Giveth Austerity Measures

[mitch]

Behold!

The bear market has arrived in all it’s glory and wrath.

So what are we going to do about it?

Give up?

Never.

Stay the course? Hmm… let’s talk about it.

@karmaticacid introduced a great discussion about making some changes to the GIVeconomy to reflect the realities of the current market. I would like to inject some concrete ideas to help protect GIV and Giveth during these trying times.

You can find a recording of this GIVeconomy call here.

I would like to touch on 4 points :

• Update Conviction Voting Settings
• Reduce GIVbacks Distribution
• Reduce GIVfarm Rewards
• Incentivize donations to the Giveth Project

Conviction Voting

Concerns we’re voiced over the flow of passing proposals in the GIVgarden. Many proposals are passing with less than ideal engagement, meaning GIV is being handed out easier than we would like from the Common Pool . I would like to suggest updating our CV settings to the following:

Spending Limit: 1.1%
Minimum Conviction: 9%
Conviction Growth: 8 days

I ran some simulations using the Commons Config Conviction Voting simulator using some of our actual parameters including:
Common Pool funds: 54,926,868.42 GIV
Effective Supply: 3,913,588.46 GIV

A few examples of how this looks:

A request for 50,000 GIV (~6000 DAI at current prices) would require:

• 986,933 GIV staked on it to pass in 7 days
• 638,686 GIV staked on it to pass in 2 weeks
• 484,839 GIV staked on it to pass in 1 month

A request for 416,666 GIV (~50,000 DAI at current prices) would require:

• Under 7 days it would be impossible
• 4,068,442 GIV staked to pass it in 2 weeks
• 3,088,436 GIV staked to pass it in 1 month

If you have no idea what the heck a Conviction Voting is and how it relates to the GIVgarden you should check out this post.

What do you think about these Conviction Voting settings?

• Yes, looks good!
• No, I have a better idea
• No, don’t change the settings
• Abstain

GIVbacks Distribution

We’ve been pretty generous with GIVbacks Distribution, offering a smooth 75% of the USD value of donations returned as GIV, with up to 1 million GIV distributed every 2 weeks (0.1% of the total supply). Now that the price of GIV has dropped substantially, that’s turning out to be a lot of GIV (Albeit with a majority portion streamed over several years).

A donation today at:

• $100 would return ~625 GIV as GIVbacks
• $500 would return ~3,125 GIV as GIVbacks
• $3000 would return ~18,750 GIV as GIVbacks

We haven’t quite reached the point where we send out the cap of 1 million GIV but we are approaching this limit rapidly as the price of GIV declines. Thus, I would suggest to lower our GIV factor from 75% to 50%, reducing GIVbacks sent out by 1/3.

These same donations stated above would then yield respectively:

• ~416 GIV
• ~2,083 GIV
• ~12,500 GIV

What do you think about this change to the GIVback Factor?

• Yes, looks good!
• No, I have a better idea
• No, don’t change the GIVback Factor
• Abstain

GIVfarm

Recently I outlined in the post for Extending the GIVfarm a proposal to Extend the GIVfarm by 2 months, with a possible further extension of an additional 2 months. The current GIVfarm program is set to end the 23rd of June.

The specs I proposed were as follows:

GIV per week = 600k (flat distribution)
Number of weeks = 8 (with a possible 8 week extension)
Total GIV distributed = 4.8 Milion (9.6 Million with extension)

Farm Distribution:

Farm	% Allocated	GIV Per Week
GIV/DAI Uniswap V2 on Mainnet	15%	90000
80GIV/ETH Balancer on Mainnet	20%	120000
GIV Staking on Mainnet	10%	60000
50GIV/xDAI Honeyswap on xDai	20%	120000
50GIV/WETH Sushiswap on xDai	20%	120000
GIVgardens/staking on xDai	15%	90000

Given the market situation I would suggest we should lower the weekly distribution amount, handing out less GIV to stakers and also give greater preference to providing stablecoin liquidity in lieu of single asset GIV staking. I would thus suggest the following changes.

GIV per week = 500k
Number of weeks = 8
Total GIV distributed = 4 million

Farm Distribution:

Farm	% Allocated	GIV Per Week
GIV/DAI Uniswap V2 on Mainnet	20%	100,000
80GIV/ETH Balancer on Mainnet	20%	100,000
GIV Staking on Mainnet	5%	25,000
50GIV/xDAI Honeyswap on xDai	25%	125,000
50GIV/WETH Sushiswap on xDai	20%	100,000
GIVgardens/staking on xDai	10%	50,000

What do you think about these changes to the GIVfarm Extension?

• Yes, looks good!
• No, I have a better idea
• No, don’t change the GIVfarm Extension settings
• Abstain

Incentivize Donations to the Giveth Project

Okay this one is where it starts to get a bit spicy . However the general sentiment is that we should create a donation drive for the Giveth Project. I took a page out of my own book and would advocate the creation of a token that can be earned by donating xDAI or DAI to the Giveth Project, let’s call this token NICE (Griff’s trademark exclamation) just as an example. The NICE token could have a few utilities in the Giveth ecosystem including:

1. Purchase a Giveth PFP NFT at a discount
2. Buy Giveth Swag
3. Staking Rewards post bear market
4. Special Discord powers/access (NICE holder lounge, badges… etc)
5. ???

