Thank you for the detailed thought and effort put forth in your response, and for providing the community insight into very real concerns and potential issues they should be thinking about.
This is true. We would rather this come from the Grants section, where 270M ARCH were allocated rather than 100M in the Community Pool, but don’t have precedent into whether or not we could vote ourselves into that tranche. If that’s acceptable we will reformat this into a signaling proposal, as would be our preference. Note that this would also leave precedent to teams being able to vote themselves into grants, so this does require special consideration.
This is a fair concern. Our planned offer for the Cosmos Hub is larger. ATOM is also far more distributed and desired for liquidity, including on Archway. If that were to pass, it would actually bring more liquidity to the Archway chain, rather than being perceived as contentious as a separate hub, and provide more ATOM liquidity to ARCH tokens. Any other planned (subject to change) offer is equal or lesser to that of Archway.
I’m open to an amendment suggesting that we will not offer a better deal than this (with the exception of ATOM) without further remunerating the Archway Community Pool to ensure Most Favored Nations?
This is fair. We have chosen Archway as our primary home, and have done everything we can to deliver at breakneck speed, high quality products. We can not at this time promise that Archway will be our primary HUB. We’re a business. If demand is higher elsewhere, then great! At this time we have received no funding from Archway’s investor network. It would be disingenuous of us to make promises that we did not have the power to ensure keeping. If we can’t pay our bills, it’s up to us to find places more profitable. We sincerely hope to have all needs met on Archway! But that is out of our hands. We believe we’ve shown optimum drive and care towards this ecosystem.
This is indeed a good risk to mention. As we earn ARCH in our treasury, it’s imperative to us that the ecosystem succeeds. If we’re a threat to it, we nullify its ability to grow. Our current stance is we will redelegate once we are the #1 validator. 3% is a fantastic goal, but likely unrealistic. What if the validator set shrinks? Additionally, for purposes of handling our derivatives, it is very important that we have significant tokens delegated to our own node based on how things function. We can not control if other people choose to delegate to us, which could put us over thresholds but in a position in which it adds risk to our protocol were we to redelegate too much apart.
All this is to say that we can not commit to something as low as 3%. We currently have no Phi Labs or Foundation delegation, which is a position we have endorsed, despite being a top performing validator, top performing governance contributor, and some of the most active people in this ecosystem. We do plan to uphold a process of manually delegating away. I like the moving target of remaining less than 0.5% above the #2 validator. Therefore if you successfully lower Chorus One’s voting power, and get better balance, and we continue to grow (such as this prop passes), we would pretty quickly begin delegating away, while still maintaining the business acumen of not having other less involved validators top the chart.
We believe that just by building and burning ARCH blockspace, and being a core supporter of initial liquidity we’re providing significant and measurable value to the Archway community completely aside from airdropping our token. We’re very grateful for everything built for and by Archway that has enabled us to operate… but we’ve also done significant work towards this ourselves. It’s wonderful how Archway did their airdrop. You guys also had a huge raise, need the token distributed for gas, and added additional steps towards claiming. Our projects are aligned but different. Our tokens use cases are aligned but different. It will be very easy for Archway aligned people to earn AXV regardless, but we feel like this strongly backs our ethos.
I understand concerns about tying this in with airdrop and investment. I get that it’s weird having them be dependent. I think of it similarly to a community bond. In a couple years’ time we’ll have this much ARCH anyways, and will have given out this many AXV to earn it anyways. This just bootstraps it much faster.
The airdrop details are intentionally vague. Our intention is to be fair, to not have individual votes factor in any way shape or form, and would love to work with you and your team to get alignment in this. We don’t want to set up an airdrop to be actively and publicly gamed.
This is true. This would indeed be safer, and in my opinion should happen regardless. Things like the liquidity council should exist. More DAOs should grow, and all should contribute, and hopefully Astrovault can and will be a hub to best foster all such growth. As these DAOs do get involved, they’ll also earn AXV. It is safer to vote no in the sense that there are risks it avoids. Our argument is that inactivity is death. We want to show more POL, we want to grow more liquidity, we want better distribution, we want Outbid (our launchpad we built on Archway) to get massive usage not only by us, but by other teams so that people know to come to Archway, work with Astrovault, and get funding, support, and liquidity. We believe that the success of this prop makes this outcome significantly more likely, and that the tangible benefits outweigh the legitimate risks, but that is for each to decide.
