Deflationary Supply Schedule Implementation

I’m proposing a deflationary supply schedule adjustment. The implementation could be something along the lines of: “If the 30-day average winning bid drops 50% from its 90-day average, then reduce the supply schedule by 75%” I believe the best strategy will come from further discussion. This thread is for those who wish to see a deflationary supply schedule implemented. If you do not believe the supply schedule should be made deflationary (given how quickly the supply is increasing), then please feel free to create another thread, please do not reply here.

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Interesting / interested – think if anything it should be inventory based not price action based and that we’re quickly hurdling towards some milestones that could be significant anchors to do so. defer to the larger group, but open to it.

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Agree with @vsvsvs. We should not be price based, changing the supply to chase after price appreciation or stability is a fool’s endeavour. Lil noun will spiral into a degen pool chasing after price appreciation, that is short term thinking and will only destroy the philosophy of the community.

However, I recognise that the supply may be inflating too quickly now that we have passed a small critical mass milestone to function as a DAO. I am in favour of a inventory based diminishing minting schedule, something like BTC that is hardcoded and predictable. When the supply is predictable, the demand side can price the NFT accordingly.

This is an initial draft, I am thinking along the line of either Discrete or Continuous:

Discrete

  • doubling the mint time every 2500 minted.
  • i.e #1 to #2500 lil noun auctions are 15mins
    #2501 to #5000 lil noun auctions are 30mins
    #5001 to #7500 lil noun auctions are 60mins
    .
    .
    so on and so forth perpetually…

This works out to be (roughly not accounting for settlement);
#0001 to #2500 will minimally take 26 days (3.75 weeks)
#2501 to #5000 will minimally take 52 days (7.52 weeks)
#5001 to #7500 will minimally take 104 days (15 weeks)
#7501 to #10000 will minimally take 208 days (30 weeks)
#10001 to #12500 will minimally take 416 days (60 weeks), 1+ year
Eventually there should be a stable supply of 20K lil nouns over 20years. Beyond that another 20 years to mint the next 2500 lil noun from #20000 - #22500.

Continuous

  • This will likely increase the cost of settlement.
  • Adding 5s to each settlement.
  • Kicks in after minting lil noun #2500
  • i.e #2500 auction time 15min (900 seconds)
    #2501 auction time 15 min 05 sec (905 seconds)
    #2502 auction time 15 min 10 sec (910 seconds)
    following the formula "Auction Time = 5*(Mint Number - 2500)+900
    This will mean that #10000 auction time is 10.6hours, #20000 is 24.5hours.
    This is a flat increment, we can also explore an exponential one such that the supply converges at 20K for example, making #20001 auction time 3 months or smth.

All variables are up to be debated to adjust the supply curve and its concavity accordingly.

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This seems like a very reasonable solution. It seems unlikely that very many people will participate as the numbers get higher. That would be my main concern with such a large group trying to govern the organization. Although, to me, that number is probably already too high for any kind of efficiency.

The other option is…just don’t change anything. Lil Nouns was created this way and if it fails to be able to manage in the long run, was it not a worthwhile experiment? If it’s changed drastically, how would you ever know if it was the right way or not? So many ethical considerations here.

What about all of the lil nouns that will never be born because of your actions?! Think of the children!

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This does seem like a proper solution. In a way, this solution helps us scale properly. As more and more are onboarded into web3, nouns could be an entry point.

One thing worth considering is how we’re going to communicate this (if the proposal passes). Because the messaging behind ‘1 noun. Every 15 minutes. Forever’ is easy to read, comprehend, and pass on.

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Nouns will run into the same problem eventually as well. Maybe a schedule could be coordinated with them in order to avoid running into them at some point?

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every 5000 mint starting at Lil Noun 1135…
(factoring in the settlement time, average ~10m)

total supply 6135 mints … going from 15m to 30m = 34 days
total supply 11,135 mints … going from 30m to 1h = 55 days
total supply 16,135 mints … going from 1h to 2h = 97 days
total supply 21,135 mints … going from 2h to 4h = 180 days
total supply 26,135 mints … going from 4h to 8h = 347 days
total supply 31,135 mints … going from 8h to 16h = 667 days

time to get to 31,135 mints is 1380 days (3.78 years)

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We don’t know for sure if it is a right or wrong decision, but inaction still is a decision made.

Why 21million Bitcoin? No one knows, it’s arbitrary. But what I do know is inflationary supply discourages participation due to the lack of scarcity. And we will run into this problem way before biggie noun would. In some sense, we can be their experimentation; a canary DAO. Nonetheless would love to hear their thoughts, I am not connected to them yet (would love for someone to connect me!).

And for the unborn lil nouns, they are not aborted. Just delayed!

