Our Community makes us better; AMA for Meta Poolers in Russia
This is a transcript from the AMA recorded by Claudio Cossio for the Russia Meta Pool community. The video will be published soon!
Every day, Meta Pool is learning and improving as a project inspired by our community and ambassadors. Our global team is lucky to have members that really support the project and are asking great questions.
In this post, we present our last AMA hold with our Russian community. Meta Pool wants to add value to the NEARverse, and we are always listening and sharing our knowledge with all of you Meta Poolers!
- When will the community receive all the tokens allocated to the community?
The tokens have already been distributed and allocated to the community, on November 23rd we unlocked the 11.4 million $META tokens to the community, so those that participated during the stakers week and community launch, and during all the next few months all the way to November 23rd, were accruing $META token rewards, under unlock contract.
On November 23rd these $META tokens were unlocked, that distribution of tokens has already been allocated. If you are asking the questions for the beta testers, we have emailed each one of them. They will get their $META tokens based in amount that is on USDC, we think that after the IDO’s, since $META would be priced, the best way in order for beta testers to get rewarded and allocate the $META is by assigning a pricing USDC, and then doing the change into the $META tokens, so that depends basically on the price discovery process that is happening right now on skyward finance.
2. Is Meta Pool owning the 63.4% of the tokens allocated to the treasury?
Between the founders and the team, we are only allocating a certain amount of $META to it, so let’s have a look at the exact numbers. If you go to the tokenomics page or to the IDO page for Meta Pool, you can see we are allocating 63.4% to the community and treasure, the rest, 36.6%, is going to be allocated to the founders, Investors, and also team and advisors.
All of our tokens are under a 12th month lockup contract, starting from November 23rd and then a two-year vesting for founders which is the same, for the team and advisors. The investors they will go, either the 12th month lockup period or 24th month lockup period, and then a 12th month vesting schedule. It’s not ownership, it’s allocation.
3. What is the percentage of everyone who invested in the early stage?
To be clear, we allocated 4% of the distribution of the $META tokens to investors, and this is distributed between Dragonfly Capital, Move Capital, A&T Capital, Blockwall, Skyvision partners, and a few other angel investors, that for privacy reasons we are not disclosing their names, and so we disclosed the total amount which is 4%.
It is not relevant that we disclosed the amount of allocation of tokens to our investors, it’s for you to know that only 4% its being allocated to investors. And regarding going to specific percentages, that is something that we want to keep private, we want to secure our investors and their allocations.
The ownership of $META tokens is currently 11.55M tokens that are being distributed and allocated to the community, so, most of all the $META tokens are owned by the community.
4. How can the Foundation help influence the decisions of the community?
There is a foundation, Meta Staking Pool, which is a Panama foundation. We will try to stay away from politics involved with this. As we said, all the current $META that are unlocked and allocated, are in the hands of the community.
One of the challenges that we are facing is that we launch with the Astro DAO behind it. What this represents, is that the feature for the token voting can only be done through the command line interface. We know that it’s not the best way to put $META token holders in front of the command line interface and start voting, we are collaborating with the Astro DAO team to have the user interface ready. We believe this will be done in Q1 of 2022, so hopefully the community can start proposing and voting for a different initiative to better serve the Meta Pool protocol.
For transparency, there is a council that would be voting on those proposals, is made of three council members, one is Narwallets,representing the private sector of the community, which is represented by Lucio, co-founder of Meta Pool. Then, the second council member is the Open Shards Alliance which is represented by Blaze, and token validators will have a say into the changes and proposals voted upon for the protocol. Finally, the third is NEAR Hispano, representing the guild members of the guild network on the ecosystem, and in this case is presented by Claudio Cossio.
We believe that we are bootstrapping the DAO, we are the ones that have a lot more visibility on what’s happening in the ecosystem, what is happening internally in the development side, what is happening with partners as well, we want to first bootstrap the whole protocol, so it can be self-sustainable. The current fee structure and the fees that are coming to the treasury are about 600 to 800 stNEAR every week, which is a good amount of money, but it’s not enough to sustain the whole structure. That’s why we raised an A round so that our team doesn’t have to use the treasury funds, we are letting them be allocated to the community.
Most of the stNEAR in the treasury is being used to start the ambassadors program.
5. How will the interest of token holders in the Meta Pool project be maintained?
One of the key parts is to expose the stNEAR, which is the liquid token, to as many projects as we can inside the NEAR ecosystem. We are launching our IDO using the stNEAR liquid token for people that want to get expose to $META, they would have to come to stake to Meta Pool or buy out of ref finance and then trade over on skyward in order to get $META. (learn how to participate in Meta pool IDO)
Some of you that are part of the beta testing group have gotten an email and are now part of the telegram group with the OIN finance team. OIN next week is going to launch their stablecoin platform. The only collateral to be use in OIN finance in order to mint the first stablecoin token in the NEAR ecosystem is going to be using stNEAR. So this is another one of maintaining the token holder’s interest in the Meta Pool project.
Second one is we are going to be launching new farms on ref, we are going to be doing OCT, which is the octopus network token, with stNEARr, and we are going to be providing incentives in $META, ref and OCT tokens as well. We are incentivizing the use of the protocol through the exposure of our liquid token, in AMM’s, dex’es, and different other platforms or Dapps, we are also looking closely at the gaming community.
6. When will the remaining Meta tokens be handed out to the community?
We are creating a post to be transparent on how we are going to be allocating the tokens, we are thinking that from 4 to 6 years we are going to be distributing more than 1B tokens during this lifetime, so we are here on the long run, we are long on NEAR, supporting this projects for the long run.
