[DAO: QmRw8jR] For Decentraland Daily Active Users: MANA incentives for USDC-ICE LP

Governance
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by 0x091f3b14a3323819c36ad0ec1298f97f0c7e0caa

Linked Draft Proposal

For Decentraland Daily Active Users: MANA incentives for USDC-ICE LP

Summary

Allocate $1mm USD worth of MANA to provide rewards for the ICE-USDC liquidity pool on QuickSwap; wherein, MANA rewards will be distributed over 3 months to those that stake USDC-ICE LP tokens.

Abstract

Daily active and concurrent users are Decentraland’s key differentiator within the nascent metaverse space, where several new competing virtual world platforms are launching and investing millions of dollars into engaging content creation. The LP rewards are a bridge to begin reversing DCL’s DAU decline and return to growth. ICE Poker SNG is a new, competitive game mode that drives organic demand and utility for ICE as it offers highly skilled players a quicker clearer path to wearable ownership. Following this temporary 3 month rewards period and the launch of ICE Poker SNG, the ICE Poker ecosystem will be self-sufficient and long-term sustainable.

Motivation

Decentral Games ICE Poker is the first free play-and earn poker game launched in Decentraland in October 2021 that accounts for ~60% of Decentraland’s weekly active users. If you hop into Decentraland and view the top scenes, you will be directed to an ICE Poker venue where you can play and interact with thousands of other real people, a social experience that no other open metaverse platform has been able to deliver.

ICE Poker has onboarded and will continue to onboard users into Decentraland and the Decentraland wearables ecosystem by delivering direct utility through self-custody and delegation of Decentraland wearables. After creating a Decentraland avatar and purchasing a wearable to play ICE Poker, many players explore other scenes and invest in adjacent Decentraland projects, as well as create their own inspired by ICE Poker.

In addition to ICE Poker, Decentral Games venues also host daily virtual events such as live music, artist showcases, NFT drop parties, comedy shows, and more.

The stats today:

  • 12 live Decentraland venues
  • 1,007 parcels of Decentraland LAND
  • 8,000+ daily active players
  • 203,000+ monthly visitors across all venues (April 2022)

Specification

Allocate $1mm USD worth of MANA to provide rewards for the ICE-USDC liquidity pool on QuickSwap. MANA rewards will be distributed over 3 months to those that stake USDC-ICE LP tokens.

Details:

  • Within 10 days following the final binding proposal passing, $1M USD of MANA would be sent to dgtreasury.eth to distribute to folks staking the ICE-USDC LP.
  • MANA will be distributed by smart contract, available claim in proportion to the amount of LP staked and the amount of time that LP is staked.
  • 0 MANA will be earned/retained by the DG DAO Treasury and DG Team. Specifically, the DG DAO will not stake the LP it provides to the pool, so all rewards will go to community members staking LP tokens.

Impacts

Daily active and concurrent users are Decentraland’s key differentiator within the nascent metaverse space: The competition is spending on development and promises eventual users; DCL has users.

This proposal will support the ICE price and thereby maintain DCL DAU while SNGs ramp up, but this describes only half the equation and represents the small upside to DCL. In the true “upside scenario,” SNG closes the remaining gap toward making the ICE economics sustainable, and the ICE Poker ecosystem succeeds in onboarding millions of players into Decentraland. Half of the gap to sustainability has already been closed, and, in short, the proposal helps bridge the remainder across 3 months, reversing DCL’s DAU decline in the short term and facilitates returning to growth sooner. The “downside scenario” is that SNG does not succeed in spite of substantial progress made to-date and this proposal only serves to sustain DCL DAU while rewards are deployed.

The mechanics of of LP rewards sustain the ICE price are straightforward: Rewarding the ICE-USDC LP pool (while excluding the DG DAO LP from being rewarded) will generate incremental demand for ICE. It’s challenging to predict the exact amount of this demand in advance; this would cause a significant amount of ICE to be taken out of circulation and placed in the pool; as a result, the ICE price will be supported while SNG is releases and ramps up.

Implementation Pathways

As outlined in the ‘Specification’ section, the only required step for implementation by the DCL DAO itself will be for the DCL DAO to transfer $1M MANA to dgtreasury.eth. The DG Team will deploy on Polygon their audited LP rewards smart contract that was previously used to reward the ETH-DG LP pool and apply this reward ICE-USDC LP on QuickSwap. MANA Rewards will be distributed to those who stake these LP tokens as outlined in the ‘Specification’ section and a UI will be provided on https://decentral.games/dg/liquidity.

Conclusion

Daily active and concurrent users are Decentraland’s key differentiator within the nascent metaverse space, where several new competing virtual world platforms are launching and investing millions of dollars into engaging content creation.

