So quickly for those who dont know. TCR = Token Curated Registry. Here is a good link to learn more, if you’re so inclined.
So essentially the idea is to create a TCR in order to “rate” Song-a-Day songs. Below I pose some ideas and some questions for the community to answer and discuss. The goal of this post is to kickstart an idea and discussion.
First, I’d like to bring up the fact that this would indeed require SAD create a token. Currently each song’s NFT is the DAO token, so an additional token would need to be created for the purpose (if not sole purpose than a purpose) of the TCR.
What PROBLEM does a TCR provide a solution for? Short answer, rate all SAD songs in order to provide a community consensus of which NFTs hold more value.
I’d question why this is important and what the result would be. Other than a song being more popular, what does this provide the NFT holder? Would they get more weighted voting rights, or would it just serve as a caste system?
What issues are there to be solved before a TCR can be realized?
- Incentives. Why would one take on the burden of participating in a TCR? Why would one risk their tokens to do so? How does the DAO incentivize/reward participation and the taking of said risk?
So the most difficult part of any DAO is how to generate participation. Why does one participate in voting and generally devote resources (time and attention as well as funds - eg buying into the DAO). SAD is a DAO which has elite company - It has a product. It generates revenue. It will continue to do so. Very few DAOs have this. Each time a SAD NFT is bought/sold on certain platforms, the DAO earns a % of said sale. Each day @jonathanmann creates and auctions a new song, the DAO generates income. I’d argue the second not truly be considered as it is not a guaranteed source for the DAO (sorry jonathan, but youre not immortal). So for the sake of this idea, I’d say focus on the former, especially considering the idea of the TCR is to align NFT market to a rank based value system.
Sorry to be so long winded, the idea is that the DAO use a % of income from these sales to generate an incentive pool which would then be distributed to TCR participants. There are a few ways which distribution could happen, though one sticks out to me, simply split the total pool for each earnings period (TBD, block/hour/day/week/month?) equally to each participant in a weighted manner according to their total weight (ie their vote+their quadratically applied addition)
- Voting.
The nature of this specific TCR is that it will constantly be evolving. Jonathan will inevitably create songs which are better (well, maybe) than existing songs, and songs which are worse (almost a guarantee - sorry Jonathan, we dont even really know each other but i find it fun to bust your balls). Thus the “voting” in this scenario will be more akin to Staking!
For example, one might really enjoy song 1234, but man, song 4321 just release and its killer! Thus the need to remove your vote from 1234 and place it in 4321. From here, we would need to refer back to point 1, why would one do this? It would require time, effort, and $ in tx fees (please, lets not do this on mainnet!!).
- Whales.
How do we prevent whales from simply buying the cheapest NFT, buying the SAD TCR token and voting their NFT to the top, then selling it and removing their vote? Also, unforeseen scenarios I didnt just dream up in 2 seconds.
I’d suggest some type of quadratic voting system. Perhaps 50% of all tokens are owned by the DAO and placed in a TCR quadratic pool which would then be distributed, likely using gitcoin strategies, to individual votes. Similar to gitcoin we could grant higher % distribution based on key elements such as the following:
- POAP: does the address contain X POAPs. These dont have to be SAD POAPs, but could be anything such as ethdenver POAPs, as an example. Either way, the community could decide and specify which POAPs deserve increased distribution and how much. AKA - each SAD community call POAP could grant the participant a .5% increase in quadratic pool distribution to their vote weight.
- BrightID: I have my concerns on the overall solution BrightID provides, and have voiced that several times, but it does still serve as a solid gatekeeper, preventing extensive abuse.
- ENS: Holding an ENS name displays more extensive eth participation, and is not free, justifying an increase in an address holding an ENS name. Distribution increase could also be increased based on both longevity of the ENS holding, and the future duration it is registered for.
- YOUR IDEA HERE: I’m not going to do all the work!
Also, I think it should be noted that when I talk about quadratic voting distribution, I do not mean that the individual would RECEIVE those quadratic tokens! If the user removes their vote, those tokens would simply be returned to the quadratic pool. Further, as more users enter the TCR as active participants, the quadratic formula results would change, so one should consider periodically adjusting a user’s quadratic token distribution even if said user does not modify their vote/stake.
In other words, if i stake 10,000 SADTCR on song 1234, and receive 35,000 SADTCR quadratic voting on top. Then 10 more users come in, my quadratic weight should no longer be 35,000, but maybe 28,000 since the pool would be distributed amongst more users. NOTE: this is a completely fictional and made up scenario! The TCR’s quadratic system should periodically reformulate this and thus would remove 7,000SADTCR from my weighted vote and redistribute based on the new results of the equation. TL;DR, the quadratic system would have to be a constantly changing, dynamic system and automated. Also, the quadratic equation would have to count for a user’s total votes amongst all songs, and not each song - otherwise users will simply stake 1SADTCR to every song to ‘maximize’ quadratic application. a user should have the same weight applied to 10 songs @ 1SADTCR each as it would 1 song @ 10SADTCR (hope that makes sense)
OK, I know i didnt touch on everything but hopefully this stars as a great starting point. Enjoy!