The Ambassador program is just the start, we want to support any project that uses stNEAR.
7. I had stNEAR is Ref.Finance farming in NEAR-stNEAR liquidity. When I withdrew, there were no $META token rewards for me. Where did they go and how to claim them?
Rest assured, your meta tokens rewards are yours, neither Ref. Finance nor Meta Pool own these tokens. They will come back to you. We are talking to the ref finance team, because how it goes is the following:
When you are delegating to the Ref. contract, the $META’s rewards are being accrued on the smart contract running on ref. So the meta token rewards are being awarded to that smart contract. Depending on the percentage of exposure you have to that farm, you will get your $META’s back. If you’d like to get your $META rewards, let’s see how to create a process for this, but right now we are collaborating with the Ref.Finance team in order for you to get your token rewards, they didn’t go anywhere. They are in the ref smart contract, and of course you have a certain amount of exposure to it so that $META would get allocated to you.
8. The funds (META tokens) be blocked when voting on the Meta Pool project beginnings?
We are looking into different governance structures and processes. We are looking closely to replicate the Voting Escrow Curve because we believe that that’s a good voting mechanism, since it will allow you to stake $META and have a voting power inside the ecosystem. We are looking at different governance structures, it’s still early, if you would like to collaborate, what we would do is create a leadership team inside the Meta Pool community in order to start discussing the different governance structures. Join our discord here.
9. I’m going to use stNEAR as collateral on OIN Finance. Is there any news where I can use USDO (maybe it will be Ref.Finance or some amm dex’es on aurora)? Will it be a stable pool (for example USDT-NUSDO)?
There will be farms on ref and also, we will be collaborating closely with some dexes in aurora, and we will be seen in bridging any NUSDO over to the different amm, dexes in Aurora. That’s the next step.
10. When the Stakers Week will begin?
Hopefully on Monday we will be letting you know about stakers week, it will start during Christmas and New Year’s Eve week, and it will run for 4 weeks. Have your NEAR ready to be staked and see you in the Meta Pool protocol!
11. Where can I find information about the current circulation supply of $META?”
All the information is on chain, you can query directly the Meta Pool contract, which is meta-token.near, and you can query the information there. You will be able to see what’s the current allocation of the $META.
For stNEAR, the contract it’s meta-pool.near, and you can query all the information, it’s all on chain. We are working around the clock, so we appreciate your patience, and we are building as we go.
12. Problem with two factor identification, limit exceeded. What should I do?
Send us the transaction that you have been having some difficulties with on Discord, and taking this is for staking on the Meta Pool protocol, or for skyward, please let us know. Reach out to your community leader in the Russian community to attend your question on Discord.
13. Why was tokenomics changed?
One of the things that changed, if you go back to the first tokenomics, the amount of the $META assigned to founders was around 36% and that got reduced to 30%. The reason for this is, we needed to allocate investors, advisors, and when we started our allocation of tokens, this was also because we quickly noticed that the amount of fees that were generated by the Meta Pool protocol was not going to allow us to grow, at least not at the pace that the ecosystem needed. It was totally a surprise when we launched Meta Pool on August 23rd and then by August 30th we had 15M in TVL, more than 1M and a half NEAR tokens staked on the platform.
What we were shooting for was to have 1M by the end of the community launch, so it was unexpected, we had to make those changes to ensure that we would be able to focus on the protocol and for it to grow, and to put all NEAR token holders front and center of this project.
14. You wanted to give out 10% of tokens to the community, but at the moment you have given away ~1%? What went wrong?
The community is being allocated 63%, we wanted to allocate 1%, and we also wanted to provide 10M tokens, so this 10% is not correct information, but that’s fine, we know that there is a lot of noise. So the numbers was to give out 10M $META during the community launch, which was 1% allocation, nothing went wrong, the launch was a complete success and that’s the reason that we are growing at the rate that we are growing and also the exposure that stNEAR has gotten.
15. When we sent our stNEARs to the Ref pool, then $META was not credited to stNEAR, how and when will the issue be resolved?
We don’t have any Estimated Time for when that will get solved, we apologize for that in advance, we assure you that those meta tokens will be credited to the LP’s that are participating currently in that pool, rest assured those tokens are not lost, and you will get your meta rewards for it.
We just need more time to collaborate with Ref Finance to have them ready.
16. The DAO has only three members, do you plan to expand the number of members to more decentralize the protocol?
Of course, that’s the goal. We are bootstrapping the protocol; we want to get it to the point that it’s sustainable and that we have tested the different governance structures that would provide a long-term perspective to the protocol itself. We understand your expectations are high, we do have high expectations of what we want to deliver, but we need for you to be patient with us, we are a small team, but now we have grown, as you see we are doubling down on the ambassador program, and the team is growing as well, we understand that is a concern the decentralization part, but we first need to make the protocol sustainable in order for decentralization and governance to be implemented. We have your best interests; we are not here to serve ourselves.
17. The tokens were unlocked, but nothing has started at the moment and the token is not even really used . The community will not be able to influence the DAO from 1% +. How will you fix this situation?”
The community is the one that has all the allocation of unlocked meta, there is no voting structure around the DAO, this is due to the fact that we have implemented Astro DAO from the very beginning. As you know Astro DAO is being built as we speak, there’s no token voting on the front end, there is on the back end, we believe that $META users should not be exposed to getting into the console and voting, we want to make it as easy for you to vote.
If you have any concerns regarding the DAO, what I propose is that we can open up a channel on the DAO on our Discord and start discussing what you see, should be, or how you envision that the voting structure should be, or the DAO structure should be, