Vision
Lets compete with the biggest projects out there. I want people to notice us competing with the likes of BAYC on OpenSea's rankings and wonder who we are and what we do.How do we get there?
Focus on driving up our floor price. People will pay attention to a 50ETH floor price, for example. Appearing at the top of OpenSea's rankings is also a free way to communicate that we're deemed valuable. I also think it's important that we do this by offering real value, not by staking.How do we do that?
We allow new owners to receive full revdis for any current investment. So, for example, if you buy a lizard right now, then the old owner gives up their rights for Civitas revdis and you get 100% of your lizard's share of Civitas.Is this unfair to the old owner?
No, the old owner decides what price he's willing to give up his revdis for. If he/she looks at the dashboard to see the current value of all the investments, they can decide what price they're willing give up those revdis for. Say we have 20 current investments and the current value of all those coins give a $40,000 valuation per lizard (just an example). So, when I sell a lizard, I might think... well, the new owner is buying something that is currently valued at about $40,000. I expect these prices to increase a little more before revdis and I think the lizard holds great long term value, so I'll price it at $60,000 in exchange for giving up my rights to claim anything in the future. You don't get revdis but it's easy to price it so that you still receive fair value. New buyers will obviously understand the high price, given that they're buying into current investments which they can view easily on the dashboard.Floor price compared to staking
The floor price gets a **much** bigger increase if you give owners all revdis for current + future investments than if they have to start from 1x weight and only receive revdis for the time they stake onwards. That's undebatable. You're simply offering a buyer more value instantly.Additional argument regarding sellers
It's also easy to argue that someone who sells is giving up their right to be invested in any current projects, in exchange for cash now. It's simply how any investment works. When I buy shares in Apple, I don't expect to receive anything after I sell, I just get a fair price for my shares.The dashboard plays a big role
Imagine being a newcomer. You look at the dashboard, it shows how much each lizard is worth right now, given the current investments and the price of each game's coin. It's so easy to communicate our value to the world, using this. Now, instead, imagine you're a newcomer. The dashboard can show you that you get 1x at first, you have to stake for X years to get 2x weight and you don't receive revdis for the time prior to purchasing. It's a significantly lower amount and it's also harder for those less DeFi savvy to understand.Why no staking?
Well, this just renders staking + weights fairly useless. It's not so much that staking is inherently bad or anything, it's just not necessary if we want the above.The idea and vision here is that we attract more people with a high floor price as we're saying "look how valuable we are" and we'll end up getting free marketing as people keeping an eye on floor price rankings will start to notice us. The idea is also simpler and better for new comers.
Argument: Staking can help reward long-term holders (weights).
Long term holders shouldn’t be rewarded. All we did was find this project first. If we all step back from our greed, we all know that we have yet to contribute anything that is reward-worthy (talking about the average lizard, not the mods, etc.). You can’t reward OG’s without stripping value away from newcomers and we all (and the vault) benefit from new buyers. Weights make buying a lizard less attractive as you know you have to wait longer to receive full revdis.
Rewarding long-term holders just seems to be a method in which to encourage people not to sell. I’d rather not want to because I’m scared of the value and prestige I’d lose.
We’re a DAO, reward everyone equally. One liz equals one liz. How can we have equal governance but unequal revenue distribution?
Argument: Staking helps reduce the supply of available lizards.
This is the wrong way to think about it. This decreases sell pressure but we should only be focused on increasing buy pressure, which this doesn’t do. Increasing buy pressure is about getting more people to want to buy. Staking doesn’t do this. Asking the holders to reduce the available supply is asking the holders to generate value (a higher floor price) but the emphasis should be on the team and council to generate more value (investments and utility).
How much data do we have that suggests the vault makes more money with less sales but higher floor versus more sales at lower value?
Argument: Illuvium has staking, so we’re familiar with it.
Illuvium’s staking is very different. You gain governance and revdis by staking their ILV token. With a lizard NFT, you already have governance and revdis without staking. Mine is also less of an argument about which is better, staking or non-staking, and more of a question of why we want or need staking?
Other pros for no staking, IMO:
Focus
It might seem trivial, but there’s good reason to set precedents, in terms of our direction and focus. Being clear about intentions is key for current holders and for people looking to buy. We can easily make it obvious that there’s no reason to stake because we have no worry that you’ll want to sell.
Simplicity
It’s easier for the team to just have a simple contract where current owners claim their revdis, whether they’ve held for a long time or not, rather than trying to allocate percentages based on weights and calculating at what point you staked, unstaked or sold.
Flexibility
Should situations change in the future, not having revdis based on staking means we can be very flexible with any additional ideas that are brought in. If we’re staked and whatever the new idea requires us not to be, we’d all have to manually unstake our lizards and the contracts surrounding revenue distribution would have to be stopped and reworked.
Greed
We all want money. I think it’s a common misconception that, to be greedy, we should stake and have the weighting system, so that we’re favoured first. Whilst it sounds true, I think we’ll benefit far greater with a simple, easy-to-understand and equal playing field for anyone who’s looking to buy. Greed should mean we want this to succeed, not that we want to receive a temporarily higher portion for some investments.
To Summarise
Overall, I think we’re just jumping into staking head-first because that’s what other projects do and it’s what we’ve come to expect. Other projects (99% of them) are terrible examples and should not be a point of reference for anything we do. The great projects, like Illuvium, have different reasons for staking that don’t apply to us.
Forget staking. Spend the time and effort on utility and investments. Allow anyone to sell at any time whilst boosting the floor price with real value. That’s the sweet spot!
If you think I should add anything to this, please let me know.