The collapse in the price of SOV in satoshis, is not a secret. Even when the SOV is not conceived to be “another sh-t-coin more”, but a governance tool, it seem that it has been losing appeal to the community. SOV as governance tool, hasn’t been useful enough.
In order to at least stabilize the value of SOV, somehow, I think something should be done. So I’ve been thinking in something to improve the demand and usefulness of our governance token.
Two things has called my attention:
1.- Very few people, few community members has proposed a SIP to be voted since the TGE. Proposing new ideas, or budgets is very difficult so far.
2.- On average, people are riding off their SOV, not buying more. On average the stakers, are selling their tokens instead of re-stake.
What can we do to improve this scenario?
The Dash Governance Model
There is a simple governance model that has been working since 2015, so it has had some stress test over the time. The Dash governance model has this interesting features:
i.- Every month, Dash releases a budget to let the community get involved in projects of promotion, improvement and adoption.
ii.- Anybody can make a budget proposal ON CHAIN by burning 5 Dash.
iii.- The masternodes (those who have stakes of Dash) are the one who vote on these proposals.
This model has certain parallels with the Bitocracy and some features can help the governance system to be stronger and more useful.
What if Sovryn adopts something as the following simple changes?
#1: The current requirement today to launch a proposal is to have a certain minimum voting power (either with own assets or delegates). But in addition to this condition, what if the possibility of launching a proposal to anyone who “burns” a certain fixed amount of SOV is enabled with it? (say 100 SOV for budget proposal / general SIPs and 200 of SOV for relevant changes in our protocol).
#2: Then the proposals can be voted by stakers and vesting contract owners. It is also known that the platform has a budget and a tokenomics to release SOV tokens. What if a bi-monthly (to say something) contest is launched to distribute some part of this budget in form of free SOV, along with proposals of adoption and improvement?
I know that this raw proposal has many downsides. E.g.: how can we assure that the budget granted will be used with the desired purpose? Well we have creative people and it is likely we could find a suitable adaptation to our model, like using staking positions as collateral (this is just one of many possibilities).
But what I want to discuss here is why this simple changes can improve our governance system and the value of our governance token.
In the first place, the mere fact of allowing to anyone to propose a change, a SIP, a budget proposal in Sovryn, with just the condition to pay a proposal-fee, may increase the attention towards our platform, making more useful the Bitocracy.
Also, by burning these fees, we reduce the “tokenomic-mass” of the SOV platform, increasing the value of the token in the long term. And long term thinking is what we’re focused on.
Also, in offering an incentive this will attract much more users into the adoption of the platform.
If this proposal is well received, it may imply some further work, as a SIP and some code to be developed for our smart contracts. But let’s take one step at the time.
Thank you reading me!