ah! good point
my understanding is that the supply will be 1B NAM
i’ve attached a couple of blog posts with screencaps of the relevant parts from these blog posts:
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can y’all expand on reason(s) you want to restrict the number of validators that can join the active set? it would be helpful if you compared the trade-offs
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In terms of upgrading software & voting proposals, it would be optimized by having smaller set of validators
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It is recommended to reduce the number of validators to less than 100 to speed up the mainnet process.
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Something like 120-150 validators could make things more manageable while still keeping things decentralized.
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250 Validator should be too much, max 150.
imo opening up the validator set seems more in keeping with the ethos of having an open network. benefits, for reference:
We’d like for Namada to have an active set of 255 validators to help ensure that the barrier to become a validator is relatively low. In our experience, stake tends to be sticky: once holders delegate, they often don’t later redelegate to different or new validators. If there’s less competition to be in the active set, we think that there will be a more level playing field for validators to attract delegations as early as possible, and our understanding is that 255 validators shouldn’t meaningfully decrease network performance.
As always, bouncing between performance and decentralization is the key😅. We used to play with the numbers of validators in previous testnets and mainnets. In one hand the “Larger Set” of 255 validators keeping the network open and inclusive, which is great for decentralization and doesn’t drastically impact performance. In another hand the “Smaller Set” - 120-150 validators- could enhance efficiency, making upgrades and decision-making faster and smoother.
I believe that 150 validators might be the ideal balance, keeping network both efficient and open.
Keen to hear more views from guys 
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If there is a comparison of Namada’s inflation problem with similar projects (eg osmosis or atom), it will clarify the issue to be discussed.
5% may be enough, but if 5% only has <100 validators, that’s equivalent to 10% for 200 validators.
Currently, this comparison is not enough to stimulate everyone to participate in the mainnet process.
I appreciate the thoughtful discussion, especially the part on shielded set rewards. Regarding the selection of assets for the shielded set, I believe we should consider the following criteria:
- Industry adoption: We should prioritize assets with widespread acceptance and usage in the broader crypto ecosystem. This could help attract more users to Namada and increase the overall utility of the shielded set.
- High-yield assets: Assets that already offer native yields, particularly staked assets, could be excellent candidates. By combining their native yields with NAM rewards, we could create a compelling value proposition for users to participate in the shielded set. This approach aligns with the point raised about Stride’s LSTs potentially being attractive for the shielded set.
I agree with @CosmicValidator that NAM or stNAM should be among the first assets in the shielded set. Additionally, considering assets from other major ecosystems like Ethereum (ETH, stETH) and potentially Bitcoin could help diversify the shielded set and attract a wider user base.
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wen TGE??? So many time
I hear the feedback on tokenomics here, and we will prioritize this - but I want to make sure that I/we understand what your expectations from a tokenomics post are, or what information you feel is specifically lacking. Tokenomics posts often include data like token issuance rates over time - but those rates are not being proposed by Heliax, they’re being discussed in this forum thread! The only thing we really plan to include in a tokenomics post is a description of the proposed genesis allocations - all other economic parameters are the subject of discussion here already. Is that (the proposed genesis allocations) the data that you are expecting, and that you think is necessary to reason about these parameters? Or are you expecting something else (and if so, what)?
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The genesis allocations which we plan to propose sum to a total of 1 billion NAM tokens (this has been discussed previously I believe, albeit not captured in a specific blog post). “Circulating supply” is a bit dependent on exact definitions, which vary - in our proposed mainnet phases, NAM would not be transferable until phase 5. How fast the phases progress is up to community governance. Does that help answer your question here, or are you looking for other information?
when people say “circulating,” i think they mean ‘how many tokens will be liquid’ when transfers are enabled
the trend these days is for new projects to lock up most of the network’s token supply, and the liquid tokens are considered the “circulating supply” (which i think tends to be beneficial for early token holders and at the cost of new stakeholders)
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I think when people are saying the tokenomics blogpost they refer to the distribution of the 1 Billion NAM tokens, what % of this 1 Billion NAM will be for the foundation, Heliax, investors, etc.? Just an additional doubt about this, it seems the allocations for the Community Builders round 1 and the Shielded Expedition are nearly finalized and clear, as well as most other allocations I think, however @Gavin created a forum post about outstanding contributions in the Shielded Expedition to be rewarded with bounties (including also the uptime), shouldn’t these bounty allocations also be included? Is an announcement or update in the forum post expected soon? Or will you just decide the bounties internally and allocate this to the accounts you already have from the Shielded Expedition?
