[DAO:2a4cc09] Call for a Decentraland Incentive system. (Draft Proposal)

Governance
1

by 0x9b3ae2dd9eaad174cf5700420d4861a5a73a2d2a (MetaGamiMall)

Linked Pre-Proposal

Call for a Decentraland Incentive system.

Summary

In the last proposal, we’ve built an initial consensus that ‘Decentraland needs an incentive system’. Meanwhile, we saw multiple feedback and concerns. In this draft proposal, we will provide more details and, hopefully, build more consensus.

Abstract

Before diving into the details, it’s important to clarify that the incentive system is not about “paying users to play.” Instead, it’s a method to reward active users (Players, Creators, Voters) and serve as a tool for onboarding new users. People accept significant spending on marketing, PR, and events, as well as rewards for game jams or contests. The same standard should be apply to this incentive system.Tthis system is simply a more effective form of marketing that encourages user engagement with Decentralnd, rather than requiring them to learn new rules for each event and risk losing interest. Please keep your minds open while reading below if possible.

This proposal will clarify the motivation of this incentives system and bring more details for discussion with the Decentraland DAO community.

Motivation

Primary Goal:
Establish a long-term incentive system aimed at attracting and retaining users (Players, Creators, and Voters), starting with those who have left DCL due to a lack of incentives.

Stretch Goal:
Generate revenue for the DAO through three main avenues:

  1. Encourage more DCL Name minting through the incentive system (see below for details).
  2. Increase traffic to boost activity in wearable and Land trading, thereby generating additional revenue for the DAO.
  3. Raise investor confidence and interest to maintain or increase the price of MANA, enhancing the DAO’s value in terms of USD.

Specification

System Validation Period:
A six-month period is necessary to evaluate the system’s effectiveness. Why six months?
A. Time is needed to develop the related technical infrastructure and conduct basic promotion as a kickstarter.
B. The effectiveness of this system also correlates with the macro environment of the crypto industry. The results will differ depending on whether the prevailing sentiment is “Crypto is a revolution” or “Crypto is a scam.” Therefore, a six-month period should be sufficient to test the system under various market sentiments.

Incentive System Allocation:
We propose allocating 5% of the monthly vesting fund to the system. (About 92,500 MANA per month)This is a reasonable amount that won’t overly burden the DAO but will still provide meaningful incentives. The DAO can adjust this percentage through future proposals.

Roles and Incentive Allocation:
Users should be divided into two groups with the following incentive distribution (from that 5% total incentive allocation from DAO monthly vesting funds):
A. DAO Voters - 25%
B. Product Users (Players, Creators, Referrals) - 75%
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The rationale is that since this is a DAO proposal, voters must be incentivized to ensure the sustainability of the scheme. At the same time, the majority of rewards should go to users who contribute to the product experience, balancing interests between voters and users.

Incentive Distribution:
A points system that asses users’ contributions and two rewards pools will be used: one for DAO voters and one for Product Users.

  • For DAO voters, each VP used grants 1 point. At month-end, rewards are distributed based on the voter’s points relative to the total points accumulated. For example,with 23,125MANA allocated to voters, a voter who earns 10,000 points out of a total of 1,000,000 points would receive 1% of 23,125 MANA, which will be 231.25 MANA.

  • For Product Users, points can be earned as follows:

  1. Players: 1 point for every 60 minutes of a non-AFK playtime (with a DCL name required).
  2. Creators: 1 point for every 60 minutes a non-AFK player (with a DCL name required) spends in their scene.
  3. Referrers: You will get 10% of the points points back from your invitees in the future.

Rewards are then distributed based on the user’s points relative to the total points accumulated that month. In order to let people to be able to understand better of this system, the Points System of Nifty Island is a good reference, the difference here is Nifty Island only have one rewards pool, and they don’t have the role of voters. In our case, we will make voter points in a separate section, and the rationale was described in the above section. Ideally, there will be a dedicate page in the Decentraland DAO official page (which need the approval of DAO Governace squad.) Or it can be developed in an independent website.
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Anti-Exploitation Measures:

  • DAO Voters: Multiple proposals created to farm points can be countered by other voters, maintaining a healthy environment.
  • Players and Creators: Requiring a player to play non-AFK with at least one DCL name to earn or contribute points increases the cost of exploitation.
  • Referrers: As long as the players and creators cannot exploit the system, then it is not possible for referrers to exploit the system.
  • Moderation: A dedicated team will supervise the process in case there are systematic bugs within the system

Conclusion

In Future:

  • Traders might be included in the Product Users list if the DAO deems it necessary.
  • The system will be monitored and adjusted based on community feedback and real-world results.

The above outlines the motivation and structure of the incentive system, helping people to visualize what the system might look like. However, it’s important to clarify that these details are not finalized and will be revised again after this poll is completed.