With regards to governance, traditional finance and behavioural psychology has it that 2% will be the estimated participation rate in a large group (>10,000). I don’t think this will be much of a problem since we will be able to delegate our votes to representatives. So the participation in our ecosystem will still be meaningful.

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@lil-Kensan

I like the discrete method better. I like how it allows for “milestones” – like the next doubling will be something to look forward too. I feel like discrete is also easier to understand than continuous. 5 seconds a day seems a little chaotic.

I agree with deflating the supply schedule because I do worry about effective governance in a DAO with too many participants. However, I don’t think we should ever deflate to the point where the supply is trickling as slowly as nouns, or slower, since that seems to defeat the purpose of “lil” nouns. I would like to allow for as many people to participate as possible, since that seems to be the purpose of lil nouns, while also recognizing that too many cooks in the kitchen too soon might be a recipe for disaster.

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I agree, increasing bid time every X amount of Lil Nouns will eventually get to the “every 24 hrs” level of Nouns. The main incentive for Lil Nouns is the easier entry point (~1/80th price of a noun) every 15 minutes.

I think at max it should be every 2 hours, which would mint 10-12 Lil Nouns a day. Still significantly higher supply than Nouns without being close to 24hr. I initially thought a deflationary supply would be good, and I still do, but it shouldn’t get close to “a new Lil Noun every 24h”

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I agree with this. I think there should be some sort of minimum issuance per day we agree on so that we can always outpace nouns in issuance and ideally always be more affordable

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What would be the next steps to set this up?

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Another way to tackle this would to make older lilnouns more potent. For instance maybe voting power diminishes with each new lilnoun. Or if a token is made and each lilnoun produces tokens each day we can make the older ones make more and reduce the amount over time etc. Just thinking about this in other ways.

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We need more specific, vetted solutions for a deflationary schedule. Something with strong community buy-in so as to ensure successful execution of the proposal.

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A deflationary supply schedule is needed. Things worth considering before deciding:

  • It shouldn’t outpace the OG Nouns at any point
  • It should strengthen the involvement of those that came in early by incentivizing their ‘stay’ in the DAO. Perhaps increasing their voting power/rights. Perhaps some traits become more and more rare.
  • A maximum deflationary schedule should be set. A maximum delay of 1LN/12 hours?

I agree with @travsap with finding more specific, vetted solutions for a deflationary schedule. I believe the next step would be to define the milestone, set max deflationary schedule for each milestone, etc.

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Above all, I think we need to set course for the DAO in order to decide upon deflationary / infaltionary model. Whats the vision like for lil nouns?

Secondly, if I’m not wrong, lil nouns is a fork of nouns and it can always choose its own path. I do not think that there are restrictions for lil nouns to follow onto the path of nouns. What I mean is that we keep it balanced and march ahead with innovative ideas.

Third, even if there’s no clear path, I would like to consider going with deflationary model as described by lil-kensan. Inflationary models are way too risky in my experience. There is a higher risk of us failing this experiment with the current model.

And yes, inaction is an action.

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I love the show of passion and willingness to experiment here! Discourse is facilitating ideation and refinement exactly as intended!

Thanks @mrbrookg for keeping things well organised in this conversation.

I would like to raise two concerns:

  1. I am not in favour of @triggitytron.eth suggestion to provide early lil nouns special voting rights and traits. The whole point of nouns and lil nouns is to have different traits with no rarity differentiation for character expression. Giving early nouns any special rights will only make them more valuable which discourages new nouns from being in demand since they are “lesser”. Also, early lil nouns already enjoy a huge first mover premium, where they were minted for lesser than 0.1ETH and valued regularly above 5ETH. Encouraging participation should not come at the cost of other nouns, including tangible or perceived favoritism.

  2. As mentioned by @mrbrookg, whatever deflationary schedule we settle upon, we will need to change “one lil nouns every 15mins, forever” to an equally simple and convincing one. So we should not overcomplicate the supply.

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i suggested that given the current cadence, it could possibly encourage early movers. But I see what you mean.

It seems the proposal could possibly be presented in this manner:

  • Change the 1 lil noun. every hour. forever. – since its implementation would take a while, that could give us time to reach a certain figure before disinflation.
  • Or perhaps make it a cascading one. put a proposal on whether or not to take disinflationary measures. followed by a list of proposed disinflationary measures (10k/year vs 20k/year, etc.).

Another thing: if we decide on a disinflationary measure, we need a bot that will settle the auctions as soon as their time is up so the time between minting nouns is as promised (1 noun. 15 min. forever). I don’t know if that too should be proposed separately or with one of the proposals.

How about:

When Lil Nouns hit 50k minted, “one lil noun, every hour, forever”

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i like the format.
my suggestion:

When Lil Nouns hit 30k minted, “one lil noun, every hour, forever”

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