Tokenomics Changes

Tokenomics Changes

We made a huge step forward in improving the tokenomics of RBW by reducing staking emissions by 60% via CUIP-016, but we believe there is more work yet to be done in order to set CU up for the best shot at long term success. We realize not everyone in the community was onboard for the reductions proposal, so we will not send this “Idea” post forward without overwhelming community support. Please read the following carefully and make your voices heard in the comments below.

Current State of RBW

After the RBW emissions reduction, RBW emissions to incentivize staking and LPing sit at 50,625 daily. The RMP sees roughly 65kof daily RBW volume, resulting in a net sink of 3.25k RBW per day. Between breeding and evolving, we typically see 40k RBW sunk each day. From the LVM, we see around 20 land mints per day, resulting in a net sink of 1k RBW. All in all, we are removing ~44K RBW from the supply each day versus the ~50k of RBW inflation.

With jousting’s implementation, there will be a 10% take rate on entries that flow to the treasury. Potions will likely prove critical to the success in tournaments, so it’s fair to assume the RMP will begin to see more volume and increase our tax revenue. It is also worth noting that the launch of jousting will likely increase breeding/evolution spend as demand for high stat corns picks up. However, we believe it will not be sufficient. If we set the lofty projection of a 3x in evolution and breeding rates, RMP volume, and land mints, we are still only removing 132k RBW from the supply each day versus the 50k of inflation… netting out to 82k of RBW deflation each day.

We, like the rest of the community, are extremely excited about jousting. However, hyper casual gameloops typically do not have the longest life span. With a 3x in growth of all RBW sinks across the board (ambitious projections), we would need to see a full month of these volumes to sink just ~2.46M RBW. The deepest RBW/WETH pool currently contains 16.6M RBW and 411 ETH, and we now have over 100M RBW in circulation, and the new staking rate will reduce demand to re-stake and lock for a full year. A measly 2.5% monthly deflation rate that is derived from lofty projections centered around a hyper casual game loop does not make us confident that this event will ignite the CU flywheel.

The LG team has done a fantastic job of balancing the UNIM supply by implementing in-game sinks and QE. However, the latter comes at a great cost to the community governed treasury. As of December 31 2022, we have accumulated over 90M of UNIM for protocol owned liquidity. 60M of the UNIM was acquired throughout Q4 for 233k USDC. We believe that there are much more effective use-cases for that money which we are going to elaborate in the following section.

Proposed Changes

We believe that increasing the breeding/evo/LVM RBW input costs is the best path forward.
CU Breeding + LVM

For that reason, we are proposing to increase the breeding and evo RBW input costs by 5x.

This could result in less breeding and evolving, but we believe jousting will bring enough demand for high stat corns that it won’t be a problem. This would, in theory, increase the RBW daily sink deriving from breeding/evo from ~40K to ~200K per day at current breed/evo rates. If we get a 2x in breeding and evo demand in lieu of jousting (instead of the 3x used in the ‘Current State of RBW and UNIM’ section above), it would end up being 400k RBW sunk each day versus the ~50k of inflation. After 1 month, we would see net deflation of ~10.5M RBW versus the ~2.46M projection above. After RBW deflation takes hold and things become unaffordable due to RBW appreciation, LG could readjust breeding and evo costs accordingly.

For the LVM, we are proposing to increase the RBW input cost for minting common land 4x, rare land 8x and mythic land 12x as seen above.

While this change could temporarily lead to reduced LVM minting it is our strong belief that this change is needed to account for the strong decrease of the RBW price.

Additionally, we are proposing to halt the UNIM QE and instead use these treasury funds to provide cash prizes in the upcoming pvp games. The UNIM QE bleeds treasury funds with no positive effect on the economy. By providing tangible cash prizes for pvp game loops instead, CU gains a marketable tool that makes people want to compete, creating more demand for corns and making the breeding game more attractive.

We acknowledge that these changes appear drastic. However, we believe that the upcoming updates and features that CU plans to release over the next couple of months will lead to market demand for Lands and Corns. The resulting increase in floor prices will generate arbitrage gaps between the market prices and the production costs which will ignite the land minting and breeding flywheel. The ultimate goal of the proposed measures is to increase the spot price of RBW. This will increase our ecosystem fund’s value and enable us to fund further development for 2nd party games, strengthening the CU IP and creating more and more utility for our collective assets.

Conclusion

It has been a very tough year for crypto, and even harder for the early adopters of Crypto Unicorns. We need to take very drastic steps in order to right the ship, as many holders in the community simply want out. We face heavy headwinds with any meaningfully positive price action, as many users would be willing to cash out for 50% losses instead of 98% losses at this point. We believe that the increase of breeding/evo/LVM RBW input costs across the board will force users to market buy RBW or use staking income that could be sold otherwise. This gives us the best chance at long-term success. Our immediate focus should be making RBW as deflationary as possible to ignite the flywheel, and this proposal would do just that.

