This is by far the most requested feature for NumerBay and probably the most difficult to implement: the ability to stake on others’ models directly with profit sharing.
I’m starting this thread to brainstorm user requirements and ideas for implementation. Feel free to comment below.
Some things to think about
- Features: What functionalities should it support?
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Design:
- What would be the ideal user experience and UI?
- Is there a similar DeFi project that can be used as reference for design?
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Implementation:
- How can the smart contract be implemented?
- What are some of the libraries and frameworks that we can leverage to make things easier?
- How to minimize gas?
- Numerai: What feature requests are there for Numerai? What should Numerai implement to make this work?
- Impact: How to make it such that it benefits the meta-model?
- Regulation: Given the nature of this feature, what would be some regulatory concerns? How to minimize the regulatory risk?
- Security: What security practices should be followed to avoid hacking and attacks?
What about the “stake mode” that’s already available on NumerBay?
If you’ve been following the NumerBay project, you may notice there’s already a “stake mode” for listings. The way it’s built allows sellers to submit for buyers without distributing the submissions files, and optionally a stake limit can be set.
The existing stake mode allows for laddered fixed pricing, which can be used for approximating profit sharing in a prepaid manner (e.g. sell for 1 NMR with 200 NMR stake limit, 2 NMR with 500 NMR stake limit, etc.). The lack of direct post-profit attribution is not ideal but it alleviates some regulatory problems (since it’s technically a product sale, instead of an investment).
Call for contribution
I don’t have experience with Solidity. If you happen to have the skill and would like to step up, it would be awesome and I would be happy to collaborate with you. In the mean time, I will also refresh my skills so hopefully we can get the implementation started.
Scratch pad
This section will be updated regularly to summarize community inputs.
To kick off the discussion, here’s my two cents on some of the topics above:
- Features:
- Model owners should be able to set laddered fees (both fixed fees and profit-based fees) based on staker amount.
- Model owners should be able to set minimum commitment period and also adjust fees based on that.
- Stakers should be able to manage a portfolio of models they stake on, and preferably with some automation toolings.
- Stakers should be able to track and verify consistency of the models they stake on. (And probably insurance for consistency using Erasure?)
- Implementation:
- The main difficulty is the Solidity smart contract. I don’t have the skill to make this happen yet and would like to call for contribution.
- Numerai:
- It could be helpful it Numerai allows for BYOW (bring your own wallet). This would allow for message signing, etc.
- It could be helpful if Numerai allows for a way of tracking model consistency for non-owners. E.g. a staker may want to know the model they stake on actually submits the same model across rounds.
- Impact:
- To benefit the meta-model we should probably avoid having too much stake concentrated on too few correlated models. One way to help would be to allow for some sort of ensemble building mechanism. E.g. a recommendation engine that tells a buyer/staker which models would ensemble well with their model or existing portfolio.
- Regulation:
- It can be problematic (for me) if this feature makes NumerBay an investment platform or if it makes Numerai or CoE legally liable for stuff. (I’m not a legal professional).
- The feature likely needs to be designed such that the responsibility for compliance is up to the users. Similar to how some ecommerce platforms offload VAT/GST burdens to their sellers.