[DAO: QmdBfSU] Get voting power for your current L1 wearables and strengthen the wider community DAO participation

Governance
1

by 0x23be90335e79d3245615985d91f69814f98a0fab (Swiss)

How do you make people participate in the DAO voting system?

Certainly not by making them feel like they have no chance of moving the needle in the first place.

At the same time, you can’t take away voting power from people who have invested early on and are now considered small whales, to make the system fairer. So what do you do?

Well, since name NFT owners have passed a vote to get voting points and landowners have voting power privileges - Why do wearables owners not have that?

The only reason that I can think of is that future L2 wearables minted on MATIC may be minted for a very low cost per NFT so those would not be a great measure of how invested their owners are in the game. This would incentivize spam wearables just to get VP. So that is out of the question, - for now. Future L2 MATIC wearables will not be included in this initiative.

But ETH Layer 1 wearables have a fixed supply (except for a few rewards still outstanding) and are well distributed across the community. Every wearable you own today is an L1 wearable.

What if owning those would give you additional voting power?

After all most of those were purchased, like names and lands. And those that were received as rewards prove active participation in the game and that should be worth something.

Yes, certain larger entities will gain some additional VP, too. But I believe the wider distribution of VP among the regular folks in Decentraland would increase the will to participate in the DAO and would better represent how invested someone is in the metaverse.

I would suggest to first decide if we want that and then have a second poll on how to tier the system based on the rarity category of the items.

What do you think? Do you want more voting power for your L1 wearables?

  • YES, VP for my L1 wearables
  • NO, no VP for my L1 wearables

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2

I just want to say, I think all proposals should have some level of discussion in the forum, even if it is small, and I respect the efforts @SWISS is putting in to find/raise possible solutions to a number of questions that have come up in these first weeks of our DAO.

This is an interesting idea. I think it definitely has some positives and some potential draw backs, but I think what I want to focus on are some of the “interesting” dynamics about this proposal and some others mentioned in it.

  • On the one-hand, an interesting dynamic is that it will cement value of L1 wearables, and increase their long-term value and rarity.
  • Another is that with this we are seeing the emergence of several overlapping and at times competing interest groups, and specialized interests. Which IS NOT necessarily a bad thing in an emerging political system. We have a) traders and MANA whales; b) name-holders; c) wearable designers and holders; all of which are taking steps to organize and consolidate their power. Other interests groups are out there, builders, land-flippers, general creatives, intellectuals… How we all determine to organize and leverage our power will be interesting to see.
  • Even with the nameholders and whales getting some important votes passed, it does not yet mean they will be fully implemented. I understand there are additional stages and will be a final vote before they are fully implemented, if I am not mistaken. So we may have a chance to avert this consolidation of interest groups into specific enclaves if that is the direction we want to go as a community.
  • I have always had some problem with separating between OG and new folk. While this is going to be fluid because wearables are transferable this is still a dynamic I think is worth monitoring.
  • I am however curious how this will play out. How do you assign voting power? does it change based on last sale? average price? Is it based on rarity level? That said I 100% agree with the way you are separating this decision with the solution ! This is an excellent precedent to be setting in our voting procedures I believe. However, I do think solutions deserve discussion in the forums surrounding proposals like this. So while leaving them out of the voting stage it is important to begin looking into them in the discussions surrounding an initial vote, as it may help make up peoples mind…
  • One final question, are we going to be prohibited from minting wearables on L1 in the future? What would stop someone from minting more on L1 and gaining voting power?

Thinking out loud here for the purpose of discussion. Would love to see people’s thoughts on this proposal in addition to their votes!

-Matimio

2 Likes
3

This is an important question. I have just added a Tweet about it, too. There are only 2 ways additional L1 wearables can be created that I am aware of. Outstanding rewards from DCL and Chinese District rewards 2021 BUT. There are many un-minted collections from the licenses to print wearables that were given to a handful of accounts. While we cannot account for the already minted NFTs we should use the system state of today and not include hundreds of unminted L1s that are not proxies of merit or investment but just gifts from DCL to the first creators.

1 Like
4

I’m concerned about this from a tokenomics perspective but I also see the appeal of bringing in wearable owners to the DAO through a proposal like this.

If the value of MANA is from governance, and you exchange MANA for wearables, you are exchanging governance value for wearable value. If wearables are assigned equivalent governance value by the DAO, where does that governance value come from? Wouldn’t assigning governance values to wearables equivalently dilute the value of MANA’s governance by increasing the supply of governance, and thus dilute the value of MANA?

While that may seem undesirable for MANA, the DAO may prefer the direct input of wearable holders despite the dilution of MANA power because wearable holders bring unique and important perspectives of Decentraland that the MANA holders do not. These wearable holders are creators and community members who are materially invested in the creator economy of Decentraland and are a critical part of the player experience of Decentraland. So we would prefer these community members have input to the DAO as a demographic.