This proposed MANA allocation is not a grant for the Decentral Games team – its entire purpose is to maintain daily active and concurrent users within the Decentraland and Decentral Games ecosystems as the Decentral Games team completes development and launches ICE Poker SNG. The LP rewards are a bridge to begin reversing DCL’s DAU decline and return to growth.

ICE Poker SNG is a new, competitive game mode that drives organic demand and utility for ICE as it offers highly skilled players a quicker clearer path to wearable ownership. Following this temporary 3 month rewards period and the launch of ICE Poker SNG, the ICE Poker ecosystem will be self-sufficient and long-term sustainable.

Since the Stage 1 proposal was posted, it’s been inspiring to see all the stories of Decentraland creators’ events being well-attended by the ICE Poker community, the ICE Poker community investing in other wearable creators/games, and even cases where folks who found Decentraland via DG have since started their own venues, projects, and games in Decentraland. This initiative would welcome ICE Poker players (folks who use Decentraland every day), wearable owners, and the Decentraland community at large to provide this LP, earn MANA, and further participate in the Decentraland DAO.

Why should the Decentraland DAO itself fund these rewards?

The Decentraland DAO has assigned $200mm in MANA to their Ecosystem Fund to fund development of engaging content in Decentraland. ICE Poker has already proven its ability to deliver value to Decentraland by driving the majority of Decentraland’s daily active and concurrent user growth in 2022. The majority of the Decentral Games treasury is locked in illiquid Decentraland LAND, LP for DG and ICE, and a Polygon Validator node.

Why $1mm and why 3 months?

$1mm USD in MANA would provide sufficient rewards over a 3 month period to allow the Decentral Games team to deliver on building, launching, and growing ICE Poker SNG, which will enable the ecosystem to self-sustain following the ending of the rewards.

From a proposal execution perspective, why should DG distribute the MANA rewards?

The DG DAO has already implemented audited smart contracts to make rewards tokens claimable for staked LP on decentral.games, so it makes sense for DG to do this execution. To reiterate, the DG Treasury and Decentral Games will earn 0 MANA. The rewards will go entirely to the community.

A note from the DG Project Lead and Founder, Miles Anthony:

“We’ve had conviction around Decentraland and its role in delivering an interactive 3D frontend for the open metaverse from its inception in 2017. Since then, we’ve purchased 1000+ parcels of LAND and invested millions of dollars to build engaging content to attract and retain over 60% of the platform’s users. This MANA allocation is a stepping stone to assist in stabilizing our in-game economy as we prepare to launch ICE Poker Sit-n-Go tournaments, along with other key initiatives that drive organic demand and utility for ICE and solidify our ecosystem’s long term sustainability. With the support of the Decentraland team and community, we look forward to onboarding the next million users into Decentraland and the nascent metaverse.”

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

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For people wondering the difference between this proposal and the draft proposal (the previous step): its exactly the same text, with the addition of the Impacts section.

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I’m voting Yes this time, even when the proposal still fails to explain exactly why maintaining the price of ICE is so important and what would happen if the ICE price drops.

I’m making a leap of faith, trusting that if DecentralGames is asking for this huge amount is because they really need it, that the ICE price dropping is truly an existential risk for the project. And that if they survive this existential thread they will continue to add value to Decentraland and contributing to the community.

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Well, I still don’t agree @Eibriel , no matter how much they change in the text, the result will be the same.

Investments are like that, holders must bear their profits or losses.

The only thing that will happen when DG donates MANA to holders is that they sell it “Instant”. So 0.01% of the supply would fly and enter circulation again.

If we want the same thing to happen with MANA as with ICE, go ahead, let’s donate 1 million mana from the DAO as many times as they are wrong.
DG has plenty of liquidity to assume and solve its problems.
The grants should be to improve the ecosystem or the project, not to distribute rewards among holders, especially knowing that many of us could not enter ICE due to its high Minteo prices.

The problem has only been caused by the people who have passed all the ICE to usdt as they received it.

The price is unsustainable, no matter how much subsidy is made.

1 Like
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I’d like to continue the conversation from last proposal here: [DAO: QmdD8d9] For Decentraland Daily Active Users: MANA incentives for USDC-ICE LP - #27 by cazala

tl;dr: I proposed incetivizing the MANA-ICE pair instead, so MANA holders that want to participate or who don’t wish to be diluted by this proposal can join without selling MANA. This aligns the incetives better between the both DCL and DG communities, and also benefits MANA by deepening the liquidity in Polygon which currently is very thin.

The counter argument was that Quickswap or other DEXs don’t route trades through ICE or MANA, so users who wish to trade ICE for USDC can’t do it directly from the Quickswap interface, since it can’t route ICE → MANA → USDC.

