Creating XSI 2.0

💭 Exploring Ideas ⚙️ Tokenomics
#1

The current state of XSI leaves room for improvement. Let’s collect all ideas and arguments here…

Links to previous discussions on the topic:

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#2

we can maybe add some “prize” for people of XSI that actually get a new citizen onboard? well, it’s kind of bounty in this case… i don’t know… i mean it is “social” because you are actually spreading the XIO’s word to other people…

2 Likes
#4

Here is a more formal address of the problems I see with the current policy.

Current XSI Policies (as I understand them):

  • The XSI Leaderboard competition runs from the 15th of the month to the 15th of the month.
  • Rewards are paid somewhere between the 15th and the 20th of the month.
  • Only XIO Citizens are eligible to participate in the XSI Leaderboard competition.
  • Citizens must have at least 250 XIO tokens in their wallet to be eligible for the XSI Leaderboard competition (to prevent Sybil attacks).
  • XSI credits can be accrued by replying to posts that specifically have #XIOSocial tagged on them on: the Official XIO Social Forum, Twitter (must also Like the tweet), Facebook (must also Like the post), YouTube (must also Thumps Up the video), Medium (must Clap the article 50 times), Reddit (must also Upvote the post), Instagram (must also Like the post), LinkedIn (must also Like the post).
  • These replies must be quality discussion points. They must generally be done within 48 hours of the #XIOSocial post, with the exception of replies on the Official XIO Social Forum which can still be counted up to 7 days after the original post. The reply must have your XID attached in the reply, and the reply must be directly to the #XIOSocial post (not a reply to someone else’s reply).
  • The XSI credits awarded for replies will be: 0 points (for non-quality), 3 points (for quality), or 15 points (for the best reply to the #XIOSocial post).
  • XSI credits may also be handed out by XIO team members for Telegram or Forum posts they found particularly helpful, at their discretion.
  • XSI credits accrued by the Citizen and displayed on the Leaderboard will translate into 10%, 5%, or 2.5% of the Citizen’s XIO wallet being air dropped to their wallet.
  • Whether the percentage is 10%, 5%, 2.5%, or 0% depends on how many credits the Citizen accrued during the month, and where that ranks them among other participants. Top 10 rankers will get 10%. Top 25 will get 5%.
  • In order to determine how many tokens you hold in your wallet, a snapshot of your wallet is taken somewhere on or around the 1st of the month.
  • The date of that snapshot is randomized to prevent Citizens temporarily inflating their XIO token holdings and then selling them quickly after the snapshot is taken.
  • Tokens must have been held 30+ days at the time of the snapshot in order to qualify as vested for the XSI percentage payout.

Problematic Policies under Review:

  • Inconsistent or (at times) non-existent communication about important policy qualifications.
  • The date of the snapshot.
  • The randomization of the snapshot date/the 30+ day vesting period.
  • Unclear whether XIO tokens contributed to the Uniswap Liquidity Pool also count both for the 250 token minimum, as well as the total amount of XIO in possession upon which a percentage multiplier will be applied for payout.
  • The 15 points for “best reply”.

Why are these policies problematic?