Fortunately, through the marketplace in the status quo, these invested community members give some of their MANA/governance to creators whose work (wearables) they value in exchange for that work (wearables). The community member has paid the creator in governance value. In this exchange the most popular creators act as a sort of delegate for the votes of wearable consumers. Having successful creators represent their supporters through the market seems good for the DAO.

Do we prefer wearable consumers have direct governance power in the DAO or would we prefer they are represented by the most talented wearable creators?

1 Like
5

Thank you for this interesting perspective. I have not yet seen this topic from that angle. I think it is important to distinguish between L1 and L2 wearables. (Ethereum Layer 1 vs Polygon Layer 2). L1 wearables mostly represent NFT investments in Decentraland (as it is common practice in the NFT space to get exposure to a project through its native NFTs) while L2 wearables mostly represent the creative power of various community members and I think you are mostly addressing the L2 folks with your perspective. Yes, many of the L1 wearables have been also been created by various designer teams in 2020 but not just regular players. So I guess also those L1 wearables can be regarded as NFT investments as they were created in collaboration with the DCL team that also got a cut of the wearables created. (There are however several thousand of L1 wearables that were not yet minted and we need to see if we should exclude those as some of the teams will not only have gotten a licence to print money but also voting power out of thin air) This proposal specifically addresses L1 wearables, not L2 wearables. However, maybe there is room for another proposal as I like some of the points you outline where creators are proxies paid in MANA:…

1 Like
6

Interesting proposal…
How much VP for a wearable though?
I’ve got some super rares 1/10s…
Will that get any priority over a 1/10000?
Is it really worth DAO MANA to fund this?
Personally I don’t think so…

7

Overall, I decided to vote yes on this proposal, because I am of the opinion that the more interest groups there are at this time the better for balancing of power within our community, and the increased amount of deliberation and cooperation that we are going to need.

I also think that it is important to reward early adapters of the world, who a) had they NOT invested in land, wearables and other content, this space might not have gotten to the point it is where we are ready, or at least closer to the mainstream adoption/adaptation; and b) likely would have made more return on their investment by simply leaving it in MANA — However, not without that buy-in to the space itself. So its an somewhat interesting catch-22 dynamic…

We are thus in somewhat of a complicated situation, where we don’t want to over-reward those who hold L1 wearables and could/maybe should have some competitive advantage over newcomers, but at the same time we don’t want to de-facto penalize and financially hurt those whose early participation and investment in the world has helped us get to this point.

I still have some concerns with L1 wearable accumulation and the simple amount of wearables that are out there that could equate to VP, and question over how to value the VP and wearable, I assume it would have to be by mint #/category. But All in all, I am generally in favor of this from a political perspective at least. The tokenomics question is something more complicated I think.

1 Like
8

I like the line about increasing the representation of interest groups within the community, and I think that’s the cleanest and strongest argument for this proposal. More representation → better policymaking → stronger economic growth despite dilution. Everyone who has MANA should vote yes if they agree with that chain of arguments.

However, I don’t think that the DAO’s job is to bestow arbitrary rewards upon specific community groups for previous participation in the world post-fact.

L1 wearables holders are not being materially penalized for buying wearables to my knowledge. They have exchanged MANA for NFTs. If they want to contribute to governance, they should exchange their NFTs for MANA or help build profitable MANA-based projects in the world. If the DAO wants to increase the contexts in which L1 wearables are valuable, that sounds great, but I don’t think that’s a good argument for this proposal.

9

Well-countered, and I don’t disagree with you. Was thinking off the cusp and freely there, and I think you are indeed correct here. DAO should not reward specific groups, and should not be used by groups to pursue reward (although if get deep into American Political Theory, it is the very balance of private property interest groups that are pursuing their own self interest and reward that creates the balance of power in the system, and thus the centrality of private property (in its many forms, not just land).

10

For sure, and sorry if the tone of that was a little dry. I agree re: property advocates for itself, and I think your framing of that touches the heart of the questions around the paradigm of MANA in the ecosystem. When NFTs can be used to govern just as easily as MANA, the interests of MANA seem a little more distant because it doesn’t have the same utility that NFTs have. Simultaneously, MANA is the foundational assumption, and is really upstream from the NFTs. So that’s what we’re all here to work out I guess! Thanks for going back and forth on this discussion.

11

L1 and L2 wearables will be seamlessly transferred between chains in the future. At first review, I don’t think it would be right to attached VP to a specific chain. Land & names (hopefully) will also be traded between L1 and L2 layers. Are you going to separate those into VP & not VP based on which chain they’re on? Those two categories have VP now because they only exist on one chain.

IMO, there are more things that need to actually be voted on & implemented first…rather than voting on how votes should be voted on things to vote on in future votes (run on sentence intended).

I don’t think extending VP to a specific chain for wearables is the best option right now.

12

@taldorf 100% all good. I appreciate the conversation and sharing of perspective. We only expand our own opinions by being open to and engaging with those who have differing ones.