Reduce APR of Multiplier Points

Proposals
21

There are some great ideas here. I support most of them.

What is not consistent here is on one hand you argue MP system is great to reward loyalty and it is important for new entrants, oppose reduction of MP APR and at the same time willing to let it go completely saying that it is outdated. They don’t both reconcile.

Saying that I recommend everyone looking things from pragmatic approach. I also support phasing out MP system or have it to be a more dynamic balancing system connected to growth rather than a static one. There are many ideas we can explore on what is the long term way it should be handled, however we have to realize things take time to discuss and implement and we cannot wait another 6 months or an year to figure out what is the ideal way to deal with things when house is on fire. we made this mistake once and we can’t repeat the same mistake again.

Why can’t we do all?

  • We already cut off the MP boost to 200%, sure I supported 100% but it is what it is. This is democracy sometimes results is not what we want
  • Second let us go ahead and cut MP APR to also reduce dilution further. Let us put it to vote and see what happens.
  • Continue to discuss more actively about the future of MP, all solutions so far offered take time to discuss, vote and implement.

I already have verified with dev team, reduction of MP APR doesn’t take time after voting, it is a simple config change. While we discuss what is the best for GMX regarding MP system, I say we need to act now and not delay further to address the issue at hand.

Let us be practical and nimble in our decision making process.

2 Likes
22

But because you are upset it is not 100%, you are willing to cut off your other leg? Just want to remind I was also upset about 100% but got over it.

How is it unattractive for new folks, new folks don’t know the past. It is same rate of inflation now for everyone at 50%. In fact the whales who already crossed 200 boost won’t be able to use any MP. So they will be getting diluted both at 100% APR and 50% APR.

New folks see attractive base APR and see there is a loyalty program, why and how would they have any idea how it was before? Everybody understands that all investments have early skew that means folks who entered early benefited much more than folks who entered late in a growing protocol. No sane person expects that a person entering a project 3 years down the lane should have had same advantage the person who entered at launch.

MP system in its core design has a skew to reward early, so in a way we would be kicking the can forever down the road to keep it fair.

Also I don’t support this idea of immediate locking to do more MP minted right away. How does this resolve the issue of MP dilution? This idea needs to be thought through.

23

i mean, i said “without some sort of caveat i think its an ill thought out move.” If a caveat or long-term plan, or even at the very least some commitment, is suggested alongside the vote and it is agreed upon then fine.

24

Fair point. Just not sure how we can get that.

I say go for vote what we can do now. Continue to discuss this actively and put up for vote any new ideas.

I am not saying we should not do any other ideas, but let us be practical. Let us do something about the burning fire while we also plan for future and act on it

25

Here’s some additional data to help infuse the MP discussion, from Saulius’ great Dune Dashboard:

  • 7,712,018 Total GMX, esGMX staked

  • 9,553,806 Total MP staked

  • 12,850,602 Total MP burned

  • 57.4% MP burn/stake rate - so over time 57.4% of all issued MPs have been burnt due to users unstaking GMX/esGMX.

Link: https://dune.com/saulius/gmx-analytics (ignore the Margin Trading segment, that is outdated.)

Regarding my other two questions:

How would a decaying mechanism to reduce the APR of MPs from 100% to 50% over a say 1 or 2 years time frame affect this proposal?

I understand this would be much harder to implement, and require a code audit. As its benefits are limited, such a decaying mechanism doesn’t seem worthwhile.

How would limiting new daily MP distribution to the amount of MPs burned that day affect the situation?

Considering the abovementioned stats around the % of MPs burned, this would introduce a lot of code complexity for very limited benefits imho.

2 Likes
26

@Kalcrypto1,

I never argue that the MP system is great, I only recognize that it was a great bootstrapping tool; MPs incentivized loyalty when revenue was low. Plus, in those early days, the supply of MPs was proportionally much lower and the base yield was relatively much higher.

We are in a paradigm of “Late-Stage MPs” and need to recognize that the current structure does not lend itself to moving in reverse. As time goes on, MPs will make up a larger and larger proportion of the revenue distribution and base yields will continue to fall, regardless of how low we push the MP APR.

It should be clear that reducing the MP APR is worse then leaving it where it is, because it further disadvantages new entrants, while doing nothing to increase the base yield. Early investors got to max MPs in 2 years, yet new entrants will be facing up to 4 years before they earn the rate we do today. Not only is it bad PR to so blatantly favor early investors, it creates an economic disincentive to bet on GMX as a new staker. I certainly wouldn’t.

I understand how one would reflexively think to reduce MP APR when recognizing that high MP ratios are an issue, but when we pragmatically model how that change impacts the ecosystem, it becomes clear that not only is it “kicking the can down the road”, it causes GMX demand to fall and we will have manufactured the opposite of the intended effect.

