Proposal: Bring Reddit /r/ethtrader subreddit DONUT microtipping to xDAI

🌿 Proposals
#1

Happy Holidays 1Hive.

Proposal Stage 1: Bring Reddit /r/ethtrader subreddit DONUT microtipping to xDAI.
cost estimated 10-15HNY

I have been working on an initiative to get reddit /r/ethrader DONUT infrastructure on to xDAI.

Some history for those who are unfamiliar. Almost 2 years ago Reddit /r/ethtrader began an experiment to create a subreddit token specifically for their sub called the DONUT, this led to DONUTs being created and distributed based on contributions to the sub and then a bridge was created to bring DONUTs to main net. I am not extremely familiar with the details of the first DONUT incarnation so I hope /u/carlslarson will fill in any historical gaps and correct any errors. About 1 year ago now the /r/ethtrader community decided to resurrect DONUTs in a second incarnation air dropping a chunk of the first 50M or so DONUTs based on previous contributions to r/ethtrader and allocating a distribution of 2M/week (or 200% inflation) now 1M/week. DONUTs were distributed via an aragon contract via ETH mainnet weekly. Once mainnet fees increased this caused DONUT distributions to drop to monthly. Carl came up with a 2 token system for governance coupling a non transferrable CONTRIB token with the DONUT token when distributed as a /r/ethtrader reward. A users governance vote = minimum(CONTRIB,DONUT). So you can see the unmovable CONTRIB has to be paired 1:1 to give the user a 1 vote.

The implications of this model are that to have a vote in governance.

  1. A user must have some CONTRIB by participating in a positive way in the subreddit
  2. A user must not sell all their DONUTs or at a minimum have re-purchased them when governance puts up proposals to vote on.

Voting is handled by reddit using on-chain wallet CONTRIB and DONUTs data when they vote.

As everyone knows mainnet transaction fees have skyrocketed over the past 6 months and this has limited DONUT distributions as well as subreddit DONUT tipping.

Reddit itself took the initiative via /r/ethtrader and DONUTs to create their own model for subreddit token associations, governance, etc. The other subreddits while similar do NOT have the same implementation that /r/ethtrader does. /r/ethtrader created most of the infrastructure for this on the main net with Aragon itself (mostly due to Carl Larson).

The upshot here is that there is a community already built to use the main net and with a Aragon distribution system (1Hive uses Aragon as well except it runs on xDAI) and carl has already indicated it would be straightforward to begin to migrate parts of the /r/ethtrader infrastructure to xDAI in stages.

The stages of bringing the entire /r/ethtrader infrastructure over to xDAI still have to be laid out in detail but they basically look like the following:

  1. Create a /r/ethtrader bot so users with DONUTs bridged on xDAI can microtip other reddit users.
  2. Move the DONUT distribution system on Aragon to xDAI - this has implications for voting and CONTRIB/DONUT pair as I think technically we’d have to mirror the wallets CONTRIB on xDAI before beginning DONUT distributions on xDAI and doing governance on-chain on xDAI.
  3. Enable on-chain governance voting via aragon (since fees would be cheap enough)

What this proposal covers is funding of at least 5-10HNY (still waiting for word from carl on this) to pay carl for the work to accomplish Stage (1). In conjunction with this and to encourage /r/ethtrader governance to support the initiative is a request for another 5HNY to fund a Honeyswap LP farm for 1 month on the HNY-DONUT pair provided /r/ethtrader governance commits to at least 50K DONUTs/week of LP on the DONUT-xDAI pair say.

The goals here are multifold.

  1. Get r/ethtrader to begin to move their DONUT infrastructure to xDAI via microtipping
  2. Allow r/ethtrader to lead the way for reddit and all the subreddits in terms of a proven scaling solution. IF we can get reddit to come here via r/ethtrader leading the way for all the subreddits this would be a huge win for xDAI and 1Hive generally.
  3. Bring the community of 300k+ /r/ethtrader eyes to xDAI and 1Hive which invariably means more money and people in the ecosystem.
  4. Bring the entire infrastructure of /r/ethtrader DONUT economy, governance and distrubtion on to xDAI
  5. Bring in more trading on Honeyswap on these low volume, low priced tokens, make xDAI the reddit hub for subreddit Token trading and distribution.

The issues right now are me getting a definitive word from carl on:

  1. how much compensation he would want and
  2. a go ahead from him that he is willing to take this job on.

