Proposal for Protocol-owned "Ticket Farming"

General
1

As INT hustles through the stages of early development and marketing, we find ourselves in a conundrum where the combination of low INT price + lower IFT emissions + lack of exposure has turned the lottery into a “farmers only” game for extracting EV.

The lottery is of course designed to be profitable for ticket buyers (to an extent), but because of everything listed above, the appetite of casual lottery participants has diminished to the point where only farmers are participating and hurting the protocol because of weekly IFT burn+dumps.

This nasty combination of low lottery participation and bleeding INT price is creating a negative feedback loop that will continue to compound until we spark interest in lottery participants and/or INT investors.

We (the multi-sig) believe a solution for this is to run a temporary campaign where the multis-sig steps into the arena of ticket farming and participates heavily in accumulating IFTs and trying to win the grand prize (for weekly roll-overs)

To be very clear: The purpose of this is to slow down sell pressure on INT while simultaneously “building the pot” for the lottery every week. A biproduct is the DAO will have a large chance at winning the grand prize and will also accumulate “lucky hands” IFTs. This will allow us to “roll over” funds for the following week’s grand prize and also have IFTs for giveaways and marketing

Based on past results, my personal experience, and math+strategies discussed here, i suggest that the multisig chooses 1 of these 3 options:

  • Buy 2000 tickets ($10k ETH and $10k INT estimated 20 IFTs returned and ~80% chance of winning the Grand)
  • Buy 1500 tickets ($7.5k ETH and $7.5k INT: estimated 15 IFTs returned and ~60% chance of winning the Grand)
  • Buy 1200 tickets ($6k ETH and $6k INT: estimated 12 IFTs returned and ~48% chance of winning the Grand)

*it is worth noting that using a combination of 50/50 ETH/INT to buy tickets is completely price NEUTRAL and the DAO is essentially trading some ETH for INT in a pseudo “buy-back” that also generates EV for the treasury in the form of lotto tickets

I think a solid plan is to anticipate we do this for at least 3 weeks (until the end of 25 IFT/week emissions) and then reassess based on market/project developments)

I personally think more tickets sooner is better and we should “reverse-martingale” our farming in an attempt to win the Grand early on and start weekly roll overs asap to coincide with future marketing campaigns. But in general any option listed above should do a sufficient job of relieving sell pressure and building the prizepool

As far as the “how”, the easiest way to do this is for one of the multisig holders to be sent funds for farming and then upon completion send the tickets+excess eth back to the multisig

3 Likes
Referral System and kickoff campaign
2

I like this idea, AFA. I say go big (2k tix).

2 Likes
3

Update and a few bullet points after discussing with the rest of the multisig participants:

  • we’ve doubled and triple checked that buying tickets with a 50/50 split of ETH and INT is indeed price NEUTRAL

  • even though a 50/50 split is price neutral, we’ve decided to do a 75/25 split of ETH/INT for our first round of ticket buying. This will be slightly price POSITIVE and act as a very small buyback

  • our intention is to print a lot of tickets. Probably somewhere in the 1700-2000 region

  • this is being done to combat farmers abusing the protocol and to help alleviate some of the sell pressure

  • if the multisig wins the grand prize, we will use it to start implementing a prize ROLLOVER to future weeks

  • all IFTs won by multisig will be used for a variety of marketing campaigns

  • we will be starting this asap this week

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How to bring Value to the INT token and increase Lotto interest
4

Very happy to announce that the first week of Protocol farming was a huge success!

  • the multisig bought ~2000 tickets early during round 14 of the lotto

  • these tickets were bought with treasury funds consisting of 75% ETH and 25% INT, resulting in a very small “buyback” of approximately $5000 worth of INT (aka the entire ticket buying process was slightly price positive)

  • the large ticket count significantly reduced the available “edge” for ticket farmers and at the end of the week the protocol had a ~60% chance to win the grand prize (and did!)

  • though winning the grand prize was not the main objective, this will allow us to “boost” future week’s prizepools, though no concrete plans are in place for when this will happen

  • along with the grand prize, the multisig also won 16 “Lucky Hands” IFTs, which effectively relieved the weekly sell pressure on INT that we’ve become accustomed to

  • these won IFTs will be used for a variety of marketing campaigns and/or contributor payments

  • the multisig plans to repeat this Protocol farming for round 15 and likely round 16 of the lotto, though will move closer to a 50/50 ratio of ETH and INT to help preserve treasury ETH while still maintaining a neutral to slightly-positive price impact from ticket farming

3 Likes