SIP-00XX The 3 Critical Price Impacting Changes Requested By The Community

Bitocracy SIP | Sovryn Improvement Proposals
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Thank you for clarifying some of the points raised.

However, the essential issues seem to remain both the lack of true decentralized community governance and the team stubborness preventing it to adapt course, or is it other agendas, I don’t know, but it starts to feel like the latter.

I do know D Man has been in dialogue over multiple issues for at least over a year now, and now finally tried to set a “make-or-break situation” in motion before it’s all too late and Sovryn its time is up.

And given the huge response so far, both BCW and non-BCW, some not in favor and some in favor on both respective “sides”, I would say it’s up to the undivided overall Sovryn community now to start critically re-thinking, questioning and acting upon this SIP.

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Fully agreed. Respect.

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no further edits, this thing must be acted upon asap.

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fuck you moders for editing my message to “deleted by author”. FUCK YOU!

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Fully agree. Things need to be changed.

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BCW has contributed some super-gem individuals to the community and I appreciate the few of you who have been active in good-faith communication over the past year. I also hope many of you others will become more active in our community, independent of whether d-man posts and tells you to comment or not. This will help us break the lines between being exclusively BCW or Sovryn.

Here are a few critiques of the proposal:

  1. UI/UX: Saying UI/UX needs to be fixed is not a proposal, it’s a demand with no substance that doesn’t assist the team at all. For context:

    • We recently hired a third party branding agency to refine the Sovryn brand, identity and look. This is estimated to take 12-16 weeks and should include a revamping of the website (but not yet the DAPP). We’re probably in week 2-3, so a ways to go. We don’t yet know what this will look like but it could have material change to our identity, logo, colors, images etc. Can we really re-design a new UI/UX if it risks being incongruent to this work and missing this newly created material?
    • Perhaps we could start a new UX in parallel to this branding? I agree that would be great! But we have severely limited resources internally and are looking to hire as much good talent as we can already.
    • Alternatively, what if BCW team asks in their 250K person community for some tangible UI/UX proposals? It would be great if you submitted some actual design-boards, or mock-ups or wire-frames or actual experienced talent. If you don’t have talent internally, it would be amazing if you spend a little bit of money and hire a third party agency to create a sample UI/UX then bring the images to us for inspiration or a proposal for Exchequer to fund? Sovryn can take on the bulk of this but having it kick-started for us would be really helpful!
    • UI/UX is also subject to technical limitations. Many of which we may not be able to fix until we get to roll-ups which likely won’t be until EOY at earliest.
    • Understand fixing UI/UX isn’t simply saying ‘see how simple Google’s search page is! We need it like this!’

  2. Staking: This proposal is lacking adversarial thinking and appears to be modeled to best suit early investors (not founding members) opposed to the long term protocol itself. A few considerations:

    • If we remove the lock-up & penalty, how do we prevent against flash-loan attacks where in the future someone could borrow large amounts of $SOV, vote, then repay the loan all in a single block to manipulate a proposal. This is a real attack and has occurred before. If you can freely un-stake it allows these flash loans attacks to ensue and is a major governance risk.
    • Perhaps instead we could go with a model discussed here where there is no penalty to un-stake, but it’s time weighted so the longer you’ve held the more VP you have. For one thing, this doesn’t eliminate the risk of flash-loan attacks, but it could possibly hedge against it. Regardless, another problem exists. In this model how do you prevent OG mega-whales from gaining insurmountable power with no future commitment to the protocol? On-top of that, since most of the team shares are not even unlocked yet (meaning they are still on a vesting locked contract), it means they are not liquid and would not be able to generate this early VP under this model to gain ground on the early BCW investors. The real beneficiaries of this proposal are the early whales who would possibly have even more power than the founding members. It could grant people who don’t really have understanding of the protocol mechanics un-touched power over voting and revenue and is another governance attack vector.
    • The next proposal on staking is to allow holders to share in revenue. Unfortunately, this would obliterate the token price floor on $SOV as it drastically reduces the ‘value investing’ aspect that currently exists. At the moment the revenues being generated by the platform are very low. But the token price is so low as well that you can buy $SOV today, max stake it for 3 years and make a pretty reasonable yield in rBTC paid weekly, plus you get SIP24 rewards paid in liquid $SOV. Those of us that have run the numbers are doing this and essentially bolstering the floor on the SOV token. And so even if the token price drops further, it theoretically will have a soft floor because of the yield in rBTC that can be earned by stakers. This is as opposed to a memecoin which can literally go to zero with no value backing it up. So, if we add holders to the revenue share it massively dilutes the yield any given person could earn on $SOV because it’s shared across a far, far larger pool. This basically eliminates the incentive to buy $SOV when the price has fully capitulated as it has now. This is how we truly run the token into $0.

