Apologies for the late input on the forums for this proposal. I will get straight to the point and voice that WhisperNode is a no vote to the proposal as written.
We have a few concerns over how this proposal is being delivered. Below is a brief overview of some high level concerns:
- Airdrop Tied to Proposal Approval
We see the tying of an airdrop to proposal approval to be a concerning practice bordering on blatant bribery. Passage of such a proposal for POL should in no manner be tied to an airdrop potential for a community. Airdrops are meant to reward early adopters and to disseminate stake in a network/project to aligned individuals; not to bribe them for community pool funds.
These quote tells me that Astrovault will be soliciting other communities, and has already stated that they will prioritize those where they’re able to succeed in pillaging community pools for bootstrap funds.
Yes, yes you are trying to buy votes or at least have the strong appearance of doing so.
First and foremost I would recommend untying airdrop conditions to proposal approval.
- POL Ownership
The proposed POL is SOLELY owned by Astrovault. They are being handed $750,000 with nothing more than a “trust us.” There are no multi-sigs, no contracts, no milestones…nothing proposed. Regardless of what is stated because you are granting tokens you are essentially trusting the team to not sell your token and are yourselves short your own protocol token. It also seems to circumvent the purpose of the liquidity council as described here:
This differs greatly from other POL proposals we have seen recently in the Cosmos ecosystems whereby POL is jointly owned by DAOs and team treasuries/foundations. In those cases there are much better safeguards and alignment. Two examples are found here:
- Network Security and Decentralization
While we agree Astrovault offers a unique approach to liquidity preservation, we disagree that it IMPROVES network security, and if not carefully considered the model actually presents a risk to network security and decentralization.
Astrovault currently sits at validator slot #4 with 13,263,032 ARCH tokens staked and 2.92% of voting power. The addition of 5,000,000 ARCH tokens would be 18,263,032 tokens and represent somewhere around 4-5% of voting power. While this number is not necessarily concerning in and of itself (we do have 3-4% of the VP on Secret Network admittedly) the business model of Astrovault will ensure that this percentage only grows over time. It is concerning to rapidly increase the voting power of one entity with the addition of 5,000,000+ ARCH tokens; especially when it seems guaranteed to grow by design of the DEX alone.
Other Considerations:
The claim brought forward is that additional liquidity is guaranteed to help scale. I would like to see some data that backs this up. Attracting liquidity is indeed a challenge, but I’m not sure handing the liquidity to the project team is necessarily the answer we’re all looking for?