Reducing the APR now exasperates the issue, not solves it.

As @horse-shaped-smyl said, we need to rip off the band-aid. 200% MP stakers will need to accept that a temporary yield reduction of less than one third will be more then made up for by the surge in GMX price as people rush to earn base yields well above the ETH stake-rate.

The positive effects of removing the MP system will arrive in the short term as base yields more then double overnight. We are in the beginning of a bull market, if there was ever a time to do it, its now. Crypto investors are hungry, valuations are exponentially rising, GMX needs a new staking narrative and any pain felt by long term stakers will be muted by the effect of the rising tide.

1 Like
27

As soon as GMX produces any type of fee growth this conversation will go away because there will be more APR for everyone. We need more asset listings at a quicker pace and to add another chain. It’s been a no growth environment for too long now and it’s making us all bicker about MP’s.

28

Yeah but this will be temporary relief whilst the underlying problem continues to get worse. Also, GMX will have to have even better growth than other perp protocols in order to generate a competitive base staking APR.

My probably naive question is how much this matters to whales. If they practically never intend to sell but are just focused on their earnings then a GMX price that underperforms the market might not matter to them. If anything, fewer new stakers improves their yield (and base yields). A relatively low GMX price wouldn’t (?) directly affect development but it might reduce the new blood and energy coming in to the system.

1 Like
29

I would like to add a potential improvement to my argument above:

Perhaps a wise middle ground would be to keep the MP system, but remove revenue distribution from MPs, and leave the governance APR, still maxing out at 200%.

Having governance weight increase the longer you participate in the ecosystem makes sense, and likely improves the quality and forward thinking of governance decisions.

It also continues to provide an incentive (admittedly much less of one) to maintain long term dedication to the GMX staking pool and disincentives trading price swings.

3 Likes
30

can you guys fix the mp system, its clearly holding back the spot price which leads to less interest in adding TVL… its so obvious

1 Like
31

I agree, the time to make the switch is when revenue is high and prices are rising.

Now that Uniswap has turned on their fee switch, there is renewed focus on protocols that provide revenue distribution. GMX should be easily dominating that domain. Without MPs, our base APR would massively out perform every revenue sharing protocol.

This week, the base APR would be ~16% without MPs. At that rate, GMX price would have to 4-5x to approach the “Risk Free” ETH stake rate.

GMX could dominate this cycle. The time is now.

3 Likes
33

Competitor protocols with less volume and fees pay out base rates of 10-20%, i.e. multiples higher than the GMX base rate, and with no or minimal lock ups required. Given this, the price action of GMX is not surprising. Capping MPs at 200% hasn’t worked. It’s time to rip the bandaid off and remove MPs completely.

2 Likes
34

TVL has nothing to do with spotprice of GMX lol

1 Like
35

the higher the gmx spot price the more reliable and safe the gmx ecosystem is perceived.

A higher GMX price leads to more TVL because we seem reliable, you probably still dont get this so whatever

36

hi all,

thank you very much for the thoughts on the multiplier points, appreciate the discussion on it

I previously had not shared a public opinion on this topic because i didn’t have a strong opinion on it

went from thinking it would be good to reduce mp apr, to thinking it may not be good, to thinking it may not matter

have spent more time thinking about it and I hope I have the right view on it now

my proposal would be to create a vote where the MP emissions and MP caps are voted on in pairs, the options would be:

  1. 200% boost cap, 100% MP APR (no change)
  2. 200% boost cap, 50% MP APR
  3. 100% boost cap, 100% MP APR
  4. 100% boost cap, 50% MP APR

my suggestion would be for a 100% boost and 50% MP APR, reasoning:

  • as the project grows, ideally we want the community to grow together with it, a higher base APR can help in this

  • when thinking about this it may be useful to consider not just today’s state but the future state as well

  • so considering not just what a new member joining today thinks but also what a new member joining a year from now would think

  • switching to a 100% boost cap would result in a base APR that is ~50% higher than a 200% boost cap in a year’s time

  • this means that any changes in protocol growth in the coming year would better translate to benefits for future new members

  • in contrast, without the change in boost percentage a large portion of the benefits from growth may be eroded by MP emissions

  • for example, without the change, a 50% increase in protocol growth would lead to a net zero change in APR for future new members in a year’s time

  • there was a point brought up that the 50% MP APR may disincentivise new members since they would take a longer time to reach max boost, reducing the max boost percentage together with the MP APR would lead to the same duration of two years required to reach the max boost percentage

