MIP-0018: MAHAX: Locked MAHA tokens for better incentives and stronger governance

Proposals
1

This proposal suggests the following:

Introducing superMAHA, converting MAHA into a fee-earning asset with governance properties similar to Curve’s veCRV, Frax’s veFXS, iceCream etc…

Similar to veCRV, superMAHA will be used for voting in governance, boosting rewards, earning trading fees, and receiving airdrops.

Motivation

Curve.finance, through its veCRV token, has built one of the best token designs in the space for emission-based projects. Furthermore, over 40% of CRV’s circulating supply is locked as the veCRV token.

MAHA also has an emission rate/inflation which is set at 50,000 MAHA tokens per month over the course of 10 years. Which makes it eligible for such a model.

Furthermore, superMAHA allows MAHA holders to actively vote on where the newly minted MAHA tokens will be distributed, decentralizing the inflation of MAHA to its community.

Minting superMAHA

Assuming 1000 MAHA is vote-locked:

minted vote-locked
1000 4 years
250 1 year
127.4 6 month
63.7 3 month
21.23 1 month
4.79 1 week

(Note: This table is just an estimate of the locking of MAHA. Users can choose any interval in between 2 weeks to 4 years)

How superMAHA works:

  • Lock MAHA between 1 week to 4 years to receive superMAHA.
  • superMAHA becomes non-transferable and non-tradeable.
  • 1 superMAHA = 1 vote in the future of MAHA governance, validators, airdrops, etc…
  • superMAHA staked translates to voting power which can be used to determine the allocation of MAHA token liquidity mining by chain and market.

This benefits MAHA ecosystem as a whole by:

  • Incentivizing farmers to stake MAHA to boost their rewards.
  • Allocate voting power to long-term holders of MAHA through superMAHA.
  • Allow superMAHA holders to partake in earning fees from the ecosystem.
  • Allow superMAHA holders to safely and securely control the inflation of MAHA tokens.
  • All ecosystem benefits (Incubatee project private sale, Oracle participation, etc, etc…)

Timeline

After discussions within the community, this proposal will be put up for a vote on July 29th, 2021 at 3pm GMT for 3 days. After which the team will schedule for the release of superMAHA sometime closer to the end of August.

A separate vote will be conducted to decide on the name of the maha staking token.

Relevant links:

3 Likes
4

This is a great addition that will greatly improve the integrity of governance. The key difference being a more direct influence rewarded to long term commitment to the project, while greatly reducing the vulnerability of short term acquisition for temporary influence.

At current, an individual can;
-Make a proposal
-Load up of cheap Maha
-Push through approval of proposal
-Sell off the Maha post-voting decision.

This means Maha is currently “governance on demand” or “temporary governance when convenient” - all of which diminishes the incentive for long term commitment over intermittent commitment, which can impact the quality of future AIP’s and their outcomes.

With this change, more leverage is given to those who Time-Lock their commitment, and in a way that can rightfully so, give more power to lesser holders who are committed for the long-term, over larger stake holders who are more interested in exiting sooner than later.

Just to explain the mechanisms here a bit more;
-The “superMaha” amount is minted instantly depending on the time-lock duration you commit too.
-For example, Time-locking 1000 Maha for 1 week will allocate to you 4.79 ‘superMaha’ instantly for use in voting. Whereas Time-locking 1000 Maha for 4 years will allocate to you 1000 ‘superMaha’ instantly for use in voting.
-After the time-lock period has expired, your Maha is returned, and your ‘superMaha’ is no longer allocated to you.

I would like to suggest with this that we include the follow;
-Maha Oracles not only require 10,000 Maha to operate, but this 10,000 Maha should be time/vote-locked for a set criteria of time.
-Maha used for Incubator perks/discounts should also be time/vote-locked for a set criteria of time.

In addition, if this proposal is approved - I’d like to suggest that all powers of governance be shifted over to ‘superMaha’.

Lastly, maybe a better brand name than ‘superMaha’ :smiley:
-MahaX

Looking forward to seeing this, but would be well timed to move on when more maha pairs/liquidity options are listed, and overall crypto market sentiment is confidently bullish.

3 Likes
5

Assuming that ARTHX does transition to be a fee bearing token, we will have two assets in the ecosystem (superMAHA and ARTHX) that allows users to earn protocol fees.