  3. Token Burn or Lock-Up: This is one part of the proposal that I am open to digging into more. Tokenomics have been a recurring issue since inception. But there are some other things to consider:

    • A burn is likely a bad idea. Most burns work because they are buying the token off the circulating supply, then burning it. So, you’re increasing the price first and foremost by reducing circulating supply, then burning to indicate it cannot re-enter the market. In order to execute this strategy we need excess balance sheet capacity or a ton of fees; neither of which we have at the moment. Instead, the burn being proposed here is just to burn tokens on our future balance sheet, which are not in the circulating market. So, the impact would be primarily for people that read Tokenomics and see the change between the old and new. This probably isn’t a huge amount of people. However, I do agree this could be a signal and a psychological cue to buy more $SOV for those that do, ultimately this strategy in it of itself it won’t directly increase $SOV price as other burns have. So people need to temper expectations on how impactful this strategy would be.
    • Additionally, doing a burn increases the centralization risk. You give more power to VC’s, which would subject us to Jack Dorsey’s meme that ‘Web3 is owned by VC’s’. This is a delicate balance. VC’s do play a role and are necessary to boot-strap protocols with early funding, but if you swing too far on one of the pendulum and raise too much money or burn too many tokens, you risk falling victim to this legitimate issue. Right now we’re comfortable with doing another fundraising round with new partners. But adding a significant burn of our future balance sheet token does absolutely run the risk of adding centralization attack vector.
    • Regarding the teams 25% token allocation, since Day 1 Yago has been very clear and transparent that protocols which typically have found success are those which are shepherded by a core team of founders. I personally have no issue with the founders having a large stake and frankly 25% compared to many other projects is actually quite a small allocation to founding team member. While I agree that no single party or small elite group should control votes, to some extent we are investing in them and they are by far the most qualified and in the know to make more weighted decisions on voting. I would be deeply disturbed if the founding and core team members didn’t have a sizable vesting interest.
    • Next point, you say we’ve raised all this money and can pay for everything directly off our balance sheet. Sorry, but this really isn’t true. We’re not brimming with money on our balance sheet. We have a lot of expenses and are looking to invest a lot of the next few years. Yes, we’re in a safe secure position at the moment but frankly a multi-year extended bear market would stretch our balance sheet extremely thin and put the protocol at risk of bankrupting itself. So proposing that we just pay for everything out of pocket is just not the reality of the situation.
    • Ultimately, I’d be open to lengthening the vesting contracts on things like Founding members tokens and to some extent on the Adoption and Development funds (but definitely not 10 years on Adoption and Dev). All things considered a burn seems like the wrong call to me, but a vesting extension may be reasonable.

Ultimately, while people claim that this proposal and conversations in the Dojo were meant to help, the reality is it was a complete cluster-f*** and I’m disappointed by all sides. On the Sovryn side I think there probably is some pride and ego that is coming out when we get attacked and I’m part of that problem. But on the BCW side there are honestly a lot of un-educated takes which are missing tons of information, while bombarding us with bot-like shit-posts that make it extremely difficult to even reply.

Stay Sovryn!

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Glad to see the thread restored.

Changes are needed - the involvement of many people here clearly shows that.

However, it seems to me that it is worth giving all of us some time to cool down, think and work out solutions that will be a necessary compromise. The discussion itself, with about a quarter of a thousand messages, is already very difficult to follow, and the very proposal we are discussing here has three main threads.

I still believe that these discussions should be separated and solutions that can be included in the already more precise, ready to vote SIP.

Haste makes waste!