  • The most glaring problem is the inconsistent or non-existent communication about important policy qualifications. Nowhere on the XIO website is it printed that the snapshot for your wallet will be taken on the 1st of the month rather than the point at which it would make the most intuitive sense (the conclusion of the month’s XSI Leaderboard competition). A reasonable person who purchased their XIO tokens in the beginning of August would have assumed that their XIO would be eligible for XSI rewards commensurate to their XSI credit accrual at the September 15th conclusion of that month’s XSI competition, as those XIO tokens will have been in their wallet for more than 30 days at that point. This lack of communication may have (and in my case did) lead to actions that might have been otherwise timed differently or avoided altogether. In my example, I might not have purchased my XIO tokens so early in August if I knew that it wouldn’t be until mid-September before I can even spend a month participating in the XSI competition. Also in my case, I have spent quite a bit of time on this project (and I do consider my time valuable), in part under the impression that I would be able to participate in the XSI program.
  • The date of the holdings snapshot is the second-most problematic policy. This is problematic for three reasons:
  1. It is counter-intuitive. It does not meet the standard of what a reasonable person would assume, absent explicit caution to the contrary. This is important, and not just because the policy was not actually communicated to participants until now (and is still not being communicated on the website). A “read the fine print” mentality surrounding XIO’s Citizenship reward programs is completely counter-productive to what the programs are aiming to engender in the first place.
  2. It creates a monthly pump-and-dump cyclicality to the XIO token price, which stacks on top of the monthly pump-and-dump cyclicality that already exists due to the timing of the XLP program policies. In the XLP program the participant is incentivized to buy tokens at the end of the month in order to get them into the Uniswap LP by the ‘deadline’ for full-month participation. Similarly, if they were planning to re-balance their LP tokens during the month, they are incentivized to do so at the beginning of the month, as this preserves the most time and optionality before the end-of-month deadline. Worse, the fact that any trimming whatsoever resets your XLP multiplier, means that a person who knows they need to re-balance their Uniswap pool tokens are incentivized to remove all of their liquidity, as this also maximizes optionality in the given set of parameters. All of this has been acknowledged by the XLP program creators, either directly on website or in Telegram chat. It has directly led to cyclical pump-and-dump selling/price action clustered around the end of the month/beginning of the next month. With the date of the XSI program’s snapshot being similarly taken around the end of the month/beginning of the next month, this ADDS to that cyclical wave. Encouraging this sort of cyclicality and market action directly injures XIO investors, as it detracts from market efficiency and may lead to the injury of XIO holders who are unaware that such cyclicality is actually being encouraged by the XIO team.
  3. It causes asymmetrical penalties to XIO holders based on when during the month they were able to buy their tokens. The fine work @jorn has done tracking the Uniswap Liquidity Pool suggests the average Citizen is a relatively small bag holder. Smaller bag holders are subject to more constraints as to the timing of when they are able to free up the capital to invest in XIO tokens. They are also more sensitive to shorter term price action, and therefore have to make choices about what levels at which they buy their token. The snapshot policy rewards larger bag holders who have freer liquidity and who are generally less concerned about the timing of their purchase. These larger bag holders are able to buy when everyone else is incentivized to buy (the end of the month) and sell when everyone else is selling (the beginning and middle of the month) without as much concern. And therefore, because of their privilege, they are better rewarded with more favorable timing in their participation of both the XLP and XSI programs.
  • The randomization of the snapshot timing is redundant relative to the 30+ day vestment period. If you’re going to only allow XIO tokens that have been held for 30+ days to apply to the reward percentage, you have already cured the “gaming of the system” concern. Therefore, the randomization policy is entirely superfluous, and can only injure, as it adds no positive benefit whatsoever.
  • The policy needs to make clear that XIO tokens put into the Uniswap LP are also eligible for both the 250+ token minimum, and to be applied to the XSI reward percentage. This goes to the aim of proper communication.
  • The 15 points handed out to the “best reply” is potentially problematic inasmuch as it is not clear how this is judged, nor who is doing the judging. You don’t want to foster an environment where people feel like they are never given the ones given extra points for their discussion, or that there are “favorites”. Even if that is not the case, the policy itself may engender these perceptions. The participation guidelines need to be clear and meritocratic.

Policy Prescriptions (how we fix it):

  1. An absolute must is to add some items to the policy explanations on the XIO website. Whether liquidity tokens qualify, and the date of the holdings snapshot, must be disclosed. They are material qualifiers.
  2. The snapshot date for XIO holdings should be changed to expiration of the XSI Leaderboard competition, which is currently the 15th of the month. These dates should match, so as to be intuitive, and to do the least amount of potential injury to XIO holders.
  3. The policy of randomization of the snapshot date should be discarded. It is superfluous, does not accomplish any positive aim which is not already accomplished by the 30+ day vestment period, and therefore can only cause confusion and do further injury.
  4. I propose we discard the 15 points for the “best” reply. I accept that the XIO founder and team members deserve the ability to, at their discretion, award XSI credits to people that they find add particular value to the discussion, or did a particularly valuable piece of research. But having a side-car policy of also subjectively awarding 15 points to the “best” reply probably causes more problems than it solves.
  5. This next suggestion is meant more for the kickoff of discussion, rather than a specific policy prescription such as the four above. In order to add more texture to the XSI rewards process, I think we should explore some reward policies that leverage the Official XSI Forum, which has been a brilliant addition to the community. Particularly, you could create easy-to-track policies around the “Likes” on the forum. For example, replacing the “extra points for best reply” policy with a “extra points for most liked” policy would be much more clear and democratic. You could also stipulate that forum members will be ineligible for these extra rewards only if they’ve also GIVEN likes at a certain rate. For example, if a user has 5 Likes under a topic (putting them in line for extra rewards), you could look up that user’s profile and see how many Likes they have handed out to others. If that user doesn’t Like anyone else’s posts, perhaps you decide they’re not eligible for the extra rewards. We would want to make this part of the contest easy to track, so as to not put much workload on those who do the tracking. If I were administering it, I would copy and paste a snapshot of the User base (including how many Likes they’ve gotten, how many Likes they’ve given, etc) every 15th of the month, do a simple subtraction to show the user base’s activity for the month. I would sort by how many Likes they’ve received from the community, and disqualify those who haven’t given at least 50% of their Likes back to other posters in the community.
4 Likes
#5

your reply is 90% about freeing tokens and or dates about when snapshot is taken… i think this topic is much more about how to get XSI better (but not in money management way!)… i mean about how we can contribute to make XIO better, not on how we can free our tokens exactly 1 minute after the XSI snapshot is taken…