We will have a leaderboard that shows the top Eligible Donors from every round, following the GIVbacks round cycles, this data can be published right inside the GIVbacks post. We’ll also have a running leaderboard for top NICE holders that can be published in Discord, right in the Giveth Project (as an update) and/or on the forum.

Data can be easily collected using the same APIs we already used to track eligible donations for GIVbacks.

There’s a few different options of what to do with the accumulated DAI/xDAI, including:

1. Save for emergency funding
2. Create GIV/DAI, GIV/xDAI liquidity
3. Buyback GIV from the OTC desk

There’s obviously lots of details to be decided amongst this proposal but the general flow would be:

1. Mint NICE token
2. Create leaderboard structure
3. Define utility
4. Choose what to do with funds

With inbetween all the nitty gritty such as :

• Minting Strategy
• Promotion Strategy
• Technical setup

Giveth has been running on donations and grants since 2016, donations are what make Giveth thrive. Adding a few new mechanics to help boost our own donations will help us out in the short term and we might glean some new ideas of how to expand this mechanic to benefit other projects on the platform.

What do you think about this plan to Incentivize donations to Giveth?

• Yes, let’s explore this more!
• No, I have a different idea
• No, don’t change incentivize donations to Giveth
• Abstain

---

There’s a lot to digest here but we should heavily consider modifying our current direction to rein in the amount of GIV we’re handing out. I’m also very excited to explore new token utility mechanics and to see how we can effectively secure donations using some of these fun game incentives. Please vote in all 4 polls and leave your advice below.

We should hope to implement some of these changes sooner rather than later in order to mitigate further damage to the GIVeconomy. Let’s do this!

[Griff]

For the GIVfarm adjustments… i’d rather see us take % off the ETH farms… cause the single sided staking keeps people primed for GIVpower, and keeps people from selling, as well as rewards people for being active in governance. Gotta keep supporting the Hodlers!

The ETH farms will drag us down if ETH’s price drops, better to lower them.

[Suga]

Thanks for all these ideas.

[mitch]

People will still stake single GIV as long as their is a GIVfarm, having better APRs for GIVpower once it launches will actually incentivize people to make the switch.

Good point on the ETH farms lets revise it

[Griff]

The switch should be effortless… Staking is the foundation of GIVpower… All staking users will get GIVpower at launch and those staked users will have the option to lock to increase their multiplier on GIVpower and APR.

So yeah the staking rewards will just get a multiplier for people if they lock… we will need to consider how we do the math for that… but if we lower the rewards now, we may have fewer people that will be there able to Lock

[mateodaza]

[mitch]

Based on your feedback what do you think about this distribtuion? @Griff

I removed the change to the single asset staking on Gnosis Chain, lowered the distro amounts for the ETH farms and slightly increased the allocation to the GIV/DAI farm from the original proposal.

GIV per week = 500k
Number of weeks = 8
Total GIV distributed = 4 million

Farm Distribution:

Farm	% Allocated	GIV Per Week
GIV/DAI Uniswap V2 on Mainnet	23%	115,000
80GIV/ETH Balancer on Mainnet	15%	75,000
GIV Staking on Mainnet	5%	25,000
50GIV/xDAI Honeyswap on xDai	25%	125,000
50GIV/WETH Sushiswap on xDai	17%	85,000
GIVgardens/staking on xDai	15%	75,000

[WhyldWanderer]

First of all, thank you so much Mitch for putting thought into and constructing this proposal!

Conviction Voting: How is this proposal different from our current settings at what would be the impact of the changes? I see where you’ve laid out a request for 50k and 416k and what the requirements would be to pass them. Can you remind us of the current settings so that we may see how much the new parameters would change things in comparison?

GIVbacks Distribution I really have to disagree with decreasing the GIV factor for GIVbacks. We have been working so hard to increase the appeal of Giveth for donors and looking for more ways to incentivize donors to use Giveth. The 75% is really our main selling point here and I think we should consider cutting corners elsewhere before dipping into GIVbacks rewards. If anything, we should be looking at ways that we can strengthen the GIVbacks program. Maybe if we can make the GIVbacks program more appealing in other ways besides the rewards and at that point we can make adjustments…

Also, it just feels wrong to rescind what we have already promised to deliver when it comes to GIVbacks. We should hold true to our promises as an organization.

Incentivize Donations to the Giveth Project: This sounds like so much fun! And I love the idea of the NICE token… I’m curious to see what kinds of ideas for token utility we can come up with.

[mitch]

Conviction Voting Parameters are:

• Conviction Growth: 8 days
• Spending Limit: 1.25%
• Minimum Conviction: 6%

[mitch]

Based on the poll, we got a clear signal to go ahead and change our CV settings. I’ve gone ahead and created the vote on the GIVgarden.

