in the Soneium mainnet?

So far, Soneium has made no explicit mention of ASTR.
This gives the impression that while ASTR may be treated as an infrastructure partner, it is not given any special status, nor has Soneium assigned it any specific role to fulfill.
In other words, securing a strong position within the Soneium ecosystem seems to be entirely ASTR’s own responsibility.

If this is indeed the case, then for ASTR’s survival, it is imperative to take significant risks, even within ACS, to secure its position. Additionally, a mechanism that integrates Soneium and ASTR, such as the conceptual DOT auction proposal I suggested, needs to be established.

What are the agreed-upon roles between Soneium and ASTR?

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Soneium’s status as a large corporate chain, Sony, makes it difficult to mention or give preferential treatment to specific tokens. For this reason, since around the time of the mainnet launch, there have been more references to Astar, but not to the tokens. I believe this will continue to be the case in the future.

So basically, as an Astar community, we need to make ASTR appealing, but since Soneium is developed by Startale and is closely related to Astar, we have a stronger partnership than it appears on the surface.

A number of Soneium projects are currently increasing their use cases for ASTR and have announced their use of ASTR for security in Soneium’s finality layer.

The dApp Staking could also include projects that use ASTR in Soneium. After organizing dApp Staking based on the guidelines currently being established by the Community Council, it may be possible to increase rewards for developers by changing various parameters.

Isn’t Polkadot’s CrowdLoan and dApp Staking already somewhat similar in content?
If it is to change it significantly, it needs to be designed to be viable.

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As stated in another thread (ref), Astar Foundation is taking all comments and issues raised lately regarding dApp Staking further.

While we are filtering all community discussions and internal discussions, a new proposal will be opened on the forum to further enhance it. To keep all information in one place, the upcoming thread that will be created begin next week will serve as source-of-truth related to discussions.

This topic will be closed after the new one is created.
In the meantime this topic will stay open but further comments will not be taken in consideration to speed up the draft. I would recommend to wait untill the new thread is opened to express further concerns.

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Hey @Maarten is there a new thread already or is it the one I am posting in Happy to support any token related eco design process.

1 Like

I’m still in the process of building a new thread but I first need to understand current development direction we want to pursue.

Reducing the tiers and slots can be done but would require a runtime upgrade and adjusting certain parameters needs to be fully tested and we have to look for possible edge cases. It will require well thought research.

Any support on that front would be very helpful, so it might be good to first open a thread related to token eco design for dApp Staking v4.

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Moved to: dApp Staking - Astar Foundation Proposal & Next steps