#6

Here are my thoughts on making the XIO Social Better/more transparent:

  1. I see a problem with definitions…so lets begin with clearly defining the following on the XIO.To website and XSI telegram group:
    a) minimum threshold for XIO Social
    b) what all is included in XIO Social (XLP, token balance etc.)
    c) which date is the snapshot taken and the 30 days criterion for xio in account
    d) which date and time leaderboard freezes for the xio social posts
    e) process to participate in XIO SOcial(get an XID)
    f) general forums on which XIO Social posts appear(twitter, linkedin, facebook, xio social website, telegram)

  2. As has been pointed out before by many users, we should make the snapshot date same as date of leaderboard snapshot just to avoid confusion around it.

  3. #xiosocial should generally have uniform giveaway (3 points) for good posts(0 for bad) but the team can give more points in case of any exceptionally important comment as per discretion.

  4. All social media platforms can be utilized to increase the reach of the program.

  5. I wont want to change the rewards structure of XIO as I feel it works very well and is a strong motivation for active participation in the community(10% of total rewards for 1-10 , 5% till 25 and so on)…lets not change what is working well here.

XID-6CCb5

#7

The current XSI is working fine, but not great. I think we are on to something but need to make it better as you said. Will try to collect my thoughts here so that we can aggregate opinions and ideas:

Section 1 (Value/Purpose):

Goals: With XSI we want to

  1. motivate people to use their brainpower in order to contribute to the growth of XIO.
  2. create a community (a proper community and not just gather people who want rewards)

Problems: In order to achieve above mentioned goals we must

  1. ensure that people are motivated for the right reason (they see themselves staying with the project long term) and not encourage only short-term solutions
  2. ensure that community is slowly growing and that newcomers can quickly integrate into XIO and start contributing

Section 2 (Reward Scheme):

Goals: We want to

  1. reward participation but we want to reward best ideas more (those who actually contribute the most)
  2. make sure the newcomers have a shot at getting rewards as well, and not have them feel like they are late to the party (nobody wants to be an outsider in a group)

Problems: Currently I think

  1. that the reward scheme is quite fair, but I am unsure how the “best” answer is picked. While that doesn’t bother me personally too much, I feel like it seems quite subjective.
  2. due to the % bonus on the existing XIO holdings, new people might feel left out. After all, if they don’t know how to get the “best” answer, collecting 3 by 3 XIO will be a long and painful road

Conclusion

Looking at the current scheme I believe I see 2 problems: The first one being that the community can contribute more, and the second one is that the longer it takes somebody to join the XIO program, their reward will be severely skewed as the majority of the XSI gains will come from the % gain on the existing XIO holdings.

For newcomers, maybe they could be employed in some fashion as SwissBorg does with their DAO. That would give them the opportunity to contribute with their specific skills (promotion for example or creating creatives).

My main concern is how to spark even better engagement from the community in terms of ideas and activity. While I was first drawn by the reward program, I stayed because of the mission and in my opinion long term value which will be massive.

I also agree with statements like these:

#8

Proposal for if XSI social was to be reformed

Summary

a) A #XIOsocial question pool on the new XSI forum.
b) XSI FAQ telegram group bot to save admins time with commonly asked questions.
c) #XIOflashsocial to raise quick awareness of XIO on relevant social media posts.
d) Stick to a maximum of 1 high scoring and 3 low scoring #XIOsocials per week to increase responses with value.
e) A fixed total reward pay-out per month, spread across a maximum of top 500 participating in XSI. Share % of fixed reward to be leaderboard rank based, rather than just a pay-out based on a % of your holdings. All to improve XSI/SMS insider wallet fund sustainability.

Detail

a) The purpose of a #XIOsocial question pool would be for citizens to be able submit questions relating to XIO improvements or future development, in which the answer is non binary and the possible responses could provide value back to the network.

I propose that these questions are submitted through the new XSI forum within a category named ‘#XIOsocial question pool’ or something similar. If a question is selected from the pool by admins (as it is deemed a question that could provide value back to the network) and is broadcasted as a #XIOsocial question, I suggest the XID which submitted it receives a 2X XSI point multiplier on XSI total that month as a big incentive to continue the good work.
I believe a carefully thought out and worded questions with an okay response can create just as much value or more to the XIO network, than an okay question with a fantastic response.

A maximum submission limit of 2 questions per month would be beneficial to prevent someone trying to game the system.

