Proposal for mainnet launch phases

Mainnet Ops
44

I think that we share the goals of communicating Namada to potential users, making it easy to enter the community, ensuring that validators can cover their operational costs, and creating a sustainable system that supports Namada (and later, perhaps, integration with Anoma) in the long term. Am I right (do we share all those goals)?

I also agree that several recent launches, such as the ones you mention, have pursued what I will call a “low-float, high FDV” strategy, where only a small portion of supply is unlocked at network start. Honestly, I find this trend concerning. If we understand the price signal as simply the clearing point between supply and demand for an asset, the value of that signal to the market as a whole depends on the supply and demand sides having freedom to express their preferences (e.g. sell if they want to sell, and buy if they want to buy). Vesting/lockups prevent one side of that market (the supply side) from expressing their preferences (selling, if they want to sell), and thus make the signal quality potentially much worse. This may provide some temporary benefit in “market cap ranking” or such metrics for an individual project, but it makes the overall market quality worse because the price signals carry less information.

In any case, the vesting term will eventually expire, and the supply side will be able to sell if they want to. Personally, I would be hesitant to hold an asset or participate in a network where many holders of that asset might want to sell (and exit), but are unable to - it seems risky, since the current signals available to me (e.g. price) might be very distorted, and their values might change substantially in the future. I think this would apply especially to participants such as validators whose income (staking rewards) and costs (hardware operation) are likely denominated in different assets (NAM and USD, respectively) and thus predicting whether or not such an operation would be sustainable is dependent on accurate price signals. It may not be the case, for example, that Namada can support the costs of hundreds of validator operators - but far better for them to learn that now, than set up a whole operational setup on the basis of a distorted price signal and have much trouble in the future when that signal is corrected.

5 Likes
45

Is it decided already the % of the supply for the Heliax team, Anoma Foundation, etc.? We know the % for the Shielded Expedition winners, the RPGF drop, but is it decided already for the rest of the supply? I assume the supply allocated to Heliax, Anoma Foundation or for incentives would be like ‘vesting’ since these parties won’t be selling any NAM?

Also, some projects like Lava have a total supply of 1 billion tokens and instead of creating incentivizes for RPC providers, validators, etc. from inflation they allocated a % of the total supply for these incentivizes. Would it be like this in Namada, that a % of the initial 1 billion NAM will be allocated for incentives, or all incentives will come from inflation? Thanks

@cwgoes NAM futures trading at $3 for months with over $1M daily volume in XT exchange for example, with public info about no vesting for NAM at launch. Is it because traders are following this high FDV path (any project with VC money will do that, this is the play book), and market is not very rational especially in crypto regarding the no vesting of NAM?

1 Like
46

Yes, yes, we share the same goals. You’re right.

Nevertheless, the “low-float, high FDV” strategy is a classic market entry that really works, which has been tested by hundreds of projects.
And it is convenient both for the team and users, as well as for the market makers of exchanges, who support the price of the token and also attract liquidity to the protocol with their trades (token + top exchanges = community and project participants).
And if the product is useful, as Namada can become with the release of the mainnet, there will be a good valuation on the top exchanges even after years, and the vestings will benefit everyone.
Win = Win for the team and the community.

As for the hundreds of validators you’re talking about, with the listing without vestings to the mainnet, the token price may drop to around zero, and the creation of some infrastructure for even dozens of validators may not happen at all.
And as I said above, now we are at the beginning of the bull market and it is so important at the start and during the next year for everyone to get stronger and become firmly on their feet, in order to withstand the bearish cycle, which will last 2-3-4 years.

Another aspect that should not be forgotten is one of the most important.
To the extent that Namada successfully enters the market, Anoma and the community around it will be more successful.
After a prolonged bear cycle, now there are only the old-timers left in the market, and the new retail is just about to get here, but this old community understands very well how the market works and in addition to looking at investments in projects, they also pay attention to what kind of team is building it, what kind of successes they have under their belt. And it is these old-timers, influencers, researchers and others who will be responsible for attracting newcomers to the projects.
And how successful Namada will be in the market, how successful it will be, in a week, a month, a year, that will directly overlay both the Heliax team and the whole Anoma team and what it will be able to build, what kind of staff it will be able to attract, what kind of long-term community it will be able to build.

It’s one thing to say, here’s a Heliax team that’s building Anoma that has a successful Namada under its belt. And it’s another thing to say, if Namada remains unsuccessful and in the shadows, then that’s not going to attract many people to Anoma later on, because they’ll already see what experience the team had before and what they did before Anoma (in this case, Namada). So these two things will go directly hand in hand with each other.
That’s why I encourage you to use the classic way of going into the market, with vesting, with a good exchange and market maker. Because I really want Namada and Anoma to do well, and what I am proposing is a long-term strategy that is successful.

