Increase staking unbonding period from 14d to 28d

Proposals Staking
1

Summary:
Hello. First post! Governance at its finest.

When GZIL and the staking contract launched in October~ I remember hearing about the unbonding period could be changed with a community vote. The basic premise of this change would be to increase the unbonding period from 14 days to 28 days.

I see there is talk about potentially another contract for 365d lockup for certain tax implications where the user lives. This proposal focuses on the main staking contract used in production today, rather than creating a new contract.

Motivation:

Firstly, I’m in no way criticizing the current 14 day unbonding, I think it’s actually a good minimum length. But I think we can do better.
The motivation behind this change is to align more with the top 50 marketcap unbonding length. To mention a few that strengthen my point:
DOT : 28 days unbonding.
XTZ : weird mechanism but essentially 5 weeks.
CRO : several contracts 30d - 180d.

Specification:

As far as my technical programming skills go, and ignorance of how this mutex value works. This change should be as simple as changing a value and redeploying the contract?
The effort involved technically to implement is very minimal.

For:

Speculatively this would make long term stakers happy as potentially a small amount would leave the pool increasing their rewards.
Not that the price isn’t stably upwards projecting at the moment anyways, but it would also increase the stability in the future.

Against:

I can understand that people already like and understand the 14 day proposal.
Maybe going against the grain is a good thing?

Poll:
edit Forgot to add poll.

Poll : Increase staking unbonding period?
  • Yes, increase to 28 days
  • No, leave it as 14 days

0 voters

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I’ve thought it should be a month from the beginning. 28 Days is perfect. Lets reward the most long term holders with the gzil.

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We all know we are here for the long run, I think it would be a great idea to extend this to 28 days to further stop panic sellers. ZIL goes through times of price stability where people wanna jump ship but it seems that doesn’t happen much longer than a month. This is a good move, I fully support it.

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I don’t see any benefit in increasing the staking lockup period, much for the contrary.

Unstaking should be as easy and quick as staking.
People who are invested for the long run will continue invested regardless of the market short term moves.

Freedom to move one’s coins should always be prioritised, as people’s lives’ conditions can change on a heartbeat and someone might need liquidity fast.

The staking locking period has nothing to do with the network’s stability.

This proposal is poor in its entirety, presenting incorrect/incomplete information and not explaining proper reasons for the change.

XTZ does not have a “weird” mechanism of “essentially 5 weeks”.
At least go through the trouble of researching for your proposal. This is lazy childish “I don’t know how it works, but I think it is this way” kind of work.
XTZ can be unstaked instantly, same for ADA.
XTZ just takes several cycles before you can start earning staking rewards (roughly 5 weeks).

The unstaking lockup period is actually what keeps away many investors, because they cannot move the funds whenever they like. This type of investors move massive amounts of money and are in for the short-term, and can actually drive the price up.
Everyone else in it for the long-term can still continue along with their strategy. But if these investors could get on ZIL without any unstaking lockup periods, the price would certainly be further up ahead that it presently is.

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We can agree to disagree on that.

Undeligating is easy as pushing the unstake button whenever you want to.

I agree long term investors are going to see 15% APR + GZIL + appreciating market value and are enjoying their investments. I don’t think they are worried about waiting 2 weeks extra, they will just prepare 2 weeks earlier.

I don’t think we should be talking about the case where someone has overinvested and needs immediate liquidity. That is one of the risks you accept by staking?
You mention freedom to move ones funds is impertent - is this only limited to 14 days, and not a day more? This is just your subjective opinion.

Where is “network stability” mentioned?.. :joy:
I said that as the price increases the unbonding period might be worth revising to maintain stability, hence this proposal.

The proposal is clear in its intentions, I’m sorry it falls short of your expectations.
There is nothing technically incorrect about my submission, I believe that your opinion just differs to mine.