Would not cause these tokens to fight each other?
How you do you keep ARTHX atractive for investors?

I would think that ARTHX should be the token that earns the most protocol fees and superMAHA will boost the rewards on top of it along with all the utility described in the proposal.

1 Like
6

This would be a kind of layer 2 for the Maha Token, if I understand this correctly. It seems to me that two things are important to clarify / discuss:

  1. I consider it useful to limit the maximum voting power per individual. E.g. that nobody can have more than 10% of the total voting power. The aim should be to distribute votes among as many as possible, without one person alone being able to outvote all the others just because he can afford it.

  2. The distribution of fees should be clearly defined. As far as I understand, once the dept pool is paid off, 50% of all fees go to Arthx, 25% to Maha-Staker and 25% to the organisation or token burn (for Maha burn, development, marketing etc.). If I take it from AIP18 correctly, then if it is approved, the 25% Maha-Staker share would simply go to the superMaha holders. Correct?

1 Like
7

Ok , so of maha is time- locked. Yes maha will moon and governance will be concentrated among committed holders . But this could come at the cost of following.

  1. Could too much maha be extract from LP’s leaving us with a liquidity crunch.
    2.We are yet to learn the mechanism of how oracle works with require 10k maha. Can this time locked maha too be considered to run a node.

Finally I would suggest for allocation and priority of incubated projects, priority should be given to those who lock for 4 years. In addition to a slab based allocation system, any unallocated could be assigned to the next slab in the hierarchy.

1 Like
8

  • For superMaha there should simply be only 1 pool or the 25% fee share should be distributed by airdrop. As simple and concentrated as possible. Exchange superMaha once and deposit it in only on one place, if necessary, and that’s it. Not like Arthx, where the 25% is spread over various staking and farming pools.

  • I like the bigger gap from 1 year to 4 years. It really shows who is backing Maha in the long run. It makes it more interesting than if there is also a 2 year option. The challenge with 4 years is simply whether it is possible to keep tokens safe for 4 years (you can’t move them around). With all the technical progress, hacks, exploits, updates and so on, this is certainly a risk.

  • It would be interesting, if 4-year superMAHA stakers would receive a certain percentage of tokens from each IDO via airdrops. Like the highest tiers of various launch pads.

  • I prefer superMAHA over MahaX.

  • The locket Maha or superMAHA, do they also earn MAHA (API) or only fees?

9

Not that critical , but with the naming I have the following suggestions.

  1. superMaha with SMaha as abbreviation.
  2. MahaN , as in Maha carrying voting rights.

MahaX would not be suitable as it would create confusion with ArthX and X , implies that a stock has non voting rights. So it doesn’t make sense.

10

Guys,
I love the idea. I believe in MahaDAO project long-term.
This idea about superMAHA is brilliant.
I’m thinking about it from the perspective of the mid/longterm investment in asset where I don’t have a change to sell it :slight_smile:
The lock-time should be linear - I mean the lockup time should be flexible and calculated according to formula. And give a change to lock event for longer time than 4 years. Check HEX project. The average staging period is over 5 years. And ppl are staking even for 10 years.
You should apply the formula “longer pays better” e.g. for 10 years period is should be 3000 superMAHA.

12

I think 4yr for 100% of locked amount turned into superMaha as a “longest option” is ideal. The problem with going over 100% returned in supermaha in a linear scale is this;

-Instead of locking 10,000 maha for 4 years to get 10,000 superMaha, the same person could lock 1000 Maha for 40 years, which if scaled would return the same 10,000 superMaha. This would be a problem because most would opt for a 10x longer lock period whilst using 10% of their bag. Which does not achieve the goal of separating governance between speculators and longterm supporters. If anything, it encourages and rewards speculators more - as they would just flip the 10% back on the market whilst wielding the governance power of their full amount.

It’s important that we do not exceed supermaha allocation greater than what a person commits in locked maha, otherwise we create a situation where there is an incentive to lock less maha for longer, while speculating with the remaining amount.

13

I was rather thinking about up to 10 years period. But you are right, that ppl could "sacrify "smaller amount of maha for having more superMAHA and speculate. 4-5 years would be enough.
The period should be flexible to give a chance to finish lockup at specific date. It would be very usefull.