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47

I have to agree with @cwgoes here. I’ve seen these types of arguments be made in other projects before, but ultimately they have resulted in slow bleed that gradually drained the project. If people want to sell, let them sell while there is volume to absorb it, and let them leave quick so there is no slow drain. A functional market is depending, as cw rightly states, on the participants being free to execute their intended actions. The only situation where vesting could make sense, is one where team members / developers would be incentivized, however this also is not unproblematic and I strongly favor a non-vesting approach for the longterm health of the token. If a project is sound we don’t need to think too much in marketing / short-term strategies. The market will adjust value accordingly. Tentatively

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48

Of course you’ve seen this, because we’ve been in a bearish trend for about 3 years. And the market has only recently rebounded.
Everythings will drains the projects, no matter how cool it is.
But the main thing is to have time to implement it systematically and correctly, and so far the market provides such an opportunity, which is what I am writing about.

49

namada可以扩展到arb zk op上吗？我觉得可以跟他们合作下

50

To have volumes, we need good exchanges and a paid market maker.But something seems to me we won’t see either the first or the second in the short term after the project’s release.

51

Let’s see what happens.

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Wouldn’t this exactly the olympics of market making?
Or MM are generally service providers that only compete for the low hanging fruit?

53

First, I’d like to give you credit for taking a principled, contrarian stance and trying to solve the issues associated with high fdv / low float. It strikes me as a genuine attempt to achieve your stated goals, and this is uncharted territory.

It seems like there are two issues people have with this approach
#1 - investors will sell
#2 - team will sell

I agree with everything you said around price signal and avoiding network distortion, and personally, it’s enough to offset any issues with #1.

#2 is trickier, because it requires a high level of trust in the team. You may even end up with a prisoner’s dilemma; what happens if one member of the founding team decides they’re no longer interested in working on the project?

One potential solution is to make the team wallets public, so that there is reputational risk to defecting. Another is to set policies around how much can be sold, and when (e.g. “not more than X% in an N month period”). Even simpler would be to keep the core team on a vesting schedule, although this does feel unfair, in a sense.

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54

Under no conditions will the team agree to this, and even if they do, they will prefer to keep the “investors” wallets hidden so that ordinary users cannot access this information. They will justify this by saying, “Well, you understand, this is confidential information” :slightly_smiling_face:

56

do you have any reason to be saying what you’re saying?

would be cool if you could engage in a less divisive way. being grounded in reason, imo, helps to be more productive than cynically speculative

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57

Gavin, is there any plans / ideas, with regards to the initial launch, for governance groups? Though what I mean here, is something that will consider previous mistakes of other chains.

I can and will expand, but before I do, just making sure im not off topic here

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58

hey! we (Knowable) haven’t made governance group plans, but i’m keen to know your thoughts about this topic

i was thinking we would use this forum for long-form and our Discord #general channel for real-time (and split it off into a Discord hot topic if it gets too noisy in “general”)

i was thinking that as patterns emerge, we could document these into our community handbook (which ideally will grow into our Namada Knowledge Base) and use this to develop more formal processes with a group to support them

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59

Yes. I think using the forum to start with makes sense. Would be cool to see it (the handbook) ported to some web3 domain or IPFS, etc, in order not to lose em. But thats detail.

The only thoughts I keep having are more or less the same thought i try to express at every chain launch over the past 10 years or so heh.

I have seen how strong chains get ripped apart by governance many times. IMO 1 of the grave mistakes most governance groups make are wrong hierarchical order. They go to foundations or active community members, such as validators, that already propose something. They try to understand the idea and then deliver it to the community.

What sounds ok. But it leads to a grave issue. The community isnt heard. It has feedback. The feedback is delivered. But that feedback is not organic. It is feedback on already proposed ideas by foundations / validators, etc.

What lacks, is a governance group from “degens for degens”. i.e. a group that goes to the community, gathers ideas, brings it to the foundation, gets feedback and helps to structure it. Not the other way around (of course both are needed, but the latter is way more important for the health of an active chain).

I also dont think validators are particularly suited for that part, as they are entities with self interests. Usually those people emerge as the community growth. And, alas, a lot of the time ignored or guided in the wrong direction, to work only from up → down.

Anyway just some philosophical thinking here. We are happy to participate though in several ways. Finding. Being part of. Maybe even providing some ipfs back up to the docs, etc

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