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Out of topic, but good marketing opportunity I think

Putting some love here won’t hurt a true Sovrynian :slightly_smiling_face:

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We are at a crossroads, this is perhaps the most active and intense sovryn discussion I’ve seen. We are divided and divided we fall. @yagu we need you to unify us somehow. We don’t need to all be happy with the result. We all need to see a clear path to success! Perhaps @yagu, you could put together a sip quickly that encompasses and addresses these 3 concerns that D has brought to the table. 1.) ui/ux 2.) tokenomics 3.) restoring confidence in solidarity between core team and the investor community (right or wrong, many are distrustful of core team and what they are doing).
Then we could see how far off Yagu and D’man’s ideas are from each other.
I am BCW follower, serious sovryn investor. I like D’s proposal, I am open it supporting it. I would like to know more from you @D in your proposal how you would protect against malicious vote attacks if staking were removed
I would also like to see how @Yagu you would resolve these core concerns differently. At the end of the day, nobody has to like each other, but we need to be united in a clear vision and roadmap of success. Otherwise, I fear the collapse of the community would severely hurt SOV and this genius project!

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The Bitcocracy was never designed to be a democracy. Was specifically designed as a security measure to prevent an attack/threat from a bad actor, regulator or government. The censorship resistance from such attacks is what gives Sovryn its unique value. One of the reasons I think Sovryn has value prospects much bigger than any other DeFi project out there is for this key reason.

Sovryn’s Key Principles:

  1. Censorship Resistance
    Sovryn cannot arbitrarily stop, or freeze transactions.
  2. Self Custody
    Sovryn cannot seize or control user funds.
  3. Transparency
    Sovryn rules set and code are open-source and visible to all.
  4. Programmatic
    All Sovryn rules are enforced objectively and uniformly by code.
  5. Permissionless
    Participation is voluntary and open to all.
  6. Pseudonymous
    Sovryn preserves open access and privacy by allowing pseudonymous participation.
  7. Low Time Preference
    Sovryn incentivizes long-term commitment and thinking
  8. Game Theory Compatible
    Sovryn incentivizes positive-sum outcomes by requiring skin-in-the-game from participants, where economic rewards and punishments enforce desired outcomes.

The Sovryn Mission:

Sovryn is creating an open, fair, and transparent financial system for the world. Bitcoin empowers individuals with monetary self-sovereignty by providing a decentralised and censorship-resistant form of digital currency. Sovryn enables people to expand upon the monetary freedom afforded by Bitcoin to achieve complete financial self-sovereignty.

This idea we are suppose to all be holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” around a campfire all agreement is not desirable for a project with such a grand ambition. Some of us who hold/stake SOV are Sovryn and some are here to just trying to tag along for the ride. Fine tag along but stop getting in the way. Even better feel free to contribute, take actionable steps on your ides/proposals and the Sovryn Team/DAO may be able to support your efforts. But theres so much to build such as a flashy welcoming UI/UX, an entire Rebrand, Limit Orders, Perpetuals, Zero, ZK-rollup tech, Privacy features, Bitcoin DeFi pension products, decentralised prediction markets, Bitcoin DeFi insurance, Bitcoin inheritance contracts, Sovryn crypto credit cards, Bitcoin Bonds, Sovryn Mobile App etc. Theres a very real possibility that ZK-rollups could be the way Bitcoin scales expressive smart contracts meaning that the Sovryn protocol is very well positioned in that case to be the financial operating system for Bitcoin.

Maybe I am in dream land, being too idealistic and living in hopium but I wouldn’t have joined this project if I didn’t believe these things could become a reality.

If you believe theres improvements to be made in the tokenomics or staking or UI/UX. By all means write proposals on the forum, make your suggestions but understand its only going to be approved if it brings value to the Sovryn protocol and the details of the proposal are well thought out. Vague proposals with little to no explanations given should not be taken seriously.

  1. UI/UX that can easily be pushed to priority and doesn’t require a SIP. I never liked the UI/UX but I always understood the project was in Alpha. I do look forward to what Beta brings.

  2. Tokenomics: I do agree tokenomics maybe an issue in short term but also I aint smart enough to comment how much the effect is. I do understand considerable amount of SOV are locked up in Staking and Vesting contracts (which I assume many forget to take into account). I personally dont like how the current Yield Farm rewards are vested for 10 months which just perpetuates the negative experience LPing in Sovryn. So i agree with a rethink of tokenomics with some cost/benefit analysis I could approve for such a SIP.