If 1Hive does this itself there is nothing the /r/ethtrader community needs to do because they will get new functionality for free. The only downside is reddit possibly stepping in here to have some say or deciding the redit scaling competition (which was supposed to be decided 2 months ago) but I think this is a low hazard and low probability event.

Frankly, I only see upside with this proposal and the roughly 5HNY to get the Stage 1 job done and set up a 5HNY matching DONUT-HNY for > 50K DONUT DONUT-xDAI LP /r/ethtrader match for a month seems cheap for the possible upside. Normally I would include in this proposal some HNY for my time as I have been slowly and steadily working towards this goal in small ways for a while now. I will reconsider adding this in once we hear from carl and my intial work getting this to a real proposal stage is completed. I probably have maybe 10hours or so in on this so far. (various reddit posts, and noodling, discord, and this post) There is no guarantee governance will go for the subsequent steps but I think even if xDAI only gets the micro-tipping side of the /r/ethrader DONUT economy that itself will be worth 1-2K to 1Hive in the long run.

Once I get a firm amount and commitment from carl I will put this up for a forum poll and make a formal 1Hive proposal.

reddit post announcing this initiative:

and in the daily

Reply from carl from a discussion thread in /r/ethtrader that started this:

EDIT ADD: Also pre-apologies to carl on this - my intention was/is to get discussion going around possible 1Hive and /r/ethtrader support for a proposal to fund the work…

Discussion/comments?

Should I offer more if carl declines for 5-10HNY?
Should I unbundle the coupled 5HNY LP reward for matching 50K/week DONUTs LP on HOneyswap?
Other?

8 Likes
#2

Have followed the r/ethtrader DONUTs experiment since the start. One of the most interesting governance experiments in crypto IMHO. Very cool to see the quite large r/ethtrader community (308k subs) still actively engaging in governance. Indeed, they’re quite passionate about it. There are even some interesting parallels to Pollen/SourceCred, since both are paying tokens based on reputation. DONUTs uses Reddit’s karma system, which is a bit different. But both are distributing rewards based on voting on content (likes/upvotes). Funnily (from the outside), both communities have also struggled with rewarding memes too much. If you thought 1Hive’s battle against memers was bad, check out this recent 58 comment thread on r/ethtrader about strategies for reducing meme rewards :sweat_smile:,

Mainnet fees are definitely a problem. I just paid $8.71 in fees to claim my lastest airdrop. Most people’s monthly airdrops are probably worth less than that at current prices. So a lot of tokens are probably just stuck in the Aragon DAO on mainnet.

I am wondering how much friction will be introduced getting the community to migrate to xDAI. Presumably people will have to come across the bridge with their DONUTs to use them for tipping, voting in the Aragon DAO? Go back to mainnet to cash out if they sell on Honeyswap? This community is mostly savvy early adopters though. I’ve been amazed watching the hoops people will jump through to claim and sell DONUTs and MOONs (r/CryptoCurrency’s token on ETH Rinkeby testnet). They may not mind, especially if it saves them a bunch on gas fees.

Another concern for the community may be fragmenting liquidity. Looking at the ETH/DONUT pair on Uniswap, I’m seeing $93k total liquidity right now. Is the plan to pull a vampire DONUT attack (sorry couldn’t help myself)?

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As someone that’s a “whale” in the DONUTs/wxDAI pool, with %27 of the total $1,439 liquidity, I wouldn’t mind a little HNY. Though my motivation for trudging my DONUTs over the bridge and providing liquidity was just to support the project. I’ll leave whether the numbers make sense to those that have thought way more about this.

5-10 HNY seems reasonable. I’ll admit, I don’t have a good idea of how much work this is. But I know /u/carlslarson to be an experienced blockchain dev that is likely in high demand. 5-10 could be on the low end, and would be in favor of raising that offer if necessary. @Eth_Man it seems reasonable to pay you something as well if this turns into a proposal. It’s a lot of work.

I think this could be worth it just for the exposure on r/ethtrader. That’s a massive, highly engaged, almost perfectly targeted audience for 1Hive. And the users are likely to be very tech savvy early adopters that won’t mind a little friction migrating to xDAI.

4 Likes
#3

This makes more sense than xmoons.
I’m hoping r/ethtrader is a more welcoming community than r/cryptocurrency.

So the premise is if we help them get their donuts over here they’ll move their other tokens to enjoy our low fees and high speed?

I feel like this should bundle with defi solutions we’re needing on xdai. Also, maybe get a forecast on how it could affect liquidity in other pools?