  • another consideration is that with a 50% MP APR, a new member’s boost rate would increase slower compared to how it was for members in the past, in that sense perhaps a 100% boost 100% MP APR could make sense as well, i suggest a 50% MP APR because it would make MPs more scarce and leave room for an MP program where activities, e.g. trading / referrals can earn MPs

  • for suggestions to remove fee distribution entirely from MPs, this would require changes to the RewardRouter and it would take some time away from other development tasks, i would also advise against this because i believe that MPs continue to incentivise long term members, and a 100% boost cap could be a reasonable compromise because this caps the maximum reduction of APR from MPs to 50%, the range from the base APR would be 1x base APR - 2x base APR which i think is a fair range to better balance between rewarding long term holders while remaining approachable to new members

  • for suggestions of stopping MP emissions entirely, would also advise against this even though no development work is required, without MP emissions, for new users it may incentivise buying GMX to stake when APR is high and selling when it is low, so this may favour short term holders, and the APR to community members may be reduced, continuing the MP emissions at a lower rate of 50% could similarly be a reasonable compromise to still incentivise new long term members

  • a change to 100% boost cap may disadvantage members that currently have 100% to 200% boost, that would be the trade-off between keeping a higher boost vs narrowing the gap and being more approachable for future new members, so whether that trade-off makes sense is something that the community in aggregate would need to decide on

11 Likes
37

I agree with X. But just to clarify: An excess 100% boost could be utilized by buying more GMX, right? Let’s say I have a 200% boost and community votes to a max 100%. I could double my GMX stack and have 100% max boost for all my staked GMX. I think that is how it is done with excess MPs right now too.

38

I am strongly opposing to voting twice for the same thing. We have already voted on MP cap and need to respect vote outcome. Second vote should be only about MP APR reduction as we were promised in first vote description.

Main concern about MP APR reduction is that it may disincentives new members since they would take a longer time to reach max boost. But it is totally wrong and misleading. My take:

As GMX OG holding and staking from beginning i am already at 200% boost… but my total fees share from beginning increased only about 20%!! (not 200% as many think). This is because i accumulated my MP together with other OGs and we diluted each other. If we cut MP cap to 100% now, my total fee share will become only 5% better that i had 2.5 years before and never rise again!! On the other hand new GMX staker in 2-4 years will have about 100% total fee share rise compared to his first staking day fees share. So how we can talk about “longer and slower” fee rise for new members?? And how this will be fair to OG holders?

My proposal is:

  • leave 200% MP cap alone. No second votes on it;
  • vote on MP APR reduction only (100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 0%);
  • make not staked MP freely transferable and tradeable;

This way we let market forces decide MP value and no one can complain about OG privileges and bad GMX base APR. Anyone can buy MP in the market and have 200% boost straight away. Nothing will change with MP burns- it will burn on any GMX or esGMX unstaking. This way in long run MP issuance/burn rate will find some equilibrium and global MP boost level will stale. By having way smaller MP emission and attached utility/value to it we can open many possibilities to use MP for variuos promotional/referral/competition rewards.

3 Likes
39

Your opinion does not conflict with the proposal. You could choose option 1 or 2. But I think many users like 3 or 4.

40

While I do agree with your statement that votes should not repeated I will urge you to reconsider.

The idea behind modifying MP is simple - make GMX more attractive to new entrants. This is direct benefit to all current holders as it would lead to rise in price. Squandering about boosts percentages at the cost of capital gains we could make just seem like pure self-harm.

Your suggestions of limiting MP apr and/or making it transferable just exacerbate further our current issues (low apr for new entrants, and unfavourable narrative).

Please note that those with MP cap will have option to buy GMX and automatically have Max boost again - this is another advantage that could be used even by borrowing GMX.

In conclusion I think Max Boost to 100% and reduce MP APR to 50% is striking the best balance of advantage for long term holders and higher rates for new entrants.

3 Likes
41

hi Saulius, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this

make not staked MP freely transferable and tradeable;

for this point, i think an issue is that if MPs are transferrable then the MP burn can be bypassed, by transferring the MPs to another account before unstaking, this could lead to a large supply of MPs, allowing anyone to reach max boost at a low cost

i understand that having these excess MPs that cannot be staked without purchasing additional GMX may not be ideal as well, one suggestion was to direct a percentage of fees e.g. 2% into a separate pool where excess MPs can be separately staked

this would require some development time, but could be a compromise to still provide some utility and benefit for excess MPs while keeping an approachable gap between new and existing members

an alternative, i believe also brought up before, would be to have all MPs staked in a separate reward pool, so a fixed percentage of fees to GMX stakers are split to staked (GMX + esGMX), and a separate fixed percentage to staked MPs

2 Likes