Anyone can see where it is going. So far, all of it has gone to NuLagoon in exchange for BTC, which I have detailed in other posts.
I am also excited about increasing the pace of development. If our market cap stabilises far above its previous base of about 1.5 million then we will have some options there. However, that is unrelated to this custodial grant. I will ask for development funds in NuBits, and when sold by contractors they will apply pressure on the sell side. That will organically decrease funds available for share buyback.
So it’s just going through NuLagoon, it’s really going to the people buying from NuLagoon. So again, where is it going? Presumably people are buying NBT and holding it. As @cryptog is concerned about, how do we know most of those NBT aren’t being held by a single attacker?
My guess is that this is organic NuBit demand. Our NuBit transaction counts have about doubled over the last two weeks compared to earlier periods. There is little evidence one way or another, however. With that in mind, we are well prepared to handle any sudden sell volume with more than 500 BTC in tier 4, park rates that have been at zero for many months, and the possibility of tapping our market cap at a higher level than has been the case in many months.
I can see this doesn’t feel good to many shareholders. It doesn’t appeal to the geek in us that wants clean and automated multisig solutions. It may feel like I am demanding more resources when I was just given so many. That isn’t really an accurate take because the resources aren’t being consumed, they are being pumped back into the market cap.
We should all be overjoyed that we are working on the problem of excessive NuBit demand. This is what winning looks like. We are in a very strong position. Now we need to meet the market demand for NuBits with supply.
I understand that you may be sensitive to that, but that’s not actually my concern. My concern is that we give a ton of NBT to a single attacker, thinking it’s genuine market demand, and then we invest all the money that attacker gave us and when he comes back to sell all at once we have to back out of all our investments in a hurry.
The concern I have with this motion is actually the same concern I would have if FLOT were operational and asking for a new $150k grant every week. It’s like @masterOfDisaster says, if we don’t think through the possible attack vectors now we’ll be one step behind and end up getting taken for a ride.
Just to be clear, I am voting for this grant because I don’t think even this much would be enough to really cripple the network if there were an attack. Still, I would like to steer toward solutions that make it so that we don’t even have to worry about how many NBT we’re putting out in the wild.
I plan on making a post about balance sheet attacks later, spelling them out as I see it. There are several attack vectors, most of which are highly risky for the attacker and all of which require a lot of liquidity. Basically, the one I’m referring to is the one where the attacker just keeps buying NBT from the network until they own a large portion of the NBT debt, then sell all at once. It’s one of the simplest attacks that causes people to fear <100% reserve systems like ours. I am advocating switching from a fixed $80k threshold for T4 to a % reserve threshold.
It will be important to keep game theory considerations in mind when analyzing attack vectors.
The ultimate question an attacker would ask prior to starting is whether or not the attack would be profitable for him (financially) or his interests (such as harming our perceived quality to promote a competitor) and then how likely success is.
This is an underrated benefit of NSR for NBT burning. Shareholders have already signalled previously that they are very willing to use that tool when necessary. Given that the NSR market cap is many multiples higher than NBT right now, as well as our robust T4 liquidity, I doubt an attacker would view our network as an easy target. They would have to update their odds of a successful attack with that information. I certainly wouldn’t want to try a buy slow, sell fast attack right now.
ALL deal with liquidity operations:
filling reserves (peg in danger), a fix for too many NBT in circulation (peg in danger), a fix for to little NBT in circulation (peg in danger), a fix for too many BTC on T4 buy side (volatility risk), etc.
You could reduce that to two motions:
one to structure liquidity operations that adjust dynamically to a changing market and changing reserves - hint: I’m speaking of 6)
one to deal with funds in excess
In fact you could stuff all into one motion, but I find it useful to separate “liquidity operations” from “revenue distribution business”.
To make it short and simple my draft (which seems complex, but is less complex than the set of motions Nu already has or will soon have…) deals with liquidity and
some thresholds that trigger actions
automatic adjustment of buy and sell side reserves to NBT in circulation (distribute revenue, burn NBT)
balancing of the buy and sell side
contracting sell side (NBT buyback) preferred by selling BTC
if BTC reserves run dry, refill reserves by selling NSR
inflating sell side (NBT distribution) in exchange for receiving BTC or NSR
recommendations for NSR holders to grant NSR or NBT based on level of reserves
Distributing revenue has been left out intentionally - the funds in excess that should be distributed could be defined by the motion nevertheless!
