Thoughts on Sovryn as incubator

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I shared some of these thoughts internally and was encouraged to share them on the forum. I hope this will stimulate further thought, debate, and creative interaction that will lead us to a clearer future direction.

I am very skeptical of a model of simply being a launchpad for other projects, especially if the idea is to earn some of their tokens and hold them for gains.

Doing this would pressure us into working on projects that may not be philosophically aligned just so we can get revenue. At the same time it would put us in a position of having to evaluate projects for viability to be sure that receiving a slice of their income would pay off. Who on the team is skilled at this? I’m not sure anyone has this proven skill.

Experience shows that most projects lose value relative to BTC over time. We’d be better off just getting paid in BTC rather than in a token or a revenue stream. But that might not be possible from crypto projects that want to pay based on future potential.

Jumping into this new direction with both feet seems incredibly risky to me. What evidence do we have that a) we’re good at this and b) projects will choose to get our help? We’ve done this kind of thing with Origins and Babelfish, right? Babelfish is still going, but it’s not a huge source of revenue. We’re trying to do this with BOS, but it’s unclear yet whether this will pay off.

The experience with BOS is unique because the project grew out of an identified need from our own experience. I am more comfortable with pursuing projects that we identify because we have see a need for them. This is the only circumstance where we have a track record of promise. We could consider developing and spinning off projects like this. But it’s not immediately clear to me that it’s better to make them independent.

Finally, we’re already getting some revenue from our RSK dapp. I think it’s just as likely that RSK will grow after upgrading the POWpeg with BitVMX. I think we should at least maintain our presence on RSK and try to figure out low-cost, high-yield ways to make our products better on RSK while working on one or two high-promise projects that we have identified. We can raise funds with SOV for these projects and spin off if we want to keep the focus tight.

Bottom line:

  1. Let’s continue to support the launch of BitcoinOS and help make the BOS token as valuable as possible.

  2. As we consider how to allocate BOS, let’s negotiate an understanding with BitcoinOS that they will refer all projects in need of incubation and launch to Sovryn. Let’s see if any projects show up on our doorstep.

  3. Let’s continue to maintain our dapp on Rootstock and look for ways to boost liquidity so that we maintain our income stream there. According to @CEK, “Rootstock is starting to gain a lot of attention and has a very aggressive and promising roadmap for Q1/2025 (Cardano using Fairgate BitVMX, 5 seconds blocks, PowPeg evolving to 1-N BitVM bridge, boltz, etc)”. This seems like a relatively low-risk strategy to keep this alive and look for opportunities to unfold.

  4. While we do that, let’s identify a promising project or two of our own, projects that we ourselves have identified as a need or opportunity. Let’s incubate the projects and be prepared to launch using the launchpad structure we developed for BitcoinOS. We can decide as the project(s) develop whether to spin them off or maintain them as our primary activity.

  5. (4b) It would be great if we could set up a pre-deposit method where people could vote on their project of choice by locking funds for investment and using that to determine our direction, similar to @yago 's prediction market concept.

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I agree. RSK is starting to look promising. RSK already has a decent reputation. Moving to 5 second block times, and using 1-N bridge could position them very nicely.

A few Projects that may be of interest (IMO).

  1. A decent Perps
  2. A way for people to create their own LP’s and launch their own Token
  3. Boltz integration. Which according to team is already done, we were just waiting for RSK to integrate(Done)
  4. A real “Runes Marketplace”. With a way to add any rune and add your own LP, preferrably on a separate page in dapp so it doesn’t spam our “Convert” page.
  5. A launchpad (Like what we will do with BOS, but on RSK Dapp)
  6. Rebuild Zero. @One_digit said he has some ideas on this…

rationale:
(1.)and (4.) could provide a lot of trading volume, which could draw in users, and provide revenue, possibly a lot. I would also add, because POWA is used for runes LP and Sovryn still owns some POWA this could help fund different things if POWA appreciates.

(6.) Could possibly provide significant revenue if we can fix the redemption issue. It’s obvious Zero was a great idea, if we could fix redemption issue Sovryn could dominate this market.

(3.) Is a quality of life improvement, but could help marketing as well.

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& 3.
I absolutely agree with you here. Let’s make the most of what we have and maybe develop it even if slowly into something better. I wholeheartedly support this approach.

& 5. is an interesting idea.

we could start just with trying it again with a low redemption fee for a start - it has not been tried - market it again as a tool to generate a bitcoin backed stable coin not as a zero percent loan. I still think it’s worth a shot especially when the RSK update rolls out and maybe brings some liquidity and steam with it.

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