Referendum Voting Rewards: The Past, The Present, The Future

The Past

For the past 10 referenda, voters have been receiving NFTs as a reward for their participation in governance. As the graph below shows, since the inception of this project, participation (measured by amount of wallets voting) has gone up significantly. A change that has a positive impact on the chain as a whole and every stakeholder.

Until now, voters have been receiving RMRK1.0.0 NFTs. I partnered with leading artists and projects in the space to design these beautiful works of art.

The feedback has been great so far and the numbers speak for themselves.

The Present

With the team at RMRK rolling out a new NFT standard, it was also time for this project to fully harness the possibilities that this new tech provides. This is something I have been excited about since I started this project and am thus very proud to present the all new RMRK2.0.0 Collection.

Well, technically it’s two collections…

The Shelf Collection

Each voter that doesn't own a shelf NFT yet will be sent one. The shelf has space for 50 items to be placed into it.

The Item Collection

Each time a wallet votes, it will be sent an item NFT which it can equip into its shelf.

What it looks like in practice

Referendum 181 was the first referendum to be rewarded with the RMRK2 collection.

Since none of the voters had a shelf yet, every single voter was sent one. Additionally, voters also received an item. For Referendum 181, the item was a trophy. These trophies were sent to the shelves of the voters. The owners of the shelves could now accept and equip the trophy into their respective shelves.

A shelf equipped with the trophy would render as follows:

The item for the next referendum will be a different one that can also be equipped to a different slot on the shelf.

What else is new?

The goal of the project is of course to drive up participance in governance and make the whole chain more decentralised. In order to live up to that goal we need to encourage “significant” participance by the community. Someone voting with 0.000001 KSM for example has a very insignificant impact on the outcome of the vote. In order to motivate the community to have a significant impact on our governance system, I have also implemented settings for the respective referenda.

Referendum Settings

With the settings we can control the rules for receiving the NFT in each respective referendum. Each referendum will have its own settings.

Some of the most relevant settings: Minimum vote amount: only voters that have voted with at least this amount will receive an NFT Maximum vote amount: only voters that have voted with maximum this amount will receive an NFT Block Cut Off: only votes up to this block are considered. Direct Only: If set to true only direct votes (no delegations) receive NFTs Transferable: Item NFTs for this referendum are non transferable. Meaning the only way to receive them is to vote. They cannot be sold or bought.

These settings are subject to change as we come up with new ideas to make this collection more fun and encourage participation.

The rules for the respective referenda will be announced on the twitter page of this project:

A note on royalties...

The project has received funding from the treasury to get to this very point. It was my intention from the start to make the project economically viable and get it off this treasury support as soon as possible. The creator royalties introduced in RMRK2.0.0 create an interesting opportunity to fund the project long term.

The shelf royalty

The royalty for the shelf is a whopping 90% and here is why…

As mentioned already, shelf NFTs are sent out to every voter that does not own one yet. Alice could thus vote on Referendum 181, receive a shelf and item NFT and then sell the shelf NFT. She can be sure to receive a new shelf when she votes for Referendum 182 again. Since the shelves are handed out in abundance, I don’t expect their value to be significant. The high royalty aims to discourage selling of the shelves themselves as to avoid me having to pay the transaction fee of sending out a new shelf to the wallet again.

The item royalty

Some of you may have noticed that the royalties for the Referendum 181 trophy are different for each NFT. A range for royalty of the referendum item can also be specified in the settings of each referendum. For Referendum 181 I chose a range from 30-50% within which a value was randomly chosen for each NFT. Some trophy NFTs thus have a royalty close to 30% while others have a royalty of 50%. Wether this royalty range is too high or too low remains to be seen and the range will most certainly be adjusted in future referenda. The reason for using a range as opposed to a fixed value for all NFTs is to add an element of luck and gamification into the process.

The Future

What happens when the shelf is full? Once all 50 slots have been filled up (Referendum 231) the shelf will be full.

What happens then remains to be seen but let me take you on a small journey…

At Referendum 231 a new collection is launched: The living room

Besides your shelf, you can also equip a bunch of other items into your living room. Maybe the item for Referendum 232 will be a couch and the one for Referendum 233 a coffee table. Voters will fill up their living room until that is full too…

Then we launch a new collection: The house

Voters can equip their living room (which in turn has their shelf equipped) into their house. The next referenda will give voters other room NFTs that can also be equipped into their house.

Imagine building your digital home by voting on referenda. And who knows, maybe the home will just become your birds nest on SkyBreach one day….

The possibilities are endless and we are just at the beginning. I am glad you are here for the ride!

P.S

It would be great to get the community involved in the project. Specifically I think the community should decide what the next items will be. I have opened a group on telegram where we can brainstorm and vote on the future items together. We would be happy to have you join and voice your opinion.

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3qiD3D…snA8wtPost author

A space meant for a discussion on improving governance processes on Kusama and make the network more inclusive and democratic

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A space meant for a discussion on improving governance processes on Kusama and make the network more inclusive and... Show More