Excited to hear the community’s thoughts and concerns! Please join the conversation below.

This proposal has been co-authored by swmartin19 and DefinitlyDABOZZ.

7 Likes

Very excited to be posting this with DaBoZz.

We only want to see CU thrive and reach its potential, and we believe the steps outlined above are the best steps forward. In our opinion, a large RBW supply sink over the next 1-2 months is enough to send us to much healthier prices and ignite new DAU growth.

We are excited to hear responses from the community around our proposed changes.

1 Like

I think we need to make a dynamic price for evo, depending on the booster, the higher the booster tier, the cheaper the evolution. Motivation to use boosters more. Otherwise, for those who use boosters, an additional tax in RBW.
Since breeding does not use a booster, make a in-game tax on hatching without a booster.

5 Likes

Just off the top of my head this feels like 3 or 4 different proposals grouped into one. I would suggest breaking this proposal up into separate ones or create a pole of which parts people support. Just my initial
thoughts

3 Likes

While you care about RBW price more, how we gonna deal with players who will sell UNIM for RBW, because the amount of RBW earned via in-game loops drastically changed?
Dunno how for the others, but such a significant jump in price (x5) is frightening. Sounds like it’s better to start with lesser multipliers.
Right now amount of RBW earned through game is small. Both seeds and berries are cheap. People will keep farming and dump berries because it’s one of the most common ways of earning RBW, gathering will become as much low profiting as questing right now because UNIM price will keep going down. No QE / no new players flow = UNIM going to zero. People won’t be buying berries for low gathering ROI.
If I can’t afford quality breeding - this means I can’t compete in PVP. Whales are in profit cuz they have lots of RBW and can afford quality breeding and competing for “tangible cash prizes”. Ready to talk.

6 Likes

I fully support the Breeding/Evo/LVM changes, the mass floor breeding and land minting at these low usd prices is just hurting the project longer term and makes no sense in the current market.
The current QE also quite broken and hides a lot of issues with the game economy, but ending it totally might be too drastic currently imo.

1 Like

The numbers proposed are completely off comparing with what an unicorn has to offer utility wise, therefore I strongly disagree.
While I get why some group of interests here are trying to push a narrative for tightening RBW to push their own bags, it will hurt the game in the long run and will do nothing but tamper with all the other efforts of actually having a succesfull game.

1 Like

While I understand the sentiment to get RBW on an upward trajectory, and agree with that goal, I don’t agree with the method. I also don’t like adult unicorns are trending towards 0 (more on this later) but there are other ways you could solve this. A couple quick things first.

We just reduced staking emissions. We don’t know the effects of it for at least a month or two. We are also about to release jousting. It would be important to see how the new “meta” develops and see how RBW plays into it before making any more drastic changes.

Onto the actual idea:

~40K to ~200K per day at current breed/evo rates. If we get a 2x in breeding and evo demand in lieu of jousting (instead of the 3x used in the ‘Current State of RBW and UNIM’ section above), it would end up being 400k RBW sunk each day versus the ~50k of inflation. After 1 month, we would see net deflation of ~10.5M RBW versus the ~2.46M projection above. After RBW deflation takes hold and things become unaffordable due to RBW appreciation, LG could readjust breeding and evo costs accordingly.

This feels like pure hopium. The proposed rates increase breeding costs so significantly that it becomes completely pointless to breed if you don’t have good stat corns. Somehow hoping that a lot of casual breeders (like myself!) will continue to expand is just irrational. I know for a fact I’ll just stop breeding and I’ll buy the exact corns I want. I’ll leave it to the breed masters to specialize and I’ll be a net purchaser. This brings me to my next point.

If the goal is to have a few specialized breeders and the rest buy from them then this idea makes sense. This increases breeding costs so much that if you have corns with some “bad” genes and some “good” genes, it’s a complete waste of time and money experimenting. As things stand you can actually breed these “bad” corns, get lucky, and have a line of a few good corns. Maybe even some mythics! If you don’t have good corns, why would you breed? You will be able to buy much cheaper corns on the market from pro breeders. They can afford to sell corns at below cost because they achieved the one baby they were looking for which makes up for all the “waste” corns. I think this is another reason you sometimes see such cheap corns. This will only exacerbate the situation tremendously. You can’t compete against people selling below cost because the one baby makes up for all the rest.

Another unintended consequence of this would the complete drop in single mythics growth rate. Right now, while rare, its actually possible to get lucky with single mythics. I have quite a few just from breeding random ones. And I breed because its relatively cheap and more corns will only be useful in the future. I suspect I’m not alone in feeling this way. If people like me stop, the growth rate of single mythics will plummet. Stopping breeding is the most rational thing to do if you’re a casual breeder - why would I throw away so much money everyday on bad corns when I can just buy really cheap ones below cost? If more utility is being brought to mythics, this only benefits older breeders since they have a larger stock. All new breeders are pretty much screwed. I guarantee the price of single mythics will sky rocket after that.