It should also be possible to end the lockup in advance with penalty. Penalty should depend on the cancelation period - what % of time.
Maha from penalty should be distributed to superMAHA holders.

14

As @enamakel has mentioned, AIP18 needs to be changed as the Maha and Arthx token roles cannot be mixed for legal reasons. A 25% fee pool for superMAHA is therefore probably not possible (and from my point of view also not optimal). Schlonki made the suggestion in Telegram that superMAHA should better play a role in the Arthx pool.

My idea on this would be to use superMAHA as a limited multiplier in the Arthx Staking Pool. Insofar as this is legally possible.

AIP18 would be kept as described above. Time locks from one week to 4 years, which give different amounts of superMAHA. Also the benefits for superMAHA such as MAHA governance / voting, airdrops and possibly IDO pre-sales etc. among others.

What would change is that superMAHA holders would not receive 25% of the income. Instead, these would only go to Arthx holders.

However, the Arthx pool, which distributes around 50-75% of the income (Collected Fees of various products), could be expanded with superMAHA as a multiplier. So whoever stakes superMAHA in this pool in addition to Arthx, increases his earnings from this pool.

This could look for example as follows:

Assuming someone has staked Arthx in the Arthx pool, which gives (without superMAHA ) a revenue share of 100 US dollars per month, superMAHA could work as follows:

0 superMAHA = 0x Rewards = 100$ Total Rewards
50 superMAHA = 1.1x Rewards = 110$ Total Rewards
100 superMAHA = 1.2x Rewards = 120$ Total Rewards
250 superMAHA = 1.5x Rewards = 150$ Total Rewards
500 superMAHA = 2x Rewards = 200$ Total Rewards
1000 superMAHA = 2.5x Rewards = 250$ Total Rewards
2000 superMAHA = 3x Rewards = 300$ Total Rewards
5000 superMAHA = 4x Rewards = 400$ Total Rewards
10000 superMAHA = 5x Rewards = 500$ Total Rewards

More than 10k superMAHA are useless. More superMAHA only benefits voting, airdrops, etc.
(We could also limit the maximum to 5k and add more multipliers towards the bottom to take better into account the price increase of MAHA in the long term).

People can increase their share of the fee earnings in two ways:

  1. Buy more Arthx and stake it (limit is max. supply).
  2. Buy more Maha, lock it and stake superMaha to the Arthx (limited to 5k or 10k superMAHA = 5x Rewards).

Benefits of this system:

  • Maha or superMAHA have only up to a certain quantity a direct financial benefit.
  • Arthx stakers buy Maha and stake them for superMAHA (This increases the price of MAHA and the number of superMAHA holders also increases. The number of people eligible to vote also increases with this.).
  • One more good reason to stake MAHA in the long run.

Things to consider when determining multipliers:

  • Maha and Arthx are very volatile and can rise significantly in value.
  • Likewise, the revenues that are generated and distributed will also rise significantly.
  • Due to the time-lock of the superMAHA, once multipliers have been set, they should last for years.

Examples of price changes for the Maha Token:

100 superMAHA cost e.g.

At 2 $ per Maha and 4 years locked: 200 $ (= 1.2x Rewards)
At 2 $ per Maha and 1 year locked: 800 $ (= 1.2x Rewards)

At 25 $ per Maha (ATH) and 4 years locked: 2’500 $ (= 1.2x Rewards)
At 25 $ per Maha (ATH) and 1 year locked: 10’000 $ (= 1.2x Rewards)

10k superMAHA costs e.g.

At 2 $ per Maha and 4 years locked: 20’000 $ (= 5x Rewards)
At 2 $ per Maha and 1 year locked: 80’000 $ (= 5x Rewards)

At 25 $ per Maha (ATH) and 4 years locked: 250’000 $ (= 5x Rewards)
At 25 $ per Maha (ATH) and 1 year locked: 1’000’0000 $ (= 5x Rewards)

The price for the multiplier (MAHA) increases over the months and years due to the additional products and user growth, but also the income from the collectetd fees that are distributed.

It is therefore important that there is already even for smaller quantities of superMAHA (50, 100 superMAHA or less) a multiplier that will still be affordable in a few months or years.