I do know about XTZ unbonding mechanism, I didn’t feel the need to explain XTZ’s whole unbonding process, the pros and cons in a paragraph to make my point about just lengthening the cycle. (and you might not like how informal this is, but it is weird and unique, sorry if you don’t like my choice of words)

If you drive shorter term people away the rewards are better for those who are in for the long term.
It’s a delicate balance between what risk you want to take for unbonding for what potential percent ROI. Is a x day unbonding period worth y%?
That’s a subjective market question, which is why I don’t think that’s a point to speculate on.

The winners are the people that have staked from the beginning, held through, and continue to till october.
Anyone else that jumped on along the way is also winning depending on their position.

Whether you have a long unbonding like DOT (64% staked - 13% ROI), or a short unbonding like ADA (72% - 6%). They both have their place in the ecosphere for investors either long term or short term.
Using the price data available to me and just basing that against the unbonding period. ADA is a lot more volitile as a result of the 0 day unbond as compared to DOT. I would argue the average investor in crypto might see the volitility as a good thing, but it’s a risk you take for having the 0 day unbonding.

Now, I believe that unbonding periods of many lengths are a good thing (look at this thread : Flexible Unbonding Period - #33 by Bobby_Digital) I think this is a great proposal.

But I know a lot of developer effort is needed to roll out a change this massive. (it’s not even passed the proposal yet) So while I appreciate this is “coming soon :tm:” change, my proposal is very clear in its intent to increase the main production staking contracts value to 28 days, to ensure the price security as ZIL climbs higher in price and more liquidity is held by investors.

Thanks for your comment.

CDTV

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I’m sorry, but you DO NOT know about Tezos unstaking mechanism if you state that it takes “essentially 5 weeks”.
There’s no long explanations about Tezos unstaking mechanism. It is immediate, period. Nothing else needed to explain.

I’m just trying to understand the rational for your proposal.
So based on your last comment:
" my proposal is very clear in its intent to increase the main production staking contracts value to 28 days, to ensure the price security as ZIL climbs higher in price and more liquidity is held by investors."

There is no evidence that increasing the unstaking lockup period brings price stability.
Comparing DOT to ADA, two projects presently at completely different stages of development, is not a good example.

Price stability ir related with:
a) the overall market evolution, greatly driven today by Bitcoin;
b) how each specific project is doing.

Increasing the staking lockup period will only hurt ZIL. Long term investors will continue to be long term investors even if the lockup period is 0 days.
Tezos and Cardano both have 0 days lockup periods and they have much bigger and stronger communities than Zilliqa.

So I’m still trying to find good justifications for your proposal, other than pure speculation without actual data to back it up.

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I should have explained the XTZ “essentially 5 weeks” better. As I didn’t really want to go into the mechanics of comparison of staking mechanisms. I understand the liquidity is instant. I tried to sum that up in one sentence but apparently it didn’t come across very well. Sorry if you feel wronged by that?

For XTZ benefit of instant liquidity, its mechanism for reward payout keeps as much new investors out than in.Talking about XTZ staking/unbonding mechanisms forwards this proposal either way. Can we consider this misunderstanding XTZ closed? Thanks.

There is no evidence that increasing the unstaking lockup period brings price stability.

Agreed, there is no correlation between staked % and price action in the chart as you mention with points a,b - driven mostly by sentiment and news.
It does have an impact on velocity therefore lessens sell pressure. Obviously if you make users that are staking hold for an extra two weeks, that will have an impact on the price (they aren’t unbonding to buy).

What impact that would actually cause in production, who knows, I can’t actually find any data of any crypto actually doing this to compare, so you’re correct, there’s no evidence to suggest this in either direction.

This is my rationale behind the proposal, its easy to understand, it’s the reason we have a unbonding period at all.

Increasing the staking lockup period will only hurt ZIL.

There’s a point to argue that the price wouldn’t be as high as it is without taking those funds out of circulation. But again, I dont have the data to show you, and no one can digest it with 100% accuracy without external influences being included on the graph.

Soon bonded zil from PP intergration will allow for staked zil to be bonded and used. So much locked bonded zils being able to interact, but instead of a 28d unbonding, they’re needing to repay the loan. This is obviously going to be longer than 14d/28d - and there are lots of users of existing defi that are leveraging similar loaning mechanism. They’re fine with the loan period being longer than 28d.