  3. Why would any serious SOV staker approve such a SIP that puts the whole protocol at risk from an attack/threat by unlocking stake? Either the person who wrote the SIP doesnt understand how the sovryn protocol is designed or just doesnt care about security of the protocol.

Now heres a short term solution that may relieve peoples anxiety/concerns. Maybe this is what the community really wants to hear more than anything:

Let’s ask the Sovryn Team for a clear step by step Roadmap for Development and Marketing/Adoption. I think this frustration is primarily due to delays of product launches and dates not kept which has made many of the community impatient (understandably so). A detailed plan of action so team can be held accountable towards their goals for the coming weeks/months.

But what do I know, my 2 sats.

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Thank you for a well-thought-out, positive contribution to the discussion. It’s kinda shocking to see how little actual analysis has been offered. 90% of the posts have just been people expressing an opinion. We’re not voting on this forum, and nobody really cares about someone’s opinion! Offer a detailed, well-constructed argument if you want to advance the discussion.

“The UI/UX is terrible” is not an argument, and it’s not constructive. As an example of a constructive suggestion, I love dseroy’s suggestion of putting in some funds or expertise to actually draw up a wireframe. At the very least, start a thread where we can all weigh in on precisely what we think is wrong with the UI/UX. Make constructive suggestions. This would provide a gold mine of value to the team trying to improve the UI/UX!

“The tokenomics are terrible.” Instead of offering hand-waving discussion about burns and locks, get down into the weeds and provide a serious analysis of the costs and benefits of specific adjustments. For example, how can we take seriously a proposal to burn tokens if there is no discussion about how that will happen and what effect it might have on the balance sheet and the governance decentralization? I have seen so many complaints about tokenomics, but the reality is that the release schedule only has tokens doubling in the next year. We only need to double the value over that period to cancel that out. Adoption doesn’t happen in a smooth line. It happens when projects are ready to be released. We are right on the verge of releasing some important products, and then we should see a big boost in adoption.

Just complaining does nothing to provide value and only discourages the people who are working very hard to bring value to the project. In fact, for a lot of people work probably slowed down significantly while we read through and digested this crazy long thread.

There is a massive amount of brain power and motivation represented in this forum and thread. We can do better to put our minds to the problem and do some deep thinking about the issues and proposing real solutions that are backed by strong and detailed arguments – stronger than “I agree!”

And we need to stop with the ad-hominem arguments. Demonstrate your good faith by working hard on the project and working hard to provide actionable input and solid analysis of proposed changes. Otherwise, why should anyone take you seriously?

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I learned more about Sovryn in this response than in most previous written content! Thank you!

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100% for splitting three three topics into separate SIPs. For what it’s worth, I’d vote for a slowing down of emissions and a specifix UX proposal with desigh boards, ideally an A/B/C choice or so. I’d vote against the staking unlock, because you are either a staker or a trader, can’t have it both. The SOV staking logic is one of the best incentive structure in DeFi. In Alpha stage we are essentially Angel Investors in SEED stage if this was a web 2.0 start-up - with very long time horizons, and should be locked up as such, if we want to expand our voting power.

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Yes to be very clear, I don’t think we need to kum bay ya. I think we need to have on a utilitarian level a clear belief in sovryn’s path to success and at least a modicum of confidence in the leadership. I am not saying that the current distrust in leadership is justified, though it may be. I am saying we need @yagu to lead us out of the FUD, so we can maintain the strong level of support for the project that the sovryn community is known for.

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Hi, when I read your fist paragraph I feel how you want to describe how great Sovryn is but in reality you described how bad it is :slight_smile:

If bitocracy or any DAO voting is not democracy why we bother?
If dev team can overvote all other hodlers why we bother and why you think Sovryn is censorship resistant? Gov can target very few people in dev team to ‘fix’ Sovryn.

So although you wrote nice long post we should turn back to the core. How to manage this ‘DAO’, why ppl have voting power if it is non necessary for them to vote as dev team will overvote them in all cases. On other hand if dev team loose the majority of votes how this project will evolve? If some SIP like this will be voted for, who will implement it? Who has keys to deploy smart contracts? These are the main questions.

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A good example of how another project are putting governance in the hands of the token holders. Well done Hydradx (google hydradx omnipool) who actually increased the voting power of community.