If the question pool is decided to be voted on in a more disturbed way, the pool could be voted on by citizens with a maximum of 2 votes per citizen. A citizen should not be allowed to vote for a question they submitted themselves.
A system would need to be implemented to prevent someone voting for themselves with another XID they may have created in attempt to game the system.
A citizen should receive an additional 5 credits towards XSI leader board per vote made as an incentive to vote.
The 2 questions with the most votes from that month’s pool could be broadcast for the next month’s XSI. The next top 10 highest voted questions in the pool in a single month, could be entered into the next month’s pool automatically, without a citizen losing a question submission allowance that following month. The questions ranking below top 12 could be deleted automatically.

b) A large proportion of people first discover XIO through telegram.
The same questions seem to be repeated by many regarding the rules of XSI. Responding to these can be very time consuming for admins. Integrating a basic FAQ bot into telegram channels could be very beneficial. As an example if someone typed /FAQ the bot could ask XSI or XLP, the user types /XSI for example and it could present a link to the new XSI forum where there could be official XSI FAQ to find out everything they should need to know. Implement such a bot would provide clarity on the XSI rules to new comers without taking up admins time replying to repeated questions.

c) The purpose of #XIOflashsocial would be to raise quick awareness of XIO on a social media posts deemed relevant by admins. The response times to these to earn points should be capped at 24hours otherwise responses may not be so rapid.
#XIOflashsocial is another name for ‘XIO flash mob’ which has been suggested by others in the community. As catchy as ‘XIO flash mob’ sounds the term ‘mob’ could make XIO be perceived in a poor light, as though the citizens are out to cause trouble on another community’s social media post. The definition of ‘mob’ is “a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence”.

d) Stick to a maximum limit of 1 high scoring and 3 low scoring #XIOsocials per week I believe is a suitable limit to allow people time to thoroughly think through their responses which may increase the likelihood of a response with value. It normally takes myself a few days to think through my response.
The limit should also help those with busy lives to be more engaged and more likely to respond.

e) Someone else has already mentioned something similar to this. I believe a fixed total reward pay-out per month, spread across a maximum number of citizens participating in XSI. The pay-out % of fixed reward each participating XSI citizen receives should be based upon leaderboard rank like it is now with the percentages altered to fit the 100% fixed monthly pay-out split. Implementing this instead of just a paying-out rewards based on a % of your holdings, should greatly improve the sustainability of the XSI/ SMS insider wallet funds.
It should also make it possible to more accurately determine a required re-fill rate for this wallet (if that is to be implemented in future) which could make XSI forever sustainable. The fixed total reward pay-out per month could equal the wallet re-fill rate. This way the wallet balance would never drop.

XID-F807

2 Likes
#9

This is a mischaracterization of what I’ve said. Nowhere in there have I mentioned anything about “freeing the token” so I can sell it. As a matter of fact, when I originally brought up these concerns, that was the response to me by one of the team members, that I’m now free to sell the token, and that was totally off-base because that’s not what I want to do, nor what I think we should be encouraging people to do.

This is all about fairness, not disadvantaging token holders based on when they were able to invest. It’s about clear communication. It’s about removing the potential perception of playing favorites. It’s about making rules intuitive and not relying on a “read the fine print” mentality. These are things that are important in building a community, otherwise there starts to develop a lack of trust between community and team.

2 Likes
#10

sorry. maybe i misunderstood your words.

#11

Totally with you on this one! Over time as we evolve we need to tackle these issues. For now, as we are early I am also more tolerant of mistakes or holes in the road, thats why the project is new after all. But if we want to move forward and actually grow it, we need to look at all aspects, from big to small, and improve them.

I believe this is a very good observation. That will not only help people use the systems in place, but make the whole project closer to peoples hearts.

1 Like
#12

Don’t know if I’m incorrect in my understanding that only posts under the “XIO Social” tabs are taken into consideration when distributing credits to the community. (when it comes to the forum) but if that is the case;

I think it would help the project if everything that is aimed to bring some sort of value to the community are credited.

I find it a bit wonky that a thumbs up and reply on a youtube video is “worth” more then the arguments/ideas presented by the author and the repliers in this post, if we use it as an example.

The question on how to automate something like this… I have no idea what so ever though.

#13

Hey JJW, that’s certainly a point. At the same time it aims at different things. Liking and commenting on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and the like is also helpful to increase overall exposure a post gets. We try to collect all arguments inside this forum. The other platforms are especially useful to be more visible. Rules for the XIOsocial are not written in stone and might be adjusted some day.

1 Like
#14

Maybe we could have 2 XSI categories (goals).

  1. These social posts across various platforms meant to increase XIO visibility and draw the community towards:
  2. Forum posts meant for a more “serious” and longer discussions.

That way we would have 2 clear and different goals and all of us would know that if we want to contribute to the project, forum is the way to go. Overall visibility for the project, social media.

But then again, I am biased as I do prefer forum to other options…

2 Likes