Liquidity Award Program

[tonkongz]

Thread for comments/feedback/proposals of Liquidity Award Program (https://github.com/ton-society/grants-program/blob/main/announcements/liquidity%20award%20program.md)

[usdton]

What are the requirements for protocols?

[tonkongz]

@usdton please take a look at the additional example provided in the draft proposal and let us know if any questions re: requirements for protocols

[eanisei]

The whole concept of LAP is great! Thank you TON society for such activity. The transparency of program like this is the reason why we love blockchain. https://tonana.org/ will definitely be participating.
The requirements are clear and seem not very hard. But what about projects that cannot afford large value to be locked ?
I guess these kind of programs should be helping small projects to grow, but in this case we can see top 5 projects getting even more liquidity...
It seems that marketing budget = winning this program.

[mikezavhoz]

While the main criteria is TVL I would say it's too easy to manipulate by major players.
Simple as that:

1. come up with DEX and/or bridge in TON
2. add 1M TON in Liquidity.
3. if enough to win, then grab the prize, else repeat step 2.
4. profit

Formally, TVL will hit the exact spot into desired KPI. TVL performed excellent! Awesome result!
Is this really the measure of quality of the project? Very questionable.

The KPIs should be difficult (better "impossible to") to manipulate and so not straightforward but more indirect and better serve the value of the end users. If you said that TON is blockchain for retail users, average Joe and his mom.

What could be such KPIs? I don't know, but here are a few samples I come up with:
Number of transactions from different wallets of retail customers. Let's not speak for the whales (who can simulate this by simple script and running millions back and forth from random wallets).
Total time spent in product interfaces by users. How to measure it? Don't know.
Yield generated to token owners (nominated in TON).
Project token price and volume sustainability
etc

[mikezavhoz]

The very first question in the proposed set of questions considered in a yes/no format: Missing strategic fit?

To answer this question, there should be a formal definition of what the current strategy is (strategy is tending to evolve over time) and what "fit" means?
GameFi project fitting to the strategy? What about gambling or slots for TONs? What about GameFi with porn?
One should easily answer these questions after reading the document.

[mikezavhoz]

Another one: Bad reputation of the founder/project team

How bad is bad and who is judging? "My mom said I'm special" (c) Joker :)

[mikezavhoz]

The founders have a conflict of interest

Conflict between whom? Themselves? Blockchains? How to measure it?

[mikezavhoz]

Stakeholders are non-compliant

Again, there should be formal criteria.

[mikezavhoz]

The link is broken under "Evaluation Criteria: DeFi Rewards Program"

[Hiyorimi]

@tonkongz kind ping

[mikezavhoz]

@tonkongz kind ping 2 )

[tonkongz]

The link is broken under "Evaluation Criteria: DeFi Rewards Program"

Fixed

[tonkongz]

The whole concept of LAP is great! Thank you TON society for such activity. The transparency of program like this is the reason why we love blockchain. https://tonana.org/ will definitely be participating. The requirements are clear and seem not very hard. But what about projects that cannot afford large value to be locked ? I guess these kind of programs should be helping small projects to grow, but in this case we can see top 5 projects getting even more liquidity... It seems that marketing budget = winning this program.

@eanisei We can think about ways to kickstart liquidity for various pools. However, it is up to individual teams to utilize creative ways to activate their communities/supporters to bring over liquidity. TON Society is ready to help with this by featuring the teams.

[tonkongz]

Stakeholders are non-compliant

Again, there should be formal criteria.

Grant committee reserves the right for subjective decline of the grant/award request because of questionable stakeholders reputation.

[tonkongz]

The founders have a conflict of interest

Conflict between whom? Themselves? Blockchains? How to measure it?

Conflict of interest which can undermine reputation of TON. We will also listen to the community when it comes to any allegations of conflict of interest and respond accordingly.

[tonkongz]

Another one: Bad reputation of the founder/project team

How bad is bad and who is judging? "My mom said I'm special" (c) Joker :)

Grant committee reserves the right for subjective decline of the grant request because of questionable founder/projet team reputation.

[tonkongz]

The very first question in the proposed set of questions considered in a yes/no format: Missing strategic fit?

To answer this question, there should be a formal definition of what the current strategy is (strategy is tending to evolve over time) and what "fit" means? GameFi project fitting to the strategy? What about gambling or slots for TONs? What about GameFi with porn? One should easily answer these questions after reading the document.

