Christine mentioned about block rewards could be something to test the MIP process, but my concern is that what the crowd wants is not always good for the protocol. Ie people will likely want Mina to be deflationary so that the coins they are holding can appreciate in value.
A good tokenomics design would need very careful mathematical and economical modelling (at least i would choose this approach), taking in account of safety, incentives and long-term development of the ecosystem. I would prefer to consult experts such as Gauntlet or Delphi who can advise on the optimisation of the design, rather than leaving it to be decided by a community vote.
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On that matter my observation is in the general community will follow certain active people in the community other than the idea. Yes, the community mostly want inflation to drop but the majority of these people did not read the token economics and think we are printing 100k mina out of nowhere when circulating supply jump significantly because of unlocks. The issue will happen if community active members start to push that idea on all social media channels and start a witch hunt over inflation. Then we will see hundreds of people just joining here and spamming for inflation to go down which mostly doesn’t happen if a person directly forward people here. Even under these circumstances registering here is the big limiter. People mostly prefer just writing about it over and over again over twitter, telegram etc.
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hence my point - should not leave it to voting?
Ok, let me summarize like this. It’s literally politics and someone mostly known community member needs to rally people towards that. The deal is this is the place for discussion and proposals goes over agreements. If the majority here agree we need to increase inflation and both side discuss with a lot of data, reason etc. The vote will be A increase in this way B increase in this way. In this format even if we have a flood of people throwing inflation is a bad message if there is nothing backing that comment making it helpful for the discussion. It’s mostly going to be disregarded. I am normally against inflation but something to happen out of that idea. I need to put a lot of time into a proper plan to make that into a proposal. I never see a proper proposal come out of rush groups in these discussions. Outside these most of the time for on chain voting. Vote weight= stake weight which doesn’t improve by keep sending same message.
While I have to agree with Emre that usually the loudest people demanding change in the inflation rate are usually also the ones who didn’t read the tokenomics and are thinking Mina is printing coins just for fun.
On the other hand, I also think this topic is worthy of being discusses and a change in inflation rate is worth at least considering (to what extend, we will find out). Compared to other issues (like the wallet creation fee, which is pretty straight forward), a possible change in tokenomics could have a relatively big impact on the project - not only price, but also staking rate etc. - and should be discussed deeply before coming to a final conclusion (either way - no change or change) and drafting a possible proposal.
And just to continue the though of changing the tokenomics in some form or another:
Mina originally opted with a high inflation rate to combat low staking rates and “force” high staking participation. While the inflation rate of 24% certainly played an important role in that, I also think the simplicity of staking on Mina (no token lock up period like other chains) also played a huge part in that. While I personally have a relatively neutral stance regarding lowering the inflation rate I nonetheless think that the original goal of having a high staking rate has been achieved and can easily be maintained simply due to the fact Mina has no lockup period and users will opt to stake nonetheless.
But I would honestly love to hear the opinion from the foundation regarding this topic and their perspective on it.
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I think there are three related topics here: 1) voting methodology (who should vote, and are votes weighted, etc.), 2) governance scope (what should be democratically decided) and 3) the actual tokenomics/inflation discussion. I think we should clarify and try to keep it to one of those topics. I think this is intended to be #2, but can we narrow it to one or the other, and use another thread for the actual tokenomics topic? If agreeable, I suggest we reword the topic to clarify it is about scope of governance.
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@jrwashburn That breakdown makes sense to me. For 1 & 2, it may be helpful to see the proposal for the MIP process proposal, I think coming out in a couple days. Definitely relevant to that
Re 3 @Trivo I also agree with that reasoning, that’s where I was thinking too. I have some more notes / thoughts / a model I was working on for it, I’ll probably try to organize & share it early this week
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Prices are reflexive meaning a higher price brings more attention to the protocol which in a low liquidity environment increases prices and there we go again. I think an initial price push is positive since it will help bring developers/users attention and have a general positive impact. Then again how to balance tokenomics/ponzinomics vs long-term survival is a difficult thing to do. I honestly think the same can be achieved via increased cooperation with other mainstream protocols like Ethereum or Solana, more exchanges integrations and a better marketing for the protocol. Most people doesn’t understand what Mina brings to the table and how it can play together with other zk solutions.
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