Yes. This is fair. It’s a weird precedent that we need to decide if we like. I agree that Juno overfunded many subpar DEXes. I warned against it. I also warn that Astrovault IS novel, and frankly a better model than other non-L1 DEXes (and those ones imo). I don’t know if there are others lining up behind us trying to solve this problem at a better rate, but I argue that they’d do it with less dedication and potential. Of the 25 grant recipients, my strong assumption is that we are by far the most prominent and to this point performant, and have the most potential to sell the most blockspace for the Archway protocol. Our visions for growth really do align well.
Yes. This is a risk. I will consistently, personally, push towards never selling treasury tokens… but ya if somebody owns tokens, they can be sold. Similarly, any AXV we give out can be sold any time. If anything, the consistent growth of our treasury should showcase the magnitude of importance that the governance of the AXV token has. Not mentioned in this concern… AXV holders can vote in ARCH governance proposals! Like this one (once governance is live). Now that’s segmented better so that only certain Archway-aligned pools can vote towards that, but it’s worth considering, and also tells me that it’s important to align token holders and communities.
- We can’t promise this. We’d love to. We’re not in a position to. If Archway grows and finds the success we aim to contribute towards then this will happen naturally. But we can’t sign a death warrant to ourselves should Archway fail in any way. Similarly we’d never ask you guys to promise that Astrovault would be the primary DEX you contribute to. If Curve comes here tomorrow with 1 Million users that’d be great for the ecosystem and you’d move Heaven and Earth to make that happen, as you should. That’s business. We work transparently. We’re available. We’re aligned. We want to grow the pie, and we have consistently shown that on Archway, without ceasing.
- We do not agree to 3%, but are open to the cap discussed, and could negotiate. Additionally it’s important to note that AXV governance will override validator governance, and enable split-voting, so it’s AXV that will have significant governance power separate from our validator.
- We are happy to abide by this first in private, and then if you find best, will be glad to publicly, for reasons of potential gamification.
Thank you again for your detailed thoughts and responses! We hope to find something agreeable to the community and all parties, and regardless of this prop, are enjoying the growth of Astrovault and Archway.
.
.
Stake Concentration — everyone has acknowledged the risk here, including the Astrovault team. While Astrovault’s use of liquidity to stake and tap into underlying L1 inflation is ingenious 
it does create some awkward dynamics around growing concentration of stake. We want to ideally bring infinite liquidity to Astrovault, but need to balance the fact that more liquidity brings more risk of validator power concentration. We’re striving for 
Governance Implications — as Astrovault continues to be a top validator in the network it will continue to have strong influence in governance. Given this prop will substantially boost the validator’s voting power, a few bits worth consideration / I’m curious about:
Understanding the Airdrop — airdrops are fun (!), but it’d be helpful for the community to have some view of what they’re getting before committing to a big spend. I understand Astrovault’s perspective, you can’t reveal too many details and risk the drop being gamed. But from the Archway community’s perspective, there’s no telling who will be included / excluded and how the 5% might be distributed. Has there been a snapshot taken? If so, can we share anymore details? Either way, I’d encourage sharing max viable info on the drop so the community can make a most informed decision on a major spend.
Funds for Airdrops — I share the concern raised by a few others about how funding requests in exchange for airdrops can set a dicey precedent. I’d personally prefer to decouple the two. I’d hope we can use the Liquidity Council and other ways to ramp up liquidity and hopefully Astrovault would still airdrop to the Archway community and supporters.
No Strings Attached — given the size of the spend, having zero checks on the usage of these funds is a bit unsettling. This is another reason why I think the Liquidity Council is a prime fit here. Liquidity Council can provide assurance that the funds will continue to be used as intended. We can activate liquidity for Astrovault and Archway, but in case something goes wrong down the line, the community has a backstop.
Moving Funds Off Archway — the proposal insinuates that some funds might be moved to other networks? See the snippet below, operative word being “primarily.” I think it’s important the liquidity remains on Archway. Again, this is where the Liquidity Council comes in handy, which can help see this through
Unclaimed Tokens Split Between AXV DAO + Archway — I’d advocate that if the Archway community did spend the funds in exchange for an airdrop, it should retain the full airdrop.