Even though this is true, in practice the ICE-USDC pair will be arbed to equilibrium with the ICE-MANA pair. So if the price of ICE is higher in the ICE-MANA pair (because there’s single side supply coming from MANA holders, which translates on exchanging MANA for ICE, propping up the price of ICE), bots will arb the price of ICE in the ICE-USDC pool until it’s the same in both pools by trading USDC → ICE → MANA → USDC. Arbitrageurs don’t even need to do the last leg of the trade in Polygon, if there’s better liquidity for MANA<>USDC elsewhere, if the liquidity of MANA in Polygon is a concern for you. There’s deep liquidity of MANA in Ethereum and CEXs.

1 Like
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While I appreciate the DG team and what they are doing in DCL, I see this as a type of bailout. I do not agree with taking funds from the DAO Treasury and allocating to a P2E project. We are in the Ebb of a market downturn. As you said, people will still be coming into DCL. Wait for the upturn and keep adding to the ICE Poker mechanics and ICE will rise with all the other cryptos in due time. DG is not FORD and the DCL DAO is not the Government.

2 Likes
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This is hell of a lot of money to support liquidity for a non-native token.

Voting NO.

I would only vote yes here if:

  • There’s already a long term MANA liquidity incentives program (eg: MANA/USDC on Uniswap)
  • There’s a long term proposal on how to use the funds (1M for a 3 month program doesn’t work in my opinion, needs to be longer term)
  • There’s a clear explanation on how the deployment of funds directly impacts Decentraland positively (I see no clear connection between incentivizing liquidity in ICE/USDC and “maintain daily active and concurrent users within the Decentraland and Decentral Games ecosystems” as the proposal claims)

I hope this proposal doesn’t pass in the current form.

3 Likes
9

I’m voting NO. This proposal asks for a lot of money that will go directly to ICE holders (in a 3 month period). It’s a quick fix, an artificial push of the price for little time, and I believe it won’t have a lasting impact on DG and Decentraland’s community.

The contributions of DG to Decentraland are very valuable. They indeed have built an attractive experience and pushed the limits of what can be built inside the world. I do hope the upcoming ICE Poker SNG game model will pave the way for the sustainable growth of DG and the ICE ecosystem as the proposal states.

ICE Poker SNG it’s a project worth supporting, however, I prefer to do it through the grant process and support the long-term development.

3 Likes
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SNG was already funded and dev’d by DG treasury, if this grant helps launch SnG successfully (ice sustainability = more players = more ice burned from SNG tourneys) isn’t that essentially a grant to help long term development retroactively?

Team has burned their own treasury to build out DG and DCL, rewarding them in post now that they require assistance seems a fair trade, team feels the best chance of success is to leverage this one-time grant to stabilize ice these next few months to ensure SnG poker launches successfully to a still-active and vibrant community of real players, people who spend hours in DCL each day and many who are now making a career out of it.

1 Like
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Hi. Decentraland fam.

Even though someone think this proposal is only for DG not DCL, I believe this proposal will be also helpful for not only DG but also DCL.
DG is running p2e poker game built in DCL platform. And when ice poker and DG are introduced in news articles, it’s most likely decentraland is also introduced together which has results of being exposed to social media and public. It’s so helpful for decentraland too.

In addition, i believe you’ve had experiences of DG events and ICE poker. DG has shown a lot of creative way to create contents and good examples which other community could learn and utilize for their communities.

Eventually, this proposal helps ice ecosystem and keep DG creating new creative contents and hosting events like DJ party, art display, etc, which is also helpful to DCL development in long term view.

Thanks

1 Like
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People pointing out that DG should use its own treasury to implement the rewards pool are not recognizing the fact that much of the DG treasury consists of DCL assets (DCL land and MANA). If DG is forced to liquidate its assets, to support itself, what do you think that will do to the valuation of the assets that many in the DCL community own?

Would it not be better, instead, to support a key member of the DCL economy, using a fractional portion of DCL funds intended just for such purpose?

1 Like
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Don’t see this helping long term or even in the short term the price will still fall and this truly only helps the big guys make more money in the short term to cover losses in my eyes. All i see is yet another attempt at a cash grab… loosing faith faster faster with every move…

2 Likes
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For Decentraland Daily Active Users: MANA incentives for USDC-ICE LP

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 56% 6,162,990 VP (151 votes)
  • No 44% 4,952,747 VP (40 votes)
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For Decentraland Daily Active Users: MANA incentives for USDC-ICE LP

This proposal has been ENACTED by a DAO Committee Member (0xbef99f5f55cf7cdb3a70998c57061b7e1386a9b0)