Atom Wars: an alternative take

[JohnMontagu]

Thanks for feedback @jBQ ! A few comments:

@jBQ

Yeah, we were talking about how long the allocation should last. We decided on 1 month because we think it should be longer than 21 days. But we agree that this is something we should talk about with the community. The duration of the allocation has pros and cons. Longer allocations are more valuable, but if we want to have ATOM Wars more often, we might need to shorten the duration. Two months seems like a good option to consider.

Agreed. Shorter allocation periods are more beneficial for Atom Wars. And when factoring in the un-bonding period a duration of 2 months seems like a good start.

@jBQ

This is another good option. It simplifies things for projects, but it could complicate matters for voters because it adds uncertainty/noise to the value of the bid. In other words, many voters might struggle to determine if they’ll earn more from project A or project B. The upside is that since this is an evolving process, over time, this uncertainty may decrease.

That’s an interesting point to bring up. Personally, I see this ‘struggle’ as a positive thing for the following reason:
While it is normal for vATOM holders’ decision-making to be driven by yield, it can’t be the only factor influencing the vote. Thus, a scenario where voters are incentivized to do additional research on bids instead of only looking at the expected vote-per-pay is more beneficial for the Hub as it builds a better informed base of voters over time. This reduces the risk of malicious projects winning bids and ensures capital flows to projects aligned with the Hub’s vision.

@jBQ

This is one of the options we looked at (among others). As always, there are advantages and disadvantages to weigh. The tranches design offers flexibility; we can easily add more tranches if needed, based on the level of competition or participation we observe. Furthermore, having multiple tranches with a substantial number of ATOMs in each presents attractive opportunities for small to intermediate projects. This is critical if our goal is to provide adequate funding for these smaller initiatives to kick-start their projects. On the other hand, the weighted distribution might allocate too much to strong projects, but, as you pointed out, it can also increase competition. Additionally, it allows even very small projects to access a (tiny) fraction of the funds available. We are opened and happy to consider and discuss this and other auction designs.

Both designs have trade-offs, I agree. But don’t you think that allocating 70% of total available liquidity to a single project and 95% to 2 projects while leaving only 5% to the small projects category is allocating too much to strong projects?

In addition to increasing demand and competition between projects, I think that weighted distribution gives a higher chance for small projects to compete. I also think that a higher number of tranches with a better distribution of liquidity could address this issue as the reasoning behind my suggestion of weighted distribution ( as well as onboarding bidders as vATOM holders) is the highly unbalanced distribution between tranches in the current design.