Non Nontransferable Social Tokens

[zkwolf]

Throwing this idea out for discussion. It’s definitely half baked but i’m curious to see what others think.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about social tokens and how they will be the next big thing in crypto. In a way, it seems like DAO governance tokens are already checking some boxes as social tokens, but I do think there are important (distinct) uses cases for each.

Recently I have been working in the play to earn space and gamifed community building is a common goal/thread. Of course, this not a new idea as communities have integrated XP points and other rep mechanisms for a long time. For example, there are already plenty of Discord bots (like MEE6) that will allow users to build rep based on participation in the community. And of course, Discourse even has a similar native feature.

So, the idea would be to implement some kind of social token (or NFT) that could track rep/xp/etc across these different community segments. Ideally, with elegant incentives and strategic coordination mechanisms built in, the token would encourage authentic community participation and growth.

The idea of the tokens(or NFT) being non-transferable is an interesting property that indeed has pros and cons. Vitalik’s recent post on Souldbound NFTs covers the topic nicely.

In reading up on the S.W.A.T initiative it seems like this idea could maybe fit as a proposal underneath that system.

All that said, there are indeed a lot of reasons that a social token might not make sense for Stakewise. The token/NFT(s) should have a simple but engaging gamification. If the design and implementation was complicated it probably wouldn’t take off.

While having the token(s) be non-transferable might reduce the sybil attack surface a bit, if leveling up resulted in direct rewards or some kind (for example in SWISE) security would still be a strong concern.

What do you guys think?

[brianchilders]

Hey @zkwolf

This is a great idea and not as half baked as you think. I saw the same article and am keen to explore the idea as you suggested. The idea of soul-bound, the fact that NFTs are not used to signal wealth, but XP, governance, proof-of-humanity and so on is something I’d love to explore.

As you indicated that this is something you’re working on / exploring - would you be willing to share in the forum what you’ve discovered / thought of so far?

-brian

@brianchilders

So today Vitalik proposed an idea of leveraging NFTs not for signaling who has the most wealth but perhaps something else. He highlights how NFTs could be leveraged to be “soul bound” e.g. non-transferrable. He highlights POAPs but we could also use the proof-of-humanity attestation e.g. https://www.proofofhumanity.id/ or perhaps https://www.brightid.org/

This may be “not ready for prime time” - but this is a thread of thought that could be leveraged to help reduce the amount of “bad actors”. The fact that you have PoH (Proof of Humanity) could help discourage bad actors.

That being said, privacy is also a concern - …

[UnitedGwei]

This could be used in SWAT for voting? Something that has literally no value but for use in the DAO?

[brianchilders]

Or perhaps a combination of this plus the SWISE token?

As of now, I believe there should be some financial investment in the DAO.

But I also agree that it should be more than just financial investment. If you read through previous posts that I’ve made, I’m also trying to advance the thought of participation as a factor. In a very simple form, we could do a multiplier of participation.

E.g.

Whale - 1,000,000 SWISE x 1 (unit) of participation = 1,000,000 voting power (this represents a whale who doesn’t actively participate in the protocol - but just basically comes in as an investor

Active Participant - 1,000 SWISE x 100 (unit) of participation = 100,000 voting power (this represents a DAO member who may not have as much $ to invest into the protocol, but because of their active participation in the protocol - their voting power (SWISE) is amplified by their participation in the protocol.

I would also propose that participation credits / power would decrease over time - which would encourage a continual participation into the protocol (e.g. the continual participation refreshes their amplification power).

To carry this out further. If we were to consider just SWISE as awards for participation in the power of the DAO and we were to go down the continued path of using just SWISE for voting, this means that those who “got the SWISE” first and gets to keep it - once there is a threshold reached usually human behavior will kick in and encourage “laziness”. I know that this is a challenging thought to swallow - but what I’m trying to look at is ways to encourage continual participation - not necessarily a one time event.

So maybe as part of the rewards mechanism in the SWAT protocol is not only SWISE itself, but also the participation token which would decrease in value over time. The idea is that you continue to participate, you continue to get the amplification power - which would incentivize continual participation instead of a one time event.

-brian

[zkwolf]

@brianchilders

As you indicated that this is something you’re working on / exploring - would you be willing to share in the forum what you’ve discovered / thought of so far?

Sure. Happy to share. At VoltaireDAO we broke the community down into different (potential) groups based a central theme related to the brand. Specifically, a wizard theme. As an example, we have scholars (Axie Infinity players that play for the guild) and they are called embers. Anyone that has joined the DC but not yet attained another title is a spark. There are more than 10 different groups at this point I think.

As it’s early stages at Voltaire, the groups simply map to Discord roles right now. Rank is primitively being tracked by the MEE6 bot and could be used to issue/distribute tokens|NFTs later on.

High level, the idea I guess then is to create a fun and interesting set of roles within the vibe or theme of the org/community. From there you can map the really fun stuff (to me) like token distribution.

@UnitedGwei

This could be used in SWAT for voting? Something that has literally no value but for use in the DAO?

I think so and I think there is an advantage to adopting this model with a lower level social token too. Ideally community building happens from the bottom up. That is to say, Ideas from from the community and are pushed up to a vote or whatever.

When governance tokens have value, it can be hard for some community members to get the needed tokens in hand to even get a proposal out there. That of course depends on the governance parameters. As I understand it, right now there is a zero quorum for SWISE proposal right now.

Either way, a non-transferable social token could be more forgiving in away because if someone does find a way to game the system and load up on the token it wont give them value. Also, attackers are less likely to exploit the system if there no clear monetary value.

But why would someone want to collect a token that is expected to have no value? Clearly we can see that social rank is important to many people in the gaming community and beyond. Also, and I think this is where a social token really starts to make sense, S.W.A.T can decided after the fact, to distribute some SWISE to social token holders. This allows S.W.A.T team to review social token ranks ahead of time and make a reasonable assessment that tokens were obtained fairly.

I think those type of design elements are paramount to the success of the token as something that will incentivize community participation. However, as an engineer, it’s just as fun to me to think about the token engineering side of things.

At the risk of over engineering things, a mostly standard (transfer function neutered) ERC-1155 contract would be an awesome way to map rank to on-chain tokens. Also, as @UnitedGwei mentioned we could bake in a governance system at this level too so voting could be done with these tokens.

As new roles are imagined, a new token and/or NFT for that role could be added to the existing 1155 contract no problem. Put it on L2 to keep fees down of course.
For example, if you hold a given role you will be issued a non-transferable NFT ‘badge’ for that role. Then, as you progress up into the role (earning XP points, or rank) you can be issued corresponding tokens for that role. This would also allow community members to hold more than one roll and track points (via tokens) for that role.

[ottodv]

Definitely think it’s worth exploring non-transferable tokens, or participation/contribution tokens. At this point I don’t have any preconceived ideas about this, other than a feeling that anything that rewards engagement and contribution, even if symbolic is good.

It also doesn’t have to be one and the same token for everyone, it might be possible to have a token that can acquire features based on what contributions someone has made.

[chak]

I also really like the idea of using a non-transferrable social token. Not much to add on from my side, but going forward I think it’s worth focusing on for at least additional discussions.

[kiriyha]

I think with the advent of non-transferable tokens, we can find ways to gamify services like ours in interesting ways. Think spending X amount of SWISE to get such a token to unlock boosted staking rewards for 3 months. Definitely worth exploring further!

[UnitedGwei]

That sounds like an interesting thought.