This could be win-win-win.

:honeybee::honeybee::honeybee:

#4

Hmmm… the donut tipping is just on reddit?
Is it just on that one forum?

I would definitely need to see projected benefits and some evidence supporting it.
Reddit hasn’t set up a spirit of friendly collaboration.
I’m a little gunshy.

For some reason I was picturing a cross-platform 1Hive community available tipping mechanism, like what Brave ostensibly has.

#5

@s_ben

Man your posts are just so ‘juicy’!

Lets start with the first because it plays into something I have been thinking about for a while.

Absolutely. It really is worse than this but no-one will admit it. The split of the community over this caused part of the issue but really what has happened in /r/ethtrader imo via DONUTs is this kind of ‘post stagnation’. No longer if /r/ethtrader focused on what was good. People trading ETH, talking about TA, proclaiming ETH rising or dropping and even making price calls (there is a bit of this). No it is a sub now filled with meme after meme and spampost after spam post to get DONUTs basically.

I have done a few governance reports and other than tips by a few earned mostly nothing, but hell I guess taking a snapshot and doing maybe an hour of two of analysis is much less than 15 minute to put together the next meme that earns far more DONUTs than I get. Am I stilted because I don’t earn more DONUTs. No I just have a concern the way the rewards are structures that these people basically could easily brigade governance and take over the sub. Would anything be better than what we have now? Unclear. If it increased value of DONUTs would people care.

These are only ‘some’ of the issues I saw. One of the goals with getting microtipping for posts on-chain is to create a potentially new model to apply sourceCred type model to. To elicit in the end a creation of a xDAI sourceCred plugin that would track wallets and post tips to then determine a new reward model. Would it be better? Right now I believe reddit karma in this regard is ‘broken’ and I have something in mind that I think you Seth wrote about how rewards have to dynamically change. I extend this conceptually to all systems to be good have to have an element of dynamism, human unpredictability vs. programmed game=ability. There and many people who just want to write code and have code do everything all the time. Once coded it is set in stone. As time goes own I see a greater value in hybrid systems humans and code which leads to dynamically evolving communities, work, and reward models. While I am working on a white-paper that will present a new system in this regard - parts of it are still based on incentivized human behavior both in doing work, the accepting and grading of it, and then the rewarding. It is the purest hybrid of code, on-chain immutability of data, and the foibles both good and bad of humans that like anything can be bent towards positive results or negative ones. Every system has pros and cons.

I agree many of your points:

yes. This is an ongoing problem. I think it would be straightfoward to move the r/ethtrader Aragon DONUT distribution to xDAI - we just have to mint on mainnet and move it across the bridge. I agree there could be liquidity issues but I see this across the board in all the startups. I also have some DONUT-xDAI liquidity - maybe 50% of it on last reckon mostly because I just wanted to bring some DONUTs over here - not because I thought I could all of this done and earn some DONUTs or even HNY for it. One thing that I see as an interesting possibility is this idea of multiple communities offering up LP rewards for combined pairs - in a way tieing their economies together. If there is one change to the Honeycomb farming staking contracts I’d like to see is the ability for 2 or MORE communities to back a single or in the case of curve or aave multiple token LPs. I think there is some power in binding communities via rewards on key trading pairs relevant to their communities.

So the idea here was first to get the mechanics for DONUT microtipping on xDAI in place then later figure out how to move the DONUT distributions and voting/governance mechanics here. I guess one could use a testnet for this but then why use a testnet when one can use a fully functioning network…

I am less concerned about fragmenting liquidity mostly because I know that probably less than 10 people hold most of it and most of us (yes I hold DONUT liquidity on Honeyswap AND on mainnet) are pretty much here for the long haul. Not because we think we will get rich, but because we have a strong interest in supporting these communities. If we can make some money too that doesn’t hurt!

As to a vampire DONUT attack I don’t know… With such low liquidity so many ways to pump and then dump these things as we have seen. Lately everything in this space still screams Pump to Dump across the board. Only in Ethereum with the growth of DeFI do I see something new being built. But as there are no rules - I believe we are building a financial bomb that is going to go off in everyone’s faces at some point. And just like I have seen time and again at companies losing 5-15K/hr everyone throws up their hands and says “I didn’t do it” when in reality 'they all did it" and not a single one of them will assume their own responsibility for the messes they created that I and my team were hired to ferret out and fix.

