Thank you to everyone for taking the time to leave your comments - there’s some great discussion here and some valuable points for us to take into consideration.
We’ll continue to review feedback across channels for a bit and put together a list of common questions and/or areas needing clarification to circle back with…
Thanks @aaron.mbf for bringing this great discussion to the table. To me it always felt like we’re doing more of the same and expect a different outcome that never comes. This suggestion is definitely out of the box thinking that I’m sure will be net positive to the ecosystem, and I’m happy we finally acknowledged that we have to expand from Polkadot regardless of Plaza’s expected launch.
As mentioned above by @Trilemma & @ogre44444 - Polkadot isn’t the place for DeFi. Even with a 28 days unbonding period (which is A LOT), people still prefer to stake safely on-chain for 17% rather than to be liquid but with DeFi risks.
Maybe it’s out of topic, but how does the Moonwell team expect GLMR holders to lock their tokens there when the APR is ~3% while on chain it’s more than double and without DeFi risk?
Back to the topic, I’d just focus on the following issues:
I want to thank you again for bringing this topic up - makes me really excited about it!
Hey everyone! So this quote stood out to me!
Moonbeam was initally created to bring the Ethereum virtual machine to Polkadot. EVM is the staple of smart contracts. The original inception leaned on the belief that copying and pasting smart contracts from Ethereum to Moonbeam will capture all the users and volume. I think it was assumed most Ethereum developers would switch because of the low gas fees and benefit from the superior ecosystem Polkadot offers.
I am not sure it was completely successfull but here are some of my thoughts:
Some mentioned a new token? I dont think another token is a good idea. In fact the double token standard on Polkadot seems fragmented. We need to become more user friendly. We need to have less siloed areas.
A canary network is a test net right? Is it redundant having both Moonriver and Moonbase Alpha? What if we trade all the Moonriver for Moonbeam, and then burn Moonriver? Crazy idea maybe?
Giving crosschain, openGov, and other Moonbeam functionalty to Ethereum seems like a great idea.
I always like to simplify things, so I made a meme:
It’s slightly off topic, but if there were more organic borrowing demand for GLMR then the rate to supply it would be higher, but in order for this to happen we need a vibrant economy. More trading on DEXes would drive higher fees, and borrowers would want to borrow GLMR to pair with other assets on DEXes.
A more vibrant economy with more trading activity could drive higher returns, but it’s very hard to do when you’re competing with 17% DOT staking rate…
Totally agree with this great summary, thanks @turrizt.
I simply add some considerations:
All in all, thanks @aaron.mbf and Foundation for 2 reasons:
Let’s proceed then, United as the Great Community we are!!!
One other comment related to Moonriver although slightly off topic - although delayed, the deployment of Axelar Amplifier to Moonriver is still being worked on and following this, grants will be distributed to build some momentum. Nothing has changed in this regard.
See here for more info.
Would be a great idea for Moonbeam to come up with a way to create a huge TVL for LST’s from outside of the Polkadot ecosystem using the original Moonbeam dapp. I would like to see the focus on BTC & ETH and maybe onboard big L1 chains in the future as a partnership with incentives from these ecosystems to boost liquidity on Polkadot. This idea comes with some issues that are very common for Polkadot;
-Market the product right so that it is being used and known in the industry
-Make it accessible in all ways and forms by doing a deep dive in users’ needs
-Make sure rewards are competitive
This would also mean a bigger focus on the financial aspect, something that is being neglected for a long time but has had some impact lately on the “I’m in it for the tech” hardcore Polkadot community.
It’s time we think more about Polkadot for what it is right now and utilize it rather than focusing on shooting for further stars all the time. We might not be the preferred chain for memes, NFTs or TVL but all of that can change depending on the direction that we push this ship together.
I have huge faith in the competence of Moonbeam and Polkadot as a whole. We have THE BEST tech and devs on the planet. Let’s show the world how it’s done!
I know founders and teams have to be diplomatic with their words, but as a hodl’er I’ll take the liberty of being more blunt.
The Plaza upgrade to Polkadot directly competes with and kind of steals the value proposition of Moonbeam. I think this is a mistake for DOT, Plaza instead should have been like an EVM interface or abstraction that delegated the execution of smart-contracts to Parachains like GLMR, with automated fee/gas conversions in the backend. This would have been more aligned with the L0 model. Adding an EVM as a system chain is a direct usurpation of Moonbeam.
Anyway, since this is the case Moonbeam may as well separate from Polkadot as it’s “security layer” and merely retain a CoreTime bridge from DOT to it’s own chain.
In this sense, Moonbeam could transition into it’s own L0 by absorbing Polkadot’s Core technology (similar in spirit to how Polkadot is absorbing Moonbeam) and then offer similar bridges to Ethereum, Solana and other chains. It could also offer CoreTime functionality just like Polkadot does, in addition to the EVM.
This would allow Moonbeam to compete with Ethereum and Polkadot directly as well as leverage those eco-systems by integrating with them. Down the road, you could even absorb JAM.
If you’re going to separate you may as well separate completely and comprehensively, maximising the value in Moonbeam by maximally extracting the value from Polkadot and other chains.
In addition to my post, I’ll add the following strategy suggestion:
“Become a Polkadot clone but with Moonbeam integrated at L0”.
The project is basically structured like this:
Moonbeam’s expansion into the Ethereum ecosystem is a great start, but an important issue is the empowerment of the GLMR token, and if moonbeam builds some form of L2 on the Ethereum ecosystem, hoping to continue to use GLMR as a gas and governance token (similar to moonwell’s scaling strategy), the benefit of this will be to live up to the current loyalists of the moonbeam network and holders of the GLMR token. It also shows moonbeam’s strong sense of responsibility to existing users for new users, which is an excellent reference example for attracting new Ethereum users, and to use glmr as gas fees on Ethereum L2, I think it can be done in the form of some kind of backend exchange (similar to the type of custom gas tokens on the hydration network), and then burn all these GLMR tokens as gas. By unifying the two networks or even merging the two networks by using the glmr token as the gas token and governance token of Polkadot L1 and Ethereum L2, that is, the moonbeam network is both Polkadot’s L1 and Ethereum’s L2 at the same time, which will greatly reduce the fragmentation of the two chains, and the security of the moonbeam network will be jointly protected by Polkadot and Ethereum (and even add Solana in the future?). The above views and ideas may not be entirely correct, but I hope to provide some useful ideas.
