[RFC] Staking Reward Token

Governance
#1

Many have expressed a desire to reward PICKLE stakers something other than sCRV. The most common request is to reward PICKLE but I would like to propose rewarding ETH instead.

The following is my rationale and I would like to hear the community’s thoughts (and suggestions) on this.

Why not PICKLE?

Staking PICKLE to earn PICKLE is a very questionable move. Some in the community have even called this too “ponzinomic” and is simply too off-brand for Pickle.

As @leekuanjew has previously pointed out, it has similarities to the whole “send me 2 ETH and I’ll give you 1 ETH” problem in our space. Put simply, rewarding staking of an endogenous token with more of that same endogenous token provides more ammo for others to criticize the legitimacy of our protocol.

Why ETH?

For all intents and purposes, ETH is the standard currency in the Ethereum ecosystem. Many have expressed a desire to purchase more PICKLE from their staked earnings. This makes it easy to claim ETH and do exactly this, but also gives people the flexibility to trade it for whatever token they like.

Rewarding ETH also provides stability because, relative to PICKLE, ETH price is a lot less volatile. Indeed this was the reasoning behind picking sCRV in the first place since it’s basically equal to a dollar (plus a little yield).

Note about ERC20 Compatibility

Note that technically, the reward token would have to be WETH since the staking rewards contract requires an ERC20 token. However, we can make it easy for users to un-wrap WETH into ETH on the same UI.

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[PIP-14] Pickle Staking Reward Token Change to WETH
#2

I am in the camp “PICKLE” for stakers.
Because you could well space out daily buys of PICKLE to have claimable (or better yet, stake to PICKLEPOWER alongside some ETH from within the GUI).
Some of the more strange protocols that have had some success in the recent past (looking at CORE and their spinoffs) perform the “market buy TOKEN” policy.
Take the profits in ETH, buy a little bit of PICKLE every day and have me harvest them. I don’t plan on selling anyways any time soon, so why all the workarounds?

I understand your argument, but in the end it might just be easier to do away with the STAKE and add that percentage of the rewards to the pools evenly if you’re not rewarding with anything that has to do with the project. You could even reward in the “least expensive Stablecoin”, so at least that would be inline with the vision of influencing the peg … ^^

As it stands I have a single digit amount of sCRV from staking, would love for you to automigrate that balance into whatever the new STAKE reward will be.

2 Likes
#3

@BigBrainBriner, from a newbie perspective makes great sense for it to be WETH or ETH. I love this idea and it so much more user friendly. I must admit I had no clue what to do with the sCRV and was on course to do a one day crash course on Curve just to understand what sCRV is and what best to do with it.

I have to admit it would be good to have PICKLE compounded to give more PICKLE, but after reading your arguments against it, I am convinced that its not the best course to take. I really like the idea of not just following other projects like sheep and doing what is right and logical.

Additionally I think a lot of small investors in my mind <5K would really appreciate this as it will be so much less gas intensive to claim ETH/WETH (I am assuming) and so much easier as you pointed out to hit any CEX/DEX with the rewards and exchange for what you like most… ofcourse i hope it all goes to market buying pickle!!

TL;DR: Love the idea. I think its a really good move from Pickle!

3 Likes
#4

From a UX perspective, I feel sCRV should be changed. We just saw yesterday in Discord someone asking, “What do I do with sCRV?”.

I’d assumed PICKLE, but I like your proposal to pay in ETH, and think it might even drive more stakers (auto-correct keeps replacing that with “stalkers”, so apologies in advance for when I don’t catch it in the future.)

  • As you pointed out, ETH is the currency of this space, and so it would feel natural.
  • The ETH and PICKLE prices would probably be more correlated than PICKLE vs USD.
  • Will save some people from having to sell anything periodically (i.e. anybody who would regularly sell their staking income.)

I like it!

9 Likes
#5

I’m all for eth/weth. Agree that sCRV isn’t normie friendly and it’s always useful to have more ETH. I’d guess that more Pickle stakers are looking to invest their earnings in something rather than just build a stable stack. Eth makes that easy.

1 Like
#6

Thanks for the proposal. I wanted to document my thoughts on this.

a) WETH / ETH is definitely better than sCRV. The reasoning for this is that ETH is more recognizable, portable and definitely a keep for long term. sCRV is not that well-known for crypto users who are not exposed to Curve protocol. Also, for the smaller stakers, they will need to spend more gas to transmute sCRV to their stablecoin of choice.

b) WETH / ETH versus PICKLES. I am on the fence on this. While i see your reasoning is to avoid being associated to a “scammy” protocol, I do feel that there is a desire from the community to be incentivized in PICKLES instead. So why not do both, if this is within the technical capabilities?
i) Allow users to claim in WETH / ETH
ii) Provide an option for users to claim WETH / ETH, to be used to market buy PICKLES and then max stake in https://app.pickle.finance/stake. Win-win for everyone.

5 Likes
#7

If people want Pickles it’s pretty easy to use their earned ETH to buy. Maybe a ‘one click’ option to go from weth to pickles would be a solution.

4 Likes
#8

One click from ETH --> PICKLE --> max stake. This should satisfy the community that wanted auto-compounding feature.

2 Likes
#9

Agree with chimaera. I don’t mind rewarding users with ETH/WETH. As for sCRV, I agreed newer investors need to be exposed to understanding what it is and converting it to ETH/PICKLE is kinda hasslesome.