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Yep, we once discussed this topic with @Cwgoes and this is also one of the cornerstones, still want to believe that Namada will choose the same path so that validators can feel good about themselves over the long term of the protocol.
I see. In the current phase 5 governance proposal example that has been published on Github, all NAM tokens could be transferred when the phase 5 proposal is passed. That continues to be my personal preference and recommendation, for reasons discussed here. However, community governance could always make a different governance proposal, or vote to do something else!
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I am interested not only in the technologies in projects, but also in their investment component, because this is a good opportunity to attract people to the project, and then get them interested in your technologies. Let’s admit that both of these points are important in crypto projects, because even for you, it’s like a token reward for actions, which means the reward can be sold…
So let’s play around with the situation. Mainnet is out. We have reached phase 5. Tokens have become transferable, all tokens, as you wrote above. Will Anoma do anything until then? I mean such processes as the listing of the NAМ token on cex, dex. Some kind of marketing company with cex.
In my understanding, before reaching the 5th phase, a date must be selected, conditionally day X will be the beginning of the 5th phase and it is on this day that the token will be available for purchase and sale on cex and dex.
First of all, I’m not a token economics expert, so my take is likely quite naive.
In my opinion, for Namada to function properly at its core, it depends on NAM rewards to attract TVL in the shielded pool. To ensure this pool operates correctly, we need to establish a reasonable emission rate for shielded assets that is attractive enough for people to deposit their assets in it.
We can’t just rely on the initial supply of 1 billion NAM and arbitrarily decide that 4 million tokens for rewarding shielded assets is sufficient. Most people don’t care about the philosophy behind Namada or the intrinsic value of NAM; they will primarily look at how much 1 NAM is worth in dollars to estimate their APY.
Even those who care about their ownership in Namada rather than its fiat value should still earn more NAM by, for example, shielding their Atom compared to staking Atom and buying NAM with their staking rewards. Therefore, we need a rough estimate of the worst-case scenario for NAM’s price to discuss the emission parameters effectively.
And for price speculation , it is a fact that tokenomics—allocation percent for the team, investors, community, airdrops, treasury, and the emission rate/unlocks—plays a key role
We need a detailed explanation of the initial 1 billion NAM allocations to estimate how the market will react. By comparing Namada with similar past projects (in terms of tokenomics), we can better understand the market’s potential response and how each parameter regarding inflation should be set.
TLDR: We need a rough estimate of NAM’s price at launch. Tokenomics—the initial allocations proposed by Anoma + the emission rate to be determined here—is a key factor. We need as much detailed information as possible to propose something rational; otherwise, it’s all speculation based on gut feelings.
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That’s pretty much it.
And it seems like Chris writes that the community itself can make a motion on this and vote on it or not. But.
That’s hard to do until we see the tokenomics from the team with all the information, including distribution, circulation, etc.
That’s why everyone is eager to see it. (tokenomic from team)
But we should probably stop discussing it here.
After all, this topic was created to discuss else entirely.
This is even more relevant given that all 1 billion NAM will be unlocked from phase 5 of mainnet launch. It can be assumed that the supply allocated to the foundation, to the team and so on will be staked, added to the shielded set or similar meaning it would be like ‘locked’ actually and not sold in the market. Knowing how the initial 1 billion NAM will be allocated we can estimate the % that will be ‘locked’ in staking, shielded set and similar and not trading or sold. For example, in Celestia in theory the circulating supply at launch was much smaller but the ‘locked’ tokens could be staked. But honestly, what is the difference if a large % of the NAM initial supply will also be staked and ‘locked’ like in Celestia? Then the actual circulating supply initially would be much smaller than the 1 billion NAM that is scaring many people
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7 500 ATOM
and 100 000 OSMO
with a maximum of 0.2% inflation each
Here we need to check what is current interest or expected return on staking ATOM or OSMO. If it is higher than our proposed inflation, we may have issues attracting those deposits.
Target amount is not so important at the moment since we do not know the turnover within Namada mainnet. When we see some statistics after mainnet launch, we can decide if the target amount of deposits should be increased to achieve the desired level of security.
2000 NAM deposit for proposal or 10k NAM in stake/delegations to qualify for the active set.
Let us get back to this when we have full allocation list and have some understanding on number of people which will have 10k+ NAM.
15 hours of consecutive downtime before being jailed
Fair enough. If let us say, an outage happens right after the validator falls asleep, then he may have enough time after waking up.