An idea for that is in the intro. It has been left out of the motion draft to not mess with the current NSR buyback motion.
It’s up to the NSR holders whether they prefer a set of band aid solutions or a sound framework.
Having no useful rules for the FLOT forces the members to discuss, trying to interpret the NSR holders’ will in times they should act.
Having all spread across a dozen motion makes it hard to keep track and consider the effect of changes in one motion to other motions.
You can start to read, discuss, improve motions that try to draw a bigger picture, or wait for the next motions:
Perhaps this might be going off topic, but we could break it out to another topic if it’s disruptive.
I’d like to hear what people who understand the system more than I do thinks about @masterOfDisaster’s approach. He (correct me if otherwise) lays out arguments that are attractive to me, but I don’t trust my own understanding enough to make a conclusion.
Shareholders seem to want to pass many less-complex motions in a row, which of course has the danger of losing sight of the forest due to all the trees, as MoD points out. I almost feel like we’ll need to make a motion just to tie all the other motions together into one coherent plan of business. I say we have at it with the bandaids, then pass an overarching motion that invalidates all the preceding motions once the shareholders have a greater concept of consensus for Nu operations.
I’m disappointed too, but sometimes the shareholders need to be coddled.
I think it’s very much on topic, because the generic topic is liquidity operations.
And you shouldn’t trust mine!
My proposal is just a draft. I’m not sure whether the thresholds are good and the actions are wise.
They are just as good as I could make them.
And they will very likely not stay the same even after such a motion has passed voting.
There need to be feedback loops to include experience.
But first it needs to start!
Try to understand it, try to attack it, try to improve it!
Start discussing it!
There has been a marked increase in the level of demand for NuBits in recent days. I can’t predict where demand will be even hours from now, but I can say that if current trends continue the NuBits in tier 4 under my control will run out in 24 to 48 hours.
I am disappointed that this grant has not received shareholder support and that FSRT is not doing anything.
Did we come this far to lose the peg to the upside for refusing to release NuBits into the market? That is the question that FSRT and shareholders need to contemplate.
The peg is in serious danger right now. Disorderly and expensive liquidity operations by way of Nu borrowing NuBits from large holders could be as little as 24 hours away. How do shareholders and @FSRT plan to deal with this?
it seems that voting is not a proper process for this kind of “emergency”. Although i don’t believe that peg is in danger (unless of a sudden big BTC decline in value).
but NBT exist in other exchanges as well (at the moment).
I don’t think that speculators could be in so panic that will buy NBT at any price from a single exchange without a sell wall!
Getting the kind of support that this grant has gotten in the first couple thousand blocks actually tells me the shareholders are doing their job very well. Even if the peg breaks upward for a couple days, I highly doubt it will incite a panic. We will establish stronger mechanisms for this eventually. For the time being, our profit source is somewhat self limiting.
I have voted for this motion yesterday but perhaps its due to the large amount of votes we have right now in combination with a grant for 100k that has passed quite recently that many shareholders are unaware. Perhaps additional visibility can be given to this topic by using EMERGENCY in caps in the topic title. While this is not a very elegant way of doing this it might help get this grant passed as soon as possible.
Right now we’re in a situation where many traders want to pull out of bitcoin as the market is very unsure in which direction its going, this is probably part of the increased surge in demand. We should also be very responsive to the market settling down and lots of people wanting to trade back their Nubit for bitcoin. Times like these are were our peg mechanisms are truly tested.
What is the status of the FSRT? Slow to respond? Nowhere to be found? Has everyone lost the keys to the 4 million NBT?
Perhaps the FSRT should be disbanded – the 4 MM NBT handed back to Jordan Lee in a single-sig transaction or burned.
It may be a step backwards from this being a distributed solution, but as this is the first time the FSRT has been put to the test, maybe it was a flawed approach to begin with that is just being discovered now. Lessons that the FLOT can learn from.
To have availability, perhaps JordanLee can advance several motions for NBT grant, and the shareholders can modulate their voting, to keep the motions at under 50%, but close enough that liquidity could be provided in short order.
The only way around I can find to overcome this situation in a urgent way and complying with motions is to “manually” reach the 40% sell side threshold, forcing @FSRT to come up and redirecting big buyers to trade with @FSRT directly.