1 Like
15

Re: AIP18
Then following is a summary of the current terms being proposed by AIP18 which will be followed by a few suggestions that may make it a bit more effective.
As it stands, I’ve gathered the following takeaways from AIP18;

  1. Time locked maha in exchange for benefits including but not limited to the right to vote, percentage of fees as rewards, Allocation in ido’s etc.
  2. Proposing naming the nontransferable token being furnished in exchange for locking maha to super maha
    From here I have identified a few drawdowns to in relation to these points;
  3. Time locking maha, while it can reduce sell pressure it can have an effect on the liquidity levels especially if we are to consider that anyone who participates in governance would have to lock there tokens for longer periods of time If they want their votes to have the weighting proportionate to their actual stake in the project. Which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing but the effect it can have on liquidity and volume may leave the possibility of it being taken advantage of by whales who can use the lack of liquidity to manipulate price on the one hand and the issue of not being disadvantageous to lp providers, if the lp providers are not being properly incentivized (not being able to vote or being excluded from airdrops or other benefits).
  4. The paying out of rewards for locking maha may create a situation whereby it can be construed as a security.
  5. The name supermaha isn’t particularly attractive to me, it doesn’t do anything different from maha in theory I also feel like mahax is not the right fit either, do to the fact that there may still be a bit of a stigma connected to the arthx launch.
    Solutions
  6. I think that one solution that may be a reasonable option would be to create a means for ppl to lock lp for the same durations of the time locked maha where by they can still earn the regular lp fees from volume (this is strictly on the trading side not protocol fees) at the same rate of conversion as simply locking maha in exchange for supermaha based on the total gmu value of liquidity provided. This can help to create a price floor for maha as well as ensuring that in the event of a full on a bear market the protocol would also have a slightly deeper warchest with enough extra liquidity to keep things flowing. Provision should also be made for for lp providers to vote as well, not quite sure of how much the weighting should be depending on duration due to the fact that they have the risk of IL
  7. The issue of being deemed a security is now of a larger concern due to all the regulatory scrutiny cryptos are being subjected to. To get around this I think there needs to be a way for us to pay out these fees accrued based on the proportion owed to us based on our holdings and the amount of time in between events, for example by paying them out quarterly in tokens from incubated projects. I think this may be a workable solution as the fees generated would still be used by the protocol to buy the tokens so that the project would still get the needed capital, it would not be paid directly and it can be structured specifically to workaround the regulatory issues.
  8. Supermaha isn’t particular attractive, I think mahax isn’t either. Their may still be a bit of a stigma because of arthx. I personally think that calling them maha shards might be a good go due to the fact that for most people who time lock their maha will only receive a fraction of it back in super maha. I think it will also be easier to accept that it isn’t really a different token and just a part or rather the rights conferred by the token minus the economic value, hence, it being a shard of itself. Also I think this may allow it to pick up a bit of traction from the eth 2.0 launch next month.
1 Like
16

Sir you got a great proposition here , and it seems we will not be eligible for maha skaking rewards.

So I believe the greatest financial benefit would be getting better allocations for your incubated projects, which would be lovely.I do feel the following would be beneficial.

  1. Have additional yearly slab between 1-4 years with an incremental of 250 for each slab eg. 2 years -500 superMaha.
  2. Most importantly an exit option would be really beneficial, instead of waiting for the time to expire. Hence I propose a linear penalty system is adopted as follows.
    1.Convert 1,000 maha to 250 superMaha a 1 year time lock.
    So if someone need their maha after 1 month , so they would be eligible for maha for proportional to how many months they hold , so in this case they will be eligible only for 8.33% of maha while the balance being burnt. This is better than having it locked for a fixed period.
    This option can be provided for those staking more than 1 year.
    Alternatively we could have a time-lock for 10 years with the same voting rights as the 4 year slab. But with the possibility of early redemption ( min 1 year), but proportionaly penalised as mentioned above.

I feel an exit clause is important , if unavailable you should indicate the process for dispute resolution. This is especially important legally I think.