As to what carl needs/wants to do this little project. I felt bad posting this without getting a definitive word on price and whether. carl just seems to be lurking - and not sure how interested he is in doing this. Right now lets see if the communities are interested. I honestly think this is a perfect match for both for too many reasons.

At some point my whitepaper work is going to land me back in sourceCred chat and forums but I think I want to try to set up an instance on a test discourse/discord data set to understand somethings about how sourceCred initializes and how the cred flow is managed to be able to back recompute cred based on changing weights.

Anyway always great to see you posting Seth as I enjoy your posts greatly. Lets hop the fact we are the DONUT-xDAI whales doesn’t kill anything. I mean we have been planning all of this just to get rich right. hahahahahha many making me think this is April Fools day.

1 Like
#6

Yes it initially would be just for reddit.

As to benefits they are mostly listed above. The only one I did NOT include that I wrote of in my post to @s_ben is the idea of using on-chain tipping for posts as a input to the sourceCred model via a on-chain plug in. This is a much larger project and longer term but I believe it would be very useful generally.

Lets try to avoid Brave and BAT because their model is a little different since basically content creators that want to get rewards (which basically was everyone) basically had to sign up somewhere and then use the browser for it to work. The mechanics to use DONUTs to tip for work globally (or any token for that matter) as a general tip mechanism would require a way for posters to associate wallets to posts for tips. This is probably going to have some friction and if an anonymous decentralized solution could be designed it would be great.

The real problem as we talked about isn’t doing this, but the backend money on/off ramps demanding everyone reveal the wallets they own to be able to do transactions. This alone has huge implications for the space generally.

The primary goal here was to prove at least one subreddit could port its infrastructure to xDAI and thereby put into place existing code, battle tested, and a community that finds improved success and growth (probably the only thing reddit cares about at this point).

2 Likes
#7

Flattery will get you tips.

I think what has happened with r/ethtrader is a cautionary tale about initial conditions and centralization. I don’t think the sub has been ruined or anything. Growth is up since DONUTs were introduced afaik, and I still find the content entertaining, memes and all. It’s heartening the community is still so passionate about governance. BUT, the community can’t seem to course correct the rewards. Once there was enough money in memes, the “meme lobby” (I can’t believe I just wrote that) was too strong to overturn. I’ve seen several attempts to reign in memes voted down. Imagine if when HNY mooned, the people gaming SourceCred in the #memes channel were able to stop the lowering of weight on the #meme channel. Also, Reddit’s reputation system, karma, is centralized and opaque. It seems from the last thread that in order to change the algorithm (e.g. lower weight on ‘comedy’ category (a proxy for memes)), Reddit has to make the change. That is problematic, especially if their internal priorities shift away from the project. It appears what you want before the system ready for “ossification” is some centralization within your org, not a third party.

Still, I think the fact that people are so engaged with DONUTs, which have a market cap of $282,128 is pretty damn cool. Have sold several hundred dollars worth of DONUTs earned from my shitposting there :sunglasses: I think it proves even wonky reward systems can work if valuations are robust and at least in the ballpark.

Sounds a bit like boosting. The mechanics of which are still under development afaik. This is also btw the basic idea behind EOS’s Voice model, which allows people to ‘boost’ posts using tokens. The basic idea is solid. Spending money is a strong signal. However, not really qualified to judge crypto economic design of these things.

I think Reddit karma is OK. It’s problematic because, as a large centralized web service, they must rely (or think they do) on ‘security by obscurity’ (keeping the algorithm secret), so it doesn’t get gamed. Considering their ongoing wars with bots, probably necessary for them. Unfortunately, this means you don’t have the data on who upvoted/downvoted posts. Which makes rolling your own reputation system more challenging.

I think you’re right about hybrid numan/code systems with dynamically evolving rewards models. One example we can look to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Literally an entire industry devoted to creating vitrual worlds, tweaking game mechanics to keep ahead of those that find vulnerabilities (cheat codes) and keep the game fair.

As for r/ethtrader users, I’m not sure micro-tipping would be enough to get them over the bridge…If you allowed people to claim airdrops, that could see a decent chunk of the ‘long tail’ that’s been letting them sit there due to gas fees come over. That could be valuable, as then they’re ‘onboarded’ onto xDAI at least.

s_ben creates @dunut_chef account to lead attack on $42k of liquidty in DONUTs pool, prepares for retirement

2 Likes
#8

si la red xdai es de lo mejor que hay hoy en dia! esperen que el mundo se de cuenta y veran