One suggestion though: can we introduce jailing for not participation in governance? Like in SE where we could not get vital proposal approved because a lot of voting power were actually not voting. E.g. if validator in active set skips three proposals from PGF steward in a row they are jailed for 1-3 days. What do you think?
slashing for duplicate vote and a light client attack
This aspect is not explained neither in specs nor in the docs. Could you please elaborate on those conditions for slashing? Maybe it is common knowledge, but I truly do not know. Thank you.
PGF steward
I hope initial or first steward will be someone appointed by Namada founders. Since PGF mechanism is quite complex in my opinion (I have submitted a few proposals in SE), so only really experienced Namada user will be able to handle it successfully and get some work actually done. PGF steward needs to know how to write that json file in a way which would properly modify blockchain without huge outages. This will be required in case of decision to change some parameters on the fly e.g. active set max limit etc.
target of 40% of the token supply at stake
Does it mean that if for example 45% of NAM supply is staked, it will not deliver you any return on investment (zero inflation)?
In this regard, an alternative would be to put NAM into a shielded set, thus, when deciding on shielded deposit inflation, we should keep in mind staking rewards. Since those two are interchangeable NAM investment options.
I would propose to define parameters so that there is a fair equilibrium at desired state of operations. E.g. when 40% of NAM is staked and our target NAM shielded set deposit is reached, you get e.g. 3% ROI no matter whether you stake NAM or keep NAM in shielded deposit.
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Why zero to start with? Somehow that vibes wrong to me but I bet that you have a reason for that.
Strongly agree and dissent with those who want to see it lower.
Having a more diverse validator set is a good thing and that means having more validators.
It can mean a lot of other things too, but simply having more I think that’s a very good starting point for diversity.
Clarification: owned by the validator, or owned by anyone?
… I guess I might actually prefer to see it owned by the validator. But I don’t know how this parameter works offhand.
Most Cosmos chains aim for 24 hours, and I think that 15 hours is a great improvement.
Seems that there’s no slash for downtime, that is good.
Consider: very rapid removal from validator set, no penalty for falling out, easy to reenter. This allows better and more diverse topologies.
I would actually strongly argue that one epoch is much better than two.
I also noticed that there is no down time slash in the matching paragraph on slashing.
In fact, can this parameter be set to zero?
I don’t think anything is gained by keeping a validator who was removed for downtime out of the set.
But then again it might not be possible to remove them until an epoch has passed.
I think that this is great. The reason that I think that this is great is actually we, the Quicksilver team, determined that it is trivially possible to insure against all slashes. That is bad. Let’s keep slashes big, especially when there’s lots of danger like the same fault by two nodes in the same epoch.
When it is time, I recommend that assets are incentivized equally relative to their price in Satoshis, gwei or unam. My thinking here is that privacy is a pretty universal need and shielded sets provide fairly universal value.
Approaching it in this way ensures that we do not play favorites and keeps the network a free and open platform.
We shouldn’t use dollars because ick.
I am sure that will happen, when it is time for that to happen, and I hope it does not happen before it is time for that to happen.
This is why 255 is probably fine and no one should ever listen to validator worries about a lack of profits on any given network.
Validation is an extremely voluntary affair. Just absolutely no way somebody can force you into validating their chain.
I also agree with the performance assessment made by @cwgoes.
255 validators ought to work just fine.
I have seen networks with 1000 validators operate, but block times were about 16 seconds.
I have seen up to 350ish keep pace with the six seconds default block time.
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Not quite. In Celestia or similar projects, for example, tokens can be staked, but they are actually locked and cannot be transferred through a regular transfer. In the case of Namada, all tokens will be transferable, and it doesn’t matter if the tokenomics state that, for example, 50% will be in a shielded pool; the market will consider them as tokens in circulation because they can be sold at any time.
Since there will be no programmatic protection against the sale of these tokens, everything will rely solely on trust in the team.
I don’t mean to say that the team is dishonest or anything like that. However, there will always be a risk that the team could just sell all the tokens at once. Naturally, these risks will be reflected in the asset’s price.
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IBC is now the interoperability standard in crypto, and its development was led by Namada co-founder @cwgoes, who I heard also contributed a lot to the Cosmos SDK. This will also be reflected in the asset’s price, meaning huge confidence about the project for the long-term meaning holding the NAM asset, because there is a strong track record with IBC. Moreover, there is a difference between a possible risk and it actually happening. The market may consider it higher risk because even if staked in theory they could be unstaked and sold, but if this doesn’t happen which is likely, the potential sell pressure won’t materialize and it won’t impact the asset price that much. Moreover, for other projects with the lockings, they will also have all supply unlocked eventually. Moreover, NAM could be locked in staking but there is also something totally new: shielded set rewards. So NAM will be locked in staking but also in the shielded set to earn these new rewards
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