1 Like
17

I like the proposal is perfect for the long-term holders
After reading comments and ideas this is my opinion

  1. To avoid the LP drain I suggest to limit the supermaha pool and keep a proportion between circulation supply and max locked maha
    If someone who stacked for 1 month want to exit someone else can take his place and fill the pool

  2. No fee for supermaha but I like the idea to boost arthx fees

  3. Completely agree with what Steven says about the governance

  4. Thier 1 for any ido (similar with oxbull launchpad)

1 Like
18

So we are nearing time to vote on this, ill quickly summarize everything into a ‘package’ that we can move forward on, whilst some other points noted here I think can be focused on more in-depth through future AIP’s

Significant Factors to Clarify for this vote;

  • SuperMaha will not be collecting platform fees as this changes the classification to a security.

Significant Factors that can be pushed to future AIP proposals, yet need final vote before AIP 18 goes live;

  • Additional Time-Lock periods
  • Early Cancellation options
  • Clarification on Oracles and Time-locked Maha

Minor Factors that can be pushed to future AIP proposals

  • IDO token reward allocation for SuperMaha stakers
  • Fee adjustments for ArthX
  • Branding of SuperMaha (MahaX, sMaha, SuperMaha, MahaShards, MahaN, ect.)

Basically anything that may impact a persons decision to time-lock Maha between now and 4 years should be known upfront before people commit to these timelines. Such as the factors I’ve outlined above that will need to be decided on before people start locking up Maha. However the bulk of this proposal centers around leveraging emissions effectively, and allocating more power to long-term commitment over short-term speculators - all of which is something that does not seem contested and we can move forward with to vote.

19

So a few things for voters to consider:

- How much more complexity does another token add to the ecosystem?
- My opinion is “not much”, as it is not a tradeable token, so won’t be diluting interest.
- What’s the main benefit?
- To allow MAHA stakers to be able to participate in voting when staked.
- Where does it leave ordinary Maha?
- If Supermaha is the only tool for voting, that leaves Maha with almost no utility.
- Is there enough incentive to lock?
- Just providing governance is not enough. The extras are the key to the success of this implementation. Of course there are the regulatory issues, but we can still build incentives in. The options so far are IDOs,
- Will these incentives be another blow to ARTHX holders?
- Goodwill has hung by a thread at times. Reducing the benefits for ARTHX holders and stakers should not be underestimated. Personally, I think JBaron and Longway’s ARTHX multiplier suggestion is the best answer here.
- Are LP providers being left behind?
- They have their own benefits from LP provision. Will need to consider if they have enough incentive to stay there during the more difficult times. Could we see what proportion of LP providers are long term holders? My guess is it would be high. Which suggests they need some way of acting in the DAO. Javaughn’s suggestion here of locking LPs seems a good solution.

Points to consider for implementation:

  • Is it simpler for user understanding for a linear lock up to a certain max value? They can use a slider on the UI rather than consulting a chart.
  • An exit option as proposed by immortal would be useful. It probably won’t get used much, but gives people a better feeling about placing their tokens in lockup.
  • I don’t like the name. MahaLock or MahaVault might be better descriptors. MahaShards was a good suggestion too.
  • I don’t think IDO allocations should be tiered according to timelock length. I think they should be tiered according to superMaha holdings, as this is already proportional to stake provided and timelock length. Tiers are, however, always bullish for IDO platforms.
  • Maha Oracle details need releasing before the implementation, as people will want to know where to put their maha. If I had 10k I would want to know where best to put it!
1 Like
20

An exit clause might not be ideal because then it works against those who have staked for 4 years. Because a penalty of. say 30% (which is what IRON finance currently does) is something that can easily be written off or paid off if the market goes hyperbolic (which it can).

The better option here is to simply encourage users to stake for however longer they’d want.

I don’t think there’ll be an LP drain for MAHA because the biggest liquidity pool is on Uniswap out of which 95% is owned by the team. Morever, the team is also the ones supply the liquidity on exchanges like Kucoin, Bitmax etc… etc…

If anything, this should be a boost to liquidity because LPs can farm the MAHA/ETH pair and earn more boosted rewards via the superMAHA token.

This is a fantastic addition and will be incorporated in the vote!

Valid points and for the name we can have another vote on it sometime soon.

21

So I suppose this is a wrap and good to go for the voting rounds.
So obviously this proposal doesn’t cover certain areas in detail, as it could complicate the essence of the matter.

So let the voting begin :hammer:

22

Voting is now live guys at:

ETH chain: Snapshot

Polygon chain: Snapshot