Now that the $REF token has been voted in by the DAO, it’s time to establish an appropriate distribution framework for the token. Currently, the DAO owns 100% of the 100 million $REF tokens.
As the first distribution effort, we propose a 7 day token auction for 2.5% of the total $REF supply on the Skyward platform. The proposed sale breakdown is the following:
2.5% of total supply - > 2,500,000 tokens
70% NEAR
20% USDT
10% ETH
Skyward supports conducting sales in multiple assets. This means the DAO can raise a combination of NEAR, USDT, and ETH.
Rationale:
We believe a token auction via Skyward will accomplish the following ecosystem goals:
Establish a fair initial price for $REF
Create an early, liquid market for $REF on the Ref Finance platform
Bootstrap the Ref DAO’s treasury
Funds to provide liquidity for REF <> NEAR and REF <> USDT pairs
Funds for farming incentives
Development
Marketing
Attract USDT and ETH assets from Ethereum via the Rainbow Bridge
Enhance the effectiveness of future distribution efforts including airdrops and liquidity mining
Help with user onboarding by subsidizing costs (e.g. bridge costs in ETH)
Skyward’s auction mechanism is one of the fairest we’ve seen in DeFi. We believe that using the platform to establish an initial, fair price for $REF (with liquid markets) will greatly inform and enhance our next distribution efforts including airdrops and liquidity mining.
Future Token Distribution:
Immediately upon the completion of the $REF sale, we expect to continue the distribution efforts. Since $REF will have a liquid market and price, we can be more strategic with the airdrop values and liquidity mining strategies.
$Ref having a price discovery mechanism through Skyward makes perfect sense. However, price discovery should take place after the early adopter issuance of tokens. Even if they are locked for 30 days or greater. This is more in step with how SkyWard launched. The contribution of early adopters is not reflective of price, but of how they believed in the product early on. Doing the issuance before price discovery gives them inherent value and will likely motivate them to participate in the sale to build a larger position.
In essence, they were first to believe, invest and use $Ref, so they should be first to receive $Ref.
@refchef great proposal !
I am in favor of a fair launch on Skyward and diversifying treasury. Also like the idea of subsidizing Bridge costs. My only complaint is:
There are no public information about the role of the token in the REF eco-system yet. This means the first buyers will do it out of pure blind speculation. Sale results are totally unpredictable in this case and we’re dependent on the YOLO spirit of NEAR DeFi users. This can work on a chain that’s loaded with hungry whales and risk capital, Near isn’t there yet.
For that I suggest making a Medium post before the sale, giving some clarity about the matter. Implementation details don’t have to be necessarily specified and we can even mention that the plans are subject to improvements and changes by the DAO.
Great point! @Blaze Do you think we can accomplish this by posting an initial airdrop snapshot ahead of the sale, so users can determine if they’ve received $REF, even if they can’t claim it just yet?
Certainly a problem, @chluff. We will post our high level thoughts for this ASAP, to be further discussed and voted on by the community.
Super! Think it’s a good idea to launch on Skyward, I do very much like their model. It will provide immediate liquidity to $ref initially + you can back $ref with diverse tokens, as you say.
In terms of determining the function of the $ref token, is that still up for debate or more or less determined? Seems like it will be an LP token by the description here?
1/ for airdrop, lock x time to pay off 1 time will cause a large sell demand at that time (market sentiment is not good & low liquidity), the team should carefully consider the token release schedule of the airdrop (my opinion, lock 1 week & 3 months linear vesting).
2/ The goal at the moment is not to consider how to distribute fair, should focus on how to take advantage of those events to increase TVL & volume for Ref finance, I thought this is more important than the the thing called “fair launch”.
This proposal is amazing, I love Skyward Finance mechanisms since it can provide a fair launched token distribution for all users. But I think we should consider several criteria carefully before thinking about distributing token on Skyward Finance:
There aren’t any official information about things like token distribution, token release schedule, and token use case of $REF for now. All of this and others like teams and partnership are some keynotes that users have considerable notice when buying a token.
So I think the plan should be thought first, how liquidity mining should be provide and how this help $REF capture value, at what time and what campaign go along with that. Or if it does then some basic information must be publish so that followers can have a trust to the projects (right now is blind buy)
I seriously think that this moment is not a good time to list $REF, sell pressure at this time is a lot and if the tokenomics is not good enough (lock up times is short, distributed unfairly) → This will make token price, well, dump and dump to the dust.
Also agree with @VinhVD. Now is the time we should think about strategy to increase TVL & Volume for Ref Finance, not to satisfy everyone with “fair launch” token
Imo the release of $REF should not depend on market conditions. I mean, the objective is not to maximise the sale / distribution but rather to give the ability to anyone to participate in the development of the protocol. I agree that the most important thing is to “beef up” our game and make sure the proposal / plan is crystal clear and exhaustive / complete.
@Didier I don’t think everyone here is on the same page about what a proposal should be.
A proposal is geared towards DAO members to vote on. The target audience is already highly involved with the protocol. That’s why I don’t think it’s the right place for pitches/ marketing material. However I do agree with you (and the other comments here) that we’re generally lacking in terms of communication/ marketing and interacting with the community. That is something we should definitely focus more on. I’m sure when the DAO matures we’ll have teams and roles where everyone is able to contribute best at his domain of expertise.
Why not focus on a fair launch? There are people who got a lot of NEAR, these can just destroy everyone. Like there are people who are here from the start of the project don’t you think they are more important than the risky gambler.
As requested, we’ve put together a suggested plan for REF’s tokenomics and distribution.
Ultimately, the decision to implement this rests with the DAO. We recommend implementing each component over time, to allow the DAO to make adjustments as needed.