Next Steps:
If this poll passes, we will refine the incentive system plan and discuss the execution details, including the technical solution, team, and budget.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
2

I think we don’t have the right tools to reward players and creators the way they are described in this proposal, the method is too weak.

1 Like
3

Thanks for the comment, I think that would be discussed in details in the next stage to define the technical feasibility, if you think this overall mechanism works, then feel free to vote yes and see if the technical solution is feasible and sensible in the next stage. (We tend to choose Baby Step and focus on one concern in one proposal, and this proposal is to focus on the overall mechanism. )

BTW it is technically feasible, all of the information described above can be traced. Our DAO traces the voting pattern and is open it to the public. The player/creator record can be tracked as well, for example, DCL metrics along with Atlas Corps is doing that. So what’s left is just the points system and reward distribution system needs to be developed in order to enact this proposal.

4

I would prefer to see specific technical solutions that are good enough before going to the governance proposal.

1 Like
5

To be honest it is not a hard tool to develop. what is unclear to you? The tool development need to go through a seperate grant proposal.Anyone can submit their version of proposal with budget, as long as they can realise this mechanism.

And the final result of the governance proposal just decide the percentage share of the incentive system and the overal mechanism.

6

@LTC

After some thoughts, I think the District VP is not the biggest concern now.

First, most of the district VP holder never used their VP to vote even once. There are only a few of them use that power, and for these people, I did not see them pushed a grant proposal themself, so I tend to believe they will not joining with bad faith in this incentives system.

Second, the current rewards is too tiny for them to do bad things. It does not worth it to face critism from the community to fight for such amount of money for them. These people are usually whales with huge assets.

Last, in the worst case, if they really do exploit the system, the DAO can vote again to restrict them

7

What would be used to determine if someone is legitimately “not AFK”? It would be fairly easy to run a script that just walks your user around forever while you’re not there. I feel like this would quickly dilute the rewards for actual participation. It would also unfortunately add to the dead mall feeling if we see a bunch of people walking around aimlessly like broken NPCs.

Overall I think this idea is progressing well and am in support of trying something out even if it’s not perfect at first. Launch a few rockets and learn from the explosions, if you will.

2 Likes
8

I find this idea interesting.
I do think we need to use some funds to promote Decentraland.
I am sure we’ll want to do more types of marketing and promotion over time than only what this is proposing, but this proposal is interesting because the amount is conservative, and the 6 month initial limit should give us time to gather ideas about whether it needs improving and how, or shelving.

4 Likes
9

How would the system work for multi-accounts or afk bots?

1 Like
10

We tend to use what DCL metrics is using here to define non-afk player and time.

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And you are right, like what we mentioned in the last proposal, for most games, it is not possible to 100% avoid bad behaviours, but we can control it by putting more cost on the bad actors. So using some code to AFK add the difficulty for exploitation, the requirement for a dcl name add the cost for exploitation. There can be more standards in place in the future as you say, and the system should be kept adjsuting based on the situation time to time.

This is so reasonable!

1 Like
11

thank you Carl, this will be the start of the scheme, but of course more marketing focus features can be in place, for example, there can be some social task to give users points to encourage further promotion.

12

First, they need a DCL name for each multi-accounts, and we tend to use dcl metrics standard to check if they are bots or not, and as said above, hope this is sensible to you!

13

"Temporary support vote yes, but I need you to address two technical issues, both of which I consider extremely important:

  1. The referrer’s benefit should be prioritized, such as taking 50% of the 75% total, meaning the more referrals they bring, the higher their rewards.
  2. How can we reward members who genuinely participate in DAO voting and are familiar with all past proposals? Understanding history is crucial for future development. In simple terms, can we track and reward those who are actively engaged in the DAO, offering them more substantial incentives (e.g., VP + reading proposal time)? Is this feasible?"
14

I like the thought of spending marketing budget on rewards for active participants, similar to Youtube ad revenue. Could even be pennies incrementally. Like a nice little $20 bonus after a significant amount of effort for those that are really active. So it’s not enough for ruggers to take advantage of. And those that end up hodling for mana to go up, will really benefit!

3 Likes
15

I don’t see how a system that rewards High VP holders with more VP can be ethical. The very act of voting for this proposal is self serving.

I do hope @esteban dusts off his no-voting account to put a stop to this so that the Dao Regenesis can have a chance to discuss more inclusive ideas.

Edit to add:

Perhaps a cap on the amount a person can receive from VP participation would help make this less self-serving.