If there is a ‘one click’ to

“TRADE ETH/WETH TO PICKLE” alongside “HARVEST ETH/WETH” I believe that would be awesome.

1 Like
#10

It can be a one-button click in our UI, but it will require 3 transactions:

  1. Claim WETH from staking contract
  2. Trade WETH for PICKLE on Uniswap
  3. Stake PICKLE into staking contract

It would actually be 4 transactions if you’ve never approved Uniswap to trade WETH on your behalf.

It could potentially be 5 transactions if your approval to stake PICKLE is less than what is required, but that is likely to be very rare.

I think what most people don’t realize is that it’s not really worth it (cuz of gas) unless you already have a large amount earned. However, if it makes people “feel” better about staking then I don’t mind it.

6 Likes
#11

I think this is a fantastic idea and it will improve PICKLE stacking and stability a lot.

It’s the best of 2 world’s, you hold PICKLE and you get reward with ETH, no more incentive to sell the farming revenue.

1 Like
#12

With above assumption:

  1. Claim sCRV from staking contract takes ~102254 gas limit. At 30 gwei its about ~$1.30. (replace this with WETH later on)
  2. Trade WETH for PICKLE on uniswap takes ~119854 gas limit. At 30 gwei its about ~$1.50.
  3. Stake PICKLE into staking contract takes ~107488 gas limit. At 30 gwei its about ~$1.34

The approving Uniswap to trade WETH on our behalf I recall doesn’t take more than 100k gas limit.

So with this math, I assume to have the 1-click button require us to spend at least around $5 to get it approved.

Say I spend $5000 and pickle is at $20. We get 250 PICKLEs.
Staking it at 20% APY constantly, we get $1000 worth of ETH/WETH.

Each month we get $83.33 worth of ETH/WETH.

Well, basically if we spend $5 to do 1-click thingy, we spend 5/83*100=6.02% per month.

Is my Math correct? Correct me if I’m wrong :smiley:

EDIT:
And I’m not sure if this is ideal or not for smaller investors. So long the gas fee is above 30 gwei, I don’t think this is very ideal if used weekly.

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#13

Your math looks correct to me. Also, don’t forget that you might be earning less and less APY as more people stake PICKLEs. So it’s just not really practical.

Keep in mind that rewards only total $18k this week, and will likely go down unless we change our fee structure drastically.

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#14

I’m in favor of this.

#15

I am of the opinion that one can withdraw at the choice WETH (ETH if possible) or PICKLE instead of sCRV.

Afterwards, everyone does what they want with it

#16

I disagree with the idea that receiving pickle is ‘ponzinomics’ in this case, and I’m in favour of receiving pickles instead of ETH. I think the benefit of receiving ETH over sCRV is pretty marginal.

A distinction needs to be made about the source of the pickles-if if they’re newly minted to provide rewards, then sure that’s not great, but if they’re generated by selling sCRV rewards and market buying pickles, then that’s entirely acceptable.

Additionally it helps by providing buying pressure for pickles, and then the onus is on someone to sell if they want to cash out (as opposed to someone receiving ETH, the onus is reversed).

1 Like
#17

As we’re discussing this, throwing out another idea, changing the withdrawal coin for the stake to WETH (at uniswap price) and having auto-compounding.

I’m a big fan of auto-compounding and buy+forget holding.
This way we get both auto-compounding, as well as a strategy opportunity which can control selling pressure/volatility of PICKLE

Deposit coin: PICKLE
Interest coin: PICKLE (auto-compounding)
Withdraw coin: WETH

I don’t think there is any competitor with a model like this already. Thoughts?

1 Like
#18

I’m certainly a fan of switching from sCRV. As others have mentioned, it’s not very attractive to new users (I had to look up what it was).

Personally I am for Eth over Pickle. One reason is that it provides a balance. In the current situation, Pickle is down and Eth is up. People are likely to be less upset if the rewards they have gained from staking were (to some degree) counter-acting the low Pickle price.

Another reason is that we already have pool 2 if people want to be rewarded Pickle. Yes, I know it’s not the same thing.

As Jeebus queried, what is the source of the Pickles? If it’s buy with sCRV that does add buy pressure.

#19

Completely agree with this - receiving ETH is likely to draw more people to the platform over stablecoins as generally we’re all of the opinion that ethereum will experience a great price appreciation.

I’m very much against the rewards being paid in Pickle. The concept of holding Pickles to get more Pickles does sound very Ponzi-ish. Even if “under the hood” the pickles are being bought on the open market then distributed to stakers, I think from an outsiders point of view it makes the platform seem a bit more dodgey and less legitimate. It also doesn’t make Pickle stand out from the crowd as theres plenty of staking projects out there that reward the stakers with more of their staking token.

Eth rewards however are really attractive from a marketing point of view. I’m not aware of many projects that pay out in Eth. It makes it very simple to explain why you should buy and hold Pickles: “Stake Pickle, Get Eth”.

Now an excellent addition would be to have a option to convert your Eth rewards to Pickle and to compound stake aswell, but I think it should always be clear that the rewards are paid out in Eth.

3 Likes
#20

I am all for the reward in WETH. Let’s KISS (keep it simple, stupid) and boost our TVL. Can’t wait to vote on it.