Tezos and Cardano both have 0 days lockup periods and they have much bigger and stronger communities than Zilliqa.

Again, this is subjective.What do you define as a community? How can this be compared and valued?
Crypto Twitter is undeniably a big community.
XTZ : 93k (Jun 16)
ADA : 306k (Jan 17)
ZIL : 170k (Jun 17)
And zil looks to be holding up actually very nicely, and growing ontop of these numbers.

(irrelevent) I would argue that Polkadot has a better community than XTZ and ADA combined. Because of its community IDO polkastarter projects ectect. That has a longer unbonding period and market cap, and its community is thriving as they have more to offer than just staking. Surely the point about having more to do in the ecosphere drives the price more than the unbonding period like you’ve mentioned yourself. Zil is growing really quick into Q2 and beyond, so shouldn’t cause an issue then according to your price stability table.

Finally, I don’t see what your issue is with the unbonding being higher actually is.
You say that 0d unbonding helps investors, but fail to also show any workings of this. apart from “the price would certainly be further up ahead that it presently is.” We’ve demonstrated that many different models fit many different investors. Again, it’s subjective to say what an investor would do.

But we’ll have to agree to disagree. We should open up the floor to other commentors, but if you want to talk about this some more (civilly, please) please reach out via forum dm, more than happy to have a constructive conversation with you.

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Firstly, there’s no need to suggest a civilised discussion when I have acted in such way all along.

I simply pointed out the lazy proposal that you’ve put forward in the first place, incomplete and with incorrect and deceiving information as it’s been pointed out. Just own up to it.
If you’re going to propose something that affects thousands of people, at least got through the effort of doing a decent informed job.

Staking lockup periods drive many investors away because they cannot move funds easily.
This brings an added layer of complexity to anyone investing which is completely unnecessary from a network stability perspective. This is a fact, and take it from an investor who deals with many other investors.
People rather put their money in assets that can be moved freely, and I don’t think we need to wonder much why and it’s only a natural decision.

Like I said, whoever is investing in the long term will continue invested regardless of the lockup periods. XTZ and ADA are clear examples of that.
THETA as another example as an unlocking period of 56 hours, and price continues to go up regardless, and more than 50% of all supply is still being staked.

Still don’t see any benefit in the increase, as you were unable to present any plausible justification to drive forward your proposal, other than price speculation with 0 data to back it up.

No need to keep saying over and over " we have to agree to disagree". It’s clear that we don’t agree, and that’s how life works. I’m not trying to persuade you in any way. I’m simply debating and showing other people how unfunded your proposal is.

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The 14 1800 blocks currently take more than 14 days.

I like option of allowing stakers to realize excessive penalty to withdraw earlier

With penalty fees distributed daily with rewards to current stakers

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No just remove it. If bitcoin wasn’t the deciding factor of zilliqa and every other crypto then have it 30bdays but when bitcoin I fking us over then I don’t want to get locked with my funds, I will cut loses. So no unboundng period at all

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I think DOGE is a better option for you then. Lol!

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Yeah atleast it’s doing way better then zilliqa and with dumb idiots like you in zil, sooner or later all gona move out. Doge is better then zil. Maybe you should consider it too. Rather sucking developers balls.

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Mmmm luv me some dev balls! ZIL should pride itself on doing nothing like DOGE

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I support a variable reward system, in which reward APR depends on how long the amount has been staked. This way a spectator will not be able to yield any profit and long-term stakers will be benefited.

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Hi I’m new to this staking thing. I staked my ZIL for a good four months and went to unstake it is Moonlet and now I’m no longer allowed fo access the remaining ZIL. It’s not clear on Moonlet how long staking is for. It’s also not clear to me how long staking is for ZIL is it 12 months? Where was that and how come that was not present when entering into this? It’s true I didn’t know that much at the time other than staking would be beneficial to me. Also I’m extremely patient so I don’t mind buying more ZIL but if someone can explain the process in plain English I would appreciate it. Thank you