Start with “project curation”, with weekly votes for which projects get featured on the homepage
Motivation
In a web3 world, we need to treat token utility and economics as first-class citizens. A project’s token is a schelling point for all general perception of a project’s quality, adoption, and other narratives. By ignoring its token, a project is at best under-utilizing a key resource and at worst actively sabotaging its own adoption.
It’s understandable that the team wanted to initially focus on growth, so plans for 1) revenue sharing and 2) LP farming were scrapped in favor of focusing resources on developing the platform. But now that the vaults, LP staking, single-sided staking (soon), and buy/sell zaps have been shipped, it is high time for the token to get some TLC.
Proposal
The direction of NFTX, as I currently understand, is towards a general marketplace as well as a curation DAO for an owned collection. Thus an easy and simple utility to start with could be for $NFTX vote signaling on projects, initially for featuring on the homepage, but later for many other use cases such as acquiring pieces for the DAO. Snapshot can be used for gasless voting for all NFTX as well as NFT sushi LP. Examples for vote signaling include Curve gauge weights and Tokemak reactor projects.
Pros for developing this utility
Re-introduces $NFTX back into public perception which will help drive attention and usage
Engages stakeholders in active participation of platform feature and evolution
Cons potentially
Reduces pool liquidity; but, balanced by $sushi onsen incentives
Reduces resources for product features development
I like the idea of it helping as an open/collaborative way to feature items on the homepage without the risk of incidents like we recently saw on other marketplaces.
I’d like to see a bit more around the rules of selection and the mechanics of what is possible with Snapshot but as a general approach I think it’s a intuitive use of the token.
A question for you @aeto, if NFTX began to get more serious traffic is there any risk/issues around a community buying x,000 NFTX tokens to vote for their project to get featured and then dump the tokens again?
Yea the buying to vote + dump immediately afterward is definitely an attack vector
The way I’ve seen most protocols handle this is to lock + vest to get voting power (eg. vecrv) in some proportion to your amount and vest time (higher amount → more votes, longer vest → more votes). There won’t be much incentive to lock + vest right now I think before revenue sharing is introduced. But when we DO turn it on, eventually, I think it’d be a great model to use
Enjoyed reading this proposal. I love this idea and have come up with some similar ideas myself. A couple weeks ago I proposed privately to the team the idea of NFTX doing some of our own NFT drops. I think we would likely do a great job. Both Kiwi and JB have experience doing their own drops already, and I think Chop and JB would both be great and finding and working with artists. JB suggested that we consider doing seasonal drops with artists who are interested in working with NFTX, and I really liked that idea.
However, despite the enthusiasm, when we discussed we sort of settled on it not being the right time quite yet. It’s really important that we get single-sided staking set up and also for us to add zaps to pull liquidity from opensea. These two features, together, should help save some of the vaults that are currently suffering from low liquidity. Also important for us to get profile view out so that we can all start viewing all of our NFTs on NFTX instead of on OpenSea. These sorts of features are less fun from a community standpoint, but I think they will go a long way to improving the UX and making NFTX an app which we all use on a daily basis. We also have a lot going on with other DeFi protocols atm, like Rari and Futureswap and TracerDao and even some big potential market makers which I don’t think I’m supposed to name
I am really keen for us to start incorporating the NFTX token more. In addition to giving the NFTX usefulness, I think it would also be great for us to start rewarding our users with strategic promotional periods as long as we don’t end up dumping too much.
Like you said on the call today, the NFTX token is a big part of what makes NFTX, and its important we don’t forget about it. I agree with this line of thinking and would only add that I think we will be in a better position for this sort of stuff going into the new year, and that the product will be ready then for mass adoption, so to speak. I would definitely like for us to go hard then on community involvement, in-house NFT drops and curation, promotional infovideos and infographics and more community outreach, etc.
If and when we do start considering artists for custom NFT drops I will be sure to let you know @aeto, so that you can weigh in on what you think is best. Having direct community involvement like that from people like yourself might be a good middle-step before opening it up entirely to dao voting. As much as I like democracy, it can sometimes stifle strong creative vision, hah, so I think it would be cool to start with a small group for the first drop perhaps and then decentralize the process after we get in the swing of things (…just thinking out loud though)
I totally understand (and respect the heck out of the team) for sticking with their product-centric vision, especially in times like these with the industry so rife for market share turnover.
That being said, it’s hard for me to see why added token utility could at all be detrimental. I think perception of token utility tied to price/perception of the project is natural and one that should be embraced and not stifled.
At the end of the day NFTX is a grand merging of NFT’s and DeFi, and having just a valueless governance token seems… counter to that ethos.
Could be off base here, but it also seems like the dev team views baking in more token utility as a slippery slope to less autonomy of the future direction of the project. This is completely valid, but I also believe token holders would happily allow the team to retain this autonomy, as it’s arguably necessary in such a fast-moving industry.
But giving the NFTX community SOMEthing to go with, as mentioned, even as simple and nonharmful as voting for main page features, would allow us holders a means of getting involved. Community is, as we all know in the NFT space, JUST AS important as product utility.
Single-sided staking/zapping rollouts could have me eating my words here, but I think $NFTX trading at treasury value is a telltale sign of something being amiss, and I think @aeto has “hit the X on the NFT” here.