16

I believe that if the new client succeeds, it will naturally attract new users. But more important is developing user friendly tools that make it easy for creators to build games on their Lands or Worlds, similar to what Nifty Island has done if you ever checked, where even a ten years old can create gunfights, flag races… ext, so they made it simple for anyone to deploy games on their ‘island,’ they offer Bloom prizes that i rememebr can be exchanged for NFTs, which can then be sold on the market. with such thing you can generate revenue through the sale of VIP guns and other power items. This creates a self sustaining ecosystem where players are rewarded to participate in those fights & races and they purchase in-game items causing income for the platforms. A similar approach could be highly effective in Decentraland with the new client, moving beyond just attend events or voting on proposals to earn MANA.

Anyway, since the community support this idea, if the government proposal passed would be best to implement Q1, Q2 after the new client release . so that help with marketing too.

one more important thing, it might be more suitable to allocate 5% of the 70% grant budget for this initiative, leaving the remaining 30% reserved for the DAO ecosystem and future needs (Budget allocation). This approach would reduce the two quarterly budget when implementing this proposal, for example here, Q1 and Q2 of 2024 to 65% instead of 70%,

which mean totalling for six months 388,500 MANA, in other words 64,750 MANA per month for 6 months.

1 Like
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thank you for commenting, we will think about it in the next stage!

18

Totally, the creators and players actually dont need that much money to be satisfied, but we are currently facing a none-incnetive environment here in dcl. I believe once they can earn something even if thats small, they will be more incentivised to do things in dcl

@BanJarod It does not let me to reply 3 consecutive msgs. so I reply here.

I would love to see @yemel @esteban feedback as well.

I think we should stop dividing the community , but to unite the community interests. All users, players, creators, voters need to be inentivised, and they are ethical to enjoy it because of their contribution(playing, creating, voting). Plus, without the support from voters, the system would be not sustainable. Big voters can shut it down any time.

Besides, we seperate the reward pool into 2 parts, to gurrantee that at least 75% of the incentives still belong to players, creators and referers. You can argue the percentage, but overall, i think its all fair , reasonable and ethical. Especially in WEB3

However, this might be a good advice, be rememebr, the system can also be adjusted in the future following DAO’s decision. So in the start, i tend to be loose and trust they can join without much exploitation. And like I said, this rewards is too small for those large voters to do bad things.

19

Thank you for the feedback Rizk, however, i wanna mention 4 things.

  1. Yes, Nifty island Blooms enable users to exchange wearable, but the ultimate goal of players/creators to farm blooms is to get their future Airdrop of token. This is also how they marketing it “Play to Airdrop”, and that actually drives the overall trading and economy. Blooms exchanging wearbale is just an extra incentive layer they put on their system, it is a very good economic feature, but not the determinal one.

  2. This proposal is a start, and it focus on building the basic elements of the system and balance the interests among creators, players, voters, and the overall interests of DCL and DAO. So it is also possible to let user cliam wearbale with the points they get in scene each month in the future. Again, this is a start, as a start, we aim to be simple and be focused, so that it will be eaiser for the community to comprehend it. (imagine a lot of people still think there should be 0 incentive at all)

  3. I think it does not have any confliction with the new client. The incentive system need some time for development and self-testing, so i dont see any reasons why it must go together with the new client. I would even think it can be better if it can start before the new client, so that we can do some debug or have some early feedback before massive promotion.

  4. I really think 5% is a very small number , IMO opinion, there should be more to use here, however, we tend to do babystep, and start from this tiney 5% percentage. Plus, I dont understand why we need to reserver the 30% of this 5% when you have the other 95% of the total DAO reservation as fund.

20

Without decentralized annonymous “Proof Of Personhood” - It would be relatively easy to create multiple fake accounts (Sybil attacks) to accumulate points and unfairly claim rewards

Without PoP, it is hard to distinguish between genuine human engagement and bots / AI autonomous agents mimicking active gameplay

The proposal includes a referral mechanism where users get 10% of their invitees’ points. Without PoP, this could be easily exploited by creating multiple fake accounts to refer each other

The current anti-exploitation measure such as requiring a DCL name - are not enough without PoP. Anyone could still create multiple legitimate-looking accounts and buy them names and even run on multiple deviced

Without ensuring that rewards are going to unique individuals, this system may end up rewarding a small number of highly active exploiters instead of a diverse community of unique real human users

The reliance on a “dedicated team” for moderation, without a PoP system, could lead to centralization and potential bias in reward distribution

As the DCL will grow, manually monitoring for exploitation without PoP would become very difficult and resource-intensive

Besides if the system is perceived as easily exploitable due to the lack of PoP, it could negatively impact investor confidence

Considering Malasya just became first country in the world to integrate PoP into their Digital infrastructure and first social decentralized social media - dscvr.one . Decentraland could became first metaverse if the DAO able to not only keep up study new technologies to the core and adapt in time

For now it is unfortunatly a NO from me, altho the proposal is great!
By the way IMO it is related to any proposal based on Reward systems to take in consideration since they are failed on default without PoP

2 Likes