The delegator community is growing steadily, but gas costs discourage small holders for two reasons.
1)The up-front gas for the approval and delegate txns. The payback period for small holders is prohibitively long.
2)The fear of choosing a “bad” indexer. Again, small holders can’t absorb the additional cost of switching indexers, so they usually decide to hold their tokens outside the protocol.
Web3 is for everyone, regardless of the size of their investment, and we need a viable mechanism for welcoming smaller holders into our community.
We have also witnessed the rise of NFTs over the last few months. One of the key drivers in the space is the access that certain NFTs grant to their holders. This concept is revolutionizing many aspects of the entertainment industry, and is providing income opportunities for underserved demographics around the world. Online gaming is a specific market segment that stands to benefit significantly from incorporating NFTs.
The Graph is decidedly not a gaming platform, but I would love to introduce a gamified delegation option which introduces additional income opportunities for small holders, and provides a new way of increasing community engagement. The community that games together stays together.
The premise is simple, but would likely be a stand-alone option managed by a separate DAO instead of becoming a component of The Graph protocol itself. We could potentially operate on the Polygon network, making it economically viable for small holders.
I’ll use a starship theme as an example, but that could change. Holders would mint a starship NFT by staking 200 GRT. The starship level would change based on the length of staking period. (30 days, 90 days, 180 days, 365 days). Every day, the holder spins a wheel to determine what cargo they transport that day, and different cargoes carry different values corresponding to an appropriate APY. The odds of getting better paying cargoes are lower, but you’re guaranteed a paying cargo.
Holders are paid in a different token (SSS) which can be used to purchase upgrades to your starship, such as increasing its cargo capacity, how often you can haul cargo, increasing your odds of getting better cargo, or non-functional changes to the starship appearance. When the staking period is complete, the holder can either withdraw their GRT and keep their starship, or keep their GRT in the protocol and continue playing the game.
The staked GRT would be delegated by the DAO to an array of indexers below the top 5 or 6 largest Indexers.
This mechanism would not only give smaller holders a fun way to participate in the network, it would provide an additional location for all community members to gather and interact. It would also increase stake decentralization, and provide holders a simple way to diversify their delegations.
My opinion is it takes too much effort for a product that isn’t within our niche. Making a popular game requires a lot of work and our expertise is more data centric.
I’d be more interested in exploring ways that subgraphs can better assist emerging games with their data needs.
the idea itself is quite interesting. what I noticed in Germany, the understanding and the trust is not where it should be. the fees is an issue of many. delegate that next, here we always have the problem of how exactly. many are at Binance in our Telegram community and have problems choosing the path via Metamask and the lack of experience. this includes the way to the indexer. Instruction is one thing, regulation in Germany is another. We and I just don’t have enough experience to build trust. Trust is the key to success.
I’m envisioning something simple along the lines of StepN, replacing the motion component with “cargo.” (Not a 1 for 1 comparison AT ALL)
No gaudy graphics, or complicated game-engines.
The game isn’t intended to attract millions of users or spawn additional programming. It’s core function could be viewed as a delegation gateway, with the added benefit of encouraging positive community interaction along with moving the decentralization needle.
The game and accompanying DAO should be developed as an auxiliary entity, because I completely agree that our in-house developer resources need to focus on more important facets. Something like this should be driven by the community, because aside from the potential usage of The Graph imagery and the delegation interaction from the DAO, there is no direct protocol interaction.
We’ve all witnessed the community griping about “marketing”, and while I view those complaints as inaccurate and mislead, I also believe that a forward-facing “fun” element such as this gives the general populace something more tangible to hold on to. The vast majority of the world does not have the technical chops to engage in web3- most of us have 4 remotes because we can’t get the Universal Remote to recognize all our devices. However, we DO spend a ridiculous amount of time playing simple games (Wordle, anyone?), and this could be a way to eventually introduce a larger segment of the populace to The Graph.
For instance, Cargo crates could carry indexer names to familiarize people with the network participants, and indexers could sponsor starships that gave a bonus return when hauling their cargo. After people have developed trust and recognition of Indexers, they will be more likely to delegate on their own, which is a win for everyone.
Agree! It has to be very simple and have an element of fun if you want a large number of people to participate. I love the idea! It took me months to delegate my small amount of GRT because I had to figure out how and where to go. When I did then I had to wait for gas fees to become reasonable. There are a lot of people like me that are interested in supporting but the barrier to entry is still quite high for most.