As per the KPI of TON Blockchain development stated in https://github.com/ton-society/grants-program

[tonkongz]

While the main criteria is TVL I would say it's too easy to manipulate by major players. Simple as that:

1. come up with DEX and/or bridge in TON
2. add 1M TON in Liquidity.
3. if enough to win, then grab the prize, else repeat step 2.
4. profit

Formally, TVL will hit the exact spot into desired KPI. TVL performed excellent! Awesome result! Is this really the measure of quality of the project? Very questionable.

The KPIs should be difficult (better "impossible to") to manipulate and so not straightforward but more indirect and better serve the value of the end users. If you said that TON is blockchain for retail users, average Joe and his mom.

What could be such KPIs? I don't know, but here are a few samples I come up with: Number of transactions from different wallets of retail customers. Let's not speak for the whales (who can simulate this by simple script and running millions back and forth from random wallets). Total time spent in product interfaces by users. How to measure it? Don't know. Yield generated to token owners (nominated in TON). Project token price and volume sustainability etc

@mikezavhoz Please find responses below:

• We do not believe it is easy to "manipulate" by big players as our award tiers criteria range from $5M to $200M. Even if big players do everything in their power to bring over users to TON (and the accompanying liquidity), this would benefit our ecosystem in the sense that during the vesting period developers, investors, and community in large will see our increase in ecosystem TVL and ignite a movement to build on our chain (since liquidity is ample). The award program is not a winner-takes-all. Smaller players can also win portion of the award prize by attaining $5M in TVL.

• KPIs that are not straightforward (and not highly quantitative) are subject to high level of judgement. Such judgement is hard to apply across the board for all applicants and could lead of complaints of how the qualitative measurements were applied. All things mentioned are important (such as user-friendly UI, user-engagement, etc.) and will contribute to meeting the quantitative metrics.

[Hiyorimi]

The award program is not a winner-takes-all. Smaller players can also win portion of the award prize by attaining $5M in TVL.

Are there any mechanism to ensure decentralisation and equal incentivization of comparable TVL pools? To put it simpler: is there a 'first place' award which is bigger than others or are there multiple 'first ranks' prizes ?

What are ideas for measuring healthy growth of the audience? Can community suggest some ways of measuring this metric?

[mikezavhoz]

Well, there is an award liquidity program in the works and we haven’t reached a concsensus yet.

In the meantime Ston.Fi DEX has reached 0.5M in TVL and we could use some clearance on the details of TON Liquidity Support Program.

Is it going to be a grant-application based process? Can we apply to the grant? What should be done for this from our side?

Is there anything we can do help with building TON Liquidity Support Program apart from the two cents we put in the last post here?

[cryptoKorba]

@mikezavhoz

Thanks for your help and feedback so far. The final details of the Liquidity Award Program are going to be announced next week. It will not require an application but will require a simple registration so that your TVL is being tracked which will also be live next week.

It won't be a one time grant, but rather an ongoing Rewards Program that provides a quarterly TON deposit to projects who consistently maintain various buckets of TVL.

@Hiyorimi There is no first place. Multiple projects and be in the same TVL bucket and will get the same reward for any given time frame.

[mikezavhoz]

Great news. So far, STON.fi grown up to $600K TVL and Defilama is tracking STON here: https://defillama.com/protocol/ston.fi?denomination=USD

Noticeable liquidity demand in TON pools (such pairs as TON/USDC, USDT, ETH, BTC, etc. :)) is growing, and we see that the users would love to make transactions with larger volumes but are unable to because low liquidity makes slippage too high too fast. And I'm sure all the DEXes are in the same situation with supply and demand in their pools. I hope with TON grants all DEXes will be able to improve the situation with TON liquidity in the pools. This is very important for the growth of the whole TON DeFi ecosystem

[DeFiTON]

Excellent! Already watched the update.

We launched DEX Tegro.Finance (tegro.fi) just yesterday and have already appeared on DefiLlama https://defillama.com/protocol/tegro-finance.

Liquidity is already more than 30 thousand dollars (in TON).

[cryptoKorba]

This issue is now locked.
Conversation continues reg. the (Revised) Liquidity Reward Program: ( #48 )