Why is Chainlink such a contrarian protocol? No wonder it's so misunderstood when it does everything so differently from the rest of the market.
With 99% of protocols staking out there, the rewards start high to attract users and then get lowered over time. They're all short term ponzi musical chairs, unsustainable and artificial.
Chainlink doesn't need this since it ALREADY has the users. They did all the heavy lifting before tokenomics, when others launch lazy tokenomics hoping it'll attract usage.
WARNING: CHAINLINK LAB EMPLOYEES OPERATE IN THIS AREA
RECOGNIZE THE SIGNS: - THEY ENJOY FEATURE DELAYS - MINIMAL COMPREHENSION OF THE IDEA OF A 'YEAR' - UNCONTROLLABLE RAGE IF YOU DON'T CALL SMARTCON 3 'SMARTCON 2'
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF: - ASK THEM TO SAY 'NIGGER' - ONCE IDENTIFIED BY THEIR INABILITY POST RACIAL STATISTICS
Understand the rollout phases, v 0.1 is essentially testnet on mainnet, it's a way of testing live alert and monitor systems before they even implement slashing. It's why they're only rolling out on 1 feed at first, it's just testing so they can gather feedback and improve details, etc. since it's testing by cl labs, it's only paid for by cl labs for the first few months of test rollout. Then as it's proven to be robust it'll progressively shift from 25m to 75m, and eventually the payout will be partially supplemented - and later on completely replaced - by user fees and the PGP fund instead of cl wallet emissions.
I would guess something like 5% for 25M 100% out of cl pockets for the first 3 months, then upgrading to 50M with 50% cl labs 50% PGP for the next 3 months, then 75M with user fees being added to the payouts, probably going from 1 feed to 3 or 5 in the first few months, then 5 to 15 after 6 months of robust testing etc with various adjustments along the way.
It's going to be a slow rollout so don't expect fireworks but it'll be steady and a year or two from now, it'll have matured to full scale without fanfare. And then ccip fees will become a serious game changer. The training wheels will be off.
There are so many moving parts to all of this that will become obvious in the coming months. Alerting, reputation, loss insurance, PGP, delegation, super linear model, neet nodes, applying staking to ccip which will require its own unique rules and will itself be released in various slow phases, and then even later nodes themselves leveraging ccip in a meta way to further optimize their revenues... Unironically a behemoth that will make layers 1 look like child play. Its going to be a wild fucking ride. They haven't been scaling to 1000 employees, mostly former fang execs, this year for nothing.
How would you approach it, simply staking and ignoring or retiring early with stake income?
Levi Taylor
Great post, thank you
Lucas Kelly
Now here's a crazy thought: what happens if within the next 2 or 5 years the network manages to be sustainable and profitable enough solely based on external user payments and user fees? With ccip direct value capture supplementing fees generated by users and third party PGP funding, the emission wallet would become useless.
Not only does link has a fixed supply. There's a very real possibility that a major portion of team tokens could be burned down the line, as snowball adoption quickly outpaces the bootstrapping stage. Imagine the effect of a 1/3rd supply token burn combined with a dried up staked supply for a massively profitable network, the common good on which the entire web3 economy relies on, from layer 2 ordering to layer 0 bridging and all the data inputs and outputs powering defi in between, and beyond with enterprise and legacy web2 abstraction layers releasing weekly bullish partnerships. I'm getting goosebumps and an erection just thinking about it.
Here's something that I think is missing, or more likely I've missed. Users need to buy Chainlink to use the network, we all know this. But has some system, or brokerage, emerged that will allow a normal user to use the network without meddling with crypto tokens on an exchange? That would really be a huge step to mass adoption. Sort of like: >pay for Chainlink services to some intermediate party >this party acquires and spends the token to establish the desired smartcontract by the payee >end user gets to use the network while not needing any understanding of crypto, wallets or the like
Isaiah Phillips
I doubt they'll burn the reserves. They can pretty much achieve the same thing by not moving the funds, or locking them for a fixed time period, and that way still keep the option for future stuff. You never know if tokens might be needed to jumpstart the tokenomics of a new features. But, yeah, I'm really excited to see growth in usage and revenue from here on out. I can't believe chainlink is already profitable even without staking
Evan Adams
I know if tokens might be needed. They dont. They are not needed.
Liam Davis
Keep digging user. You are almost at your own personal singularity. Think about a network that connects all other networks seamlessly and securely.
Nathaniel Ross
There are some seriously high quality posts in this thread
Logan Young
what's the sauce for this?
Aiden Sullivan
this is what many dapps will do users will barely know it's crypto related on the back end