The importance of governance in the context of HydraDX cannot be stressed enough.
With the tripling of all HDX balances, the decision-making power of early HDX owners outweighs the voting power of team and investors . This means that any HDX holder can initiate a referendum which, if approved by the larger community, may have far-reaching consequences for the protocol .
Runtime upgrades are the first obvious example of how powerful Substrate governance is. Referenda can be used to push code changes which alter the logic of the Omnipool or any other piece of functionality. In the context of HydraDX, governance gives HDX owners the right to decide the fate of all liquidity held by the protocol. Other important areas where HDX owners will have the final say is deciding which assets are allowed to enter or exit the Omnipool , as well as rates allocation - how much to and to whom?

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In a democracy, a lot of idiots have a say. The power lies within those that can manipulate other people. In our bitcocracy, the ones have a say that are financially tied to their decisions. The team holds a lot of voting power. But the staking system allows anyone to 10x their voting power versus the team by locking up their tokens longer. There’s 20 million SOV on the open market. Buy it, stake it for 3 years and boom you own 200 million Voting Power, more than is currently in existence. Who knows, if you did it you might think differently about the recents claims in this thread? It appears that most stakers do. So far most people crying here have no stake in the bitocracy and want to manipulate for short term price action or be able to leave without a loss.

Wanna change Sovryn? GO lock up your SOV for 3 years and change it. If more people did this, the team could not hold the majority of voting power. The price would be different too. We could only achieve things if we find a common ground and different groups come together. That’s how it will hopefully work in the future. By now the system proves to be resilient. The majority is not measured by how loud a crowd cries here.

If you don’t have Voting Power, you can’t affect decisions. You may share user feedback but you are not a part of our bitocracy. We are Sovryn. Simple as that.

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Democracy isn’t bad politics, its bad math. A thousand corrupt people is just as bad as one corrupt person. This is why Sovryn should be designed more like a Republic and I believe it is. A republic is based on the rule of principles, or rule of law. America is not a democracy, its a republic. The voting system, with the electors college, gives small states a powerful voice in the republic as the larger more populated states. The smaller farm states don’t get their voice drowned out by the city crowd in LA.
I think Dman has some fantastic ideas to help Sovryn get on its feet. But if the leader of any group could come in with the powerful influence of his followers and easily sway the direction of the protocol in his direction, no matter how good his ideas or intentions, it would also show the vulnerability of the protocol as far as I can tell.
I do think the community needs a bigger voice. As it stands, I rarely see a need to vote with my staking influence because it is always 99% in one direction. But I also don’t think it would be good if the community could too easily influence the outcome.

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This is TERRIBLE idea.

This sip if it would be powerful for a change must be completed as ONE, in a package.

I’ll tell you what will happen if separated:

  1. ux will be done
  2. staking will be commented out by the stakers.
  3. tokenomics simply won’t be done.

And we are where?

3 feet ahead instead of 300 feet ahead.
For UX UI I smashed it inside his head already, Yago will do it anyway already… I talk for over a year about that thing…

So… you want to vote on something, feel significant, vote.

But if you want to CHANGE something for better, keep these 3 as a pack.

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Ill bet, that most stakers will never vote yes to that “package”. We like our staking rewards, and it is at least half of the reason I traded some of my precious bitcoin for SOV. Stakers have 17million in voting power.

I could almost guarantee you, your “package” will not pass because of staking stipulation. You want to change something, negotiate with voters, not with devs.

Also, Sovryn changing Bitocracy will look pretty silly honestly. I mean, some people think this is going to be a huge project (someone said a trillion dollar project), and the Bitocracy and tokenomics change because of 1 guys “package”?

I can see devs deciding lock up funds in good faith, some of the funds @Sacro has posted in Telegram, discord, and on the forum… but actually changing supply? This is supposed to be a “Bitcoin project”. Do bitcoiners believe in token changes? No serious bitcoiner will trust the project when we are doing token burns like “Shiba Cum Rocket 9000 Casino coin”. Youll have to start marketing Sovryn as Shitcoin on Bitcoin :stuck_out_tongue:

Same thing with Bitocracy. I think @dseroy has made some good points that there isnt a good way of addressing. Not that I think it would pass anyway.

I kind of hope it goes up for a vote. This way when there is only a few million votes for and 15 million votes against, nobody can blame it on devs anymore.

This is obviously just my opinion, and like I said, im excited for it to go to a vote. We’ll see!

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