Gardens

Here’s the parameters and the appropriate Calculations :

User Params
Conviction Growth	8
Minimum Conviction	0.09
Spending Limit	0.011
Minimum Effective Supply	0.02

Solidity Params
Decay	9999949
Max Ratio	110000
Weight	108
Minimum Threshold Stake Percentage	20000000000000000

Please vote!

[karmaticacid]

I’m looking at the CV params right now, I didn’t vote yet, but I’m thinking perhaps they are a little too conservative.

Working on this to compare our old params w the new: New vs Old CV params Giveth - Google Docs

Going to take a look right now w/ Griff and chat about it, but posting in case anyone else is wondering similar things.

[Griff]

Here is the Giveth Version of the dashboard: https://commons-config-frontend-git-feat-giveth-givethio.vercel.app/

[karmaticacid]

Ok, so for the conviction voting params, I do agree with the general sensation that things are passing a shade too fast for my liking. Sometimes I am just surprised by proposals passing. I think making them a bit more conservative makes sense, but the new proposal live in the garden seems to make it take nearly double the GIV to pass proposals (in comparison to the old params).

I’m particularly interested in proposals around the $30k range because it seems that most big conference sponsorships & development proposals cost that amount roughly. ETHBarcelona & the smart contract audit are two good examples.

GIV price today is about $0.10, so $30k would be 300k GIV.
Aside from Griff, our top token holders with voting power in the garden have around 200k GIV each liquid.

Right now, the actual GIVgarden has:
Common Pool: 54,896,368.42 GIV
Effective Supply: 4,798,042 GIV

I used these params to test scenarios in the commons configuration dashboard, you can play with it here.

I think increasing the number of tokens required to pass a $30k proposal in 2 weeks by about 25% feels good. I don’t want to make things TOO hard to pass, and with bear market and the GIV token price declining, it is already getting harder to pass proposal of that side.

I propose:

Spending Limit: 1.2%
Min Conviction: 7%
Conviction Growth: 8 days

For two weeks, this looks like:

In comparison to our setting as they are now:

It would take 8 regular GIV whales, in comparison to 6 to pass a $30k proposal in 2 weeks.
$10k, $5k proposals take about 100k GIV more on each to pass the proposal in 2 weeks.

I think since our biggest contributors have around 200k each in the garden, and smaller but active contributors have something like 50k each… these seem like “goldilocks” adjustments.

I put a bunch of screenshots comparing this proposal w/ Mitch’s and the original here

Mitch’s proposal may still pass in the Garden, but I spent the time working on this already, so thought I’d just post/share to get feedback.

[karmaticacid]

I LOVE the NICE token idea.

@mitch

1. Purchase a Giveth PFP NFT at a discount
2. Buy Giveth Swag
3. Staking Rewards post bear market
4. Special Discord powers/access (NICE holder lounge, badges… etc)
5. ???

1. +1 @santigs would love if you kept this in mind

For the others… I have some questions:

• Would we make this nontrasferrable?
• What kind of things would we talk about in the special channels to make them desirable? What do donors want?

I think that people definitely want swag & discounts. Maybe we can make some kind of quest/gamification system where you can add to your GIVpower multiplier with NICE or something.

[santigs]

We could create a non transferable “NICE” version of the PFP and give that as a reward for donating if you already have one of our “initial collection” NFT and use that as a gating system for the swag, staking rewards, discord power/access, etc. That way we can keep NICE token transferable.

[mitch]

I think keeping it transferrable allows for another market to blossom, laissez-faire economics. Also this allows it to be spent on things like swag or PFPs without having to do any spooky token things.

I like the idea of plugging it into GIVpower or other options but I’d like to keep the MVP spec simple for the sake of expediency.

[mitch]

Let’s do it! I’ll vote for you!

[Suga]

Following with interest but not a lot of feedback.

[karmaticacid]

Based on feedback from today’s governance call, I created the vote to change the CV params as per my earlier comment. These have been reviewed by @mitch & @griff & had no verbal blocking in the gov call.

Here are the parameters & appropriate calculations:

User Params
Conviction Growth	8
Minimum Conviction	7.00%
Spending Limit	1.20%
Minimum Effective Supply	2.00%

Solidity Params
Decay	9999949
Max Ratio	120000
Weight	100
Minimum Threshold Stake Percentage	20000000000000000

When I inputted it, it looked like this:

Please vote!

Gardens

[karmaticacid]

re: GIVbacks factor change suggestion. We discussed it in the research call and the idea that… well, we should really motivate our team to support getting more donations on the platform… If GIV is at $0.10 and we get more than $133k of donations in a round, the max factor will proportionately decrease.

If we were to get more than $200k of donations, the max factor would be 50% automatically because of the gap on the amount of GIV we have allocated to each round.

I think the limit is built into the system as it is, and changing it to 50%… I’m not sure this will create a huge impact on our token in the bear. Apparently most people who get GIV form GIVbacks just donate it again anyway… our donors aren’t really the ones dumping the GIV, I think it’s more the farm side degens.

For these reasons, I voted “no change” in the snapshot