This also feels a lot like, one progressing in the game, and then pulling the ladder up behind them. All those who are intermediate/pro breeders stand to benefit immensely from this. The value of all their corns on their set up will get valued much higher. But theres no chance for new breeders to enter the market unless you have a ton of $$$$ to start. Unless that’s the intended goal?

Overall, I think increasing breeding costs this significantly will just completely stop casual breeders. Rather than a breeding increase, there’s a very good chance you’ll actually see that number go down. But more importantly I think breeding will get concentrated into the hands of a few which I’m not a fan of. And on top that, this will lead to jousting being completely controlled by these breeders. It will basically create a “ruling” class separated by cost of entry. Right now, the minnows can afford to end up with a single mythic by luck and little to no cost (if you put all your cart earnings into breeding). But after this there’s no chance these minnows can win mythics. Not at these prices.

6 Likes

Independent of initial idea, I am completely, and strongly against this. This is the definition of subsidize the rich and tax the poor.

I am assuming your idea involves a sliding scale of “subsidy” for using a higher level booster. Even if it doesn’t this applies:

People who casually breed for more farm corns just want a higher population. But they will be penalized for wanting this with higher breeding costs. Pro breeders who have all the good “seed” corns and spend heavily on boosters will be directly subsidized by lower breeding costs.

The reward for using boosters is the higher chance of creating a better offspring. Reducing breeding costs provides an additional reward of lowering breeding costs, essentially subsidizing the booster. So people using boosters now get rewarded twice.

So those who can’t create the T6 boosters, who are the majority of players, won’t get this subsidy. The only people who will get this subsidy are the ones who can already afford the higher breeding costs in the first place.

If the goal is:

Motivation to use boosters more.

This can already be achieved via jousting. Higher stat corns will perform better, forcing people into using boosters if they want to be competitive. We don’t need to subsidize the process.

3 Likes

I like the continued effort to increase the value of RBW and believe that will benefit everyone. However, I would support a more gradual approach. First, to see the initial impact of Staking v2 and Jousting launch. Then, to pursue the recommendations outlined here in incremental steps so people can adjust and the team can tune.

I don’t like the idea of increasing breeding costs, as imo this is one of the most fun game loops for new/casual/non-whale players - as others have mentioned, at least with these breeding costs there are strategies that allow you to get lucky with bad stat corns to continue breeding, and actually enjoy the game.

Not a big fan of increasing evo costs for the same reason, but maybe a small increase would be ok?

For land costs, couldn’t they increase by x each time one is purchased, with a cap?

Personally I think a better way to increase RBW sinks (and increase value) would be to remove UNIM from the game and rebalance prices to a single coin economy.

1 Like

Increasing RBW totals of breeding would have the complete opposite effect you are trying to achieve on RBW. If a unicorn and its utility is worth $10 to people then the RBW value will equal what people believe the unicorn is worth divided by total amount of RBW it costs to breed.(Generally) This is why Sky Mavis reduced the amount of AXS needed per breed as the value of AXS rose.

But RBW has gone down, not up. Axie actually INCREASED the AXS fee 4x to $24 at the time in order to ignite the flywheel… AXS was trading around $6 at the time and proceeded to ~25x

After hearing community feedback, DaBoZz and I agree that it is too much to include a UNIM QE removal in this propsoal.

We plan to make a draft proposal to make breeding fee > evolution fee, and to increase costs much less drastically… ~1.5x

Thanks for joining the convo sir.

I agree with you - we need to be more gradual. Please see my reply to @MTM_zela for details

Hi TT!

Heard loud and clear on this. We agree that this proposal was trying to hit too many birds with one stone.

We are revising the proposal to remove the QE to UNIM adjustments entirely, are drastically reducing the proposed increases to RBW breeding costs (while still raising them roughly 1.5x), and keeping the LVM RBW input costs the same.

Would love to hear more thoughts on the draft proposal once its live.

You will see in the earlier replies that Axie increased breeding costs 4x prior to the AXS run up, although it IS worth noting that SLP was seeing very healthy price action at the same time. This is why we want to keep UNIM QE as is.

In terms of the LVM, the RBW input costs are laughably low, and we believe (and aron has stated as well on AMAs) that these do need to be changed.

Thank you for the thoughtful reply, my friend!

We now agree with many of your points and they will be reflected in the draft proposal coming soon. Please read my other replies to get a sense for the changes. Your comments were critical to the newer ideas we will introduce… so seriously… thank you for taking the time to share your concerns with the initial post.

1 Like

A draft proposal has been written so I’ll be closing this to help consolidate the discussion in the actual proposal thread.

Draft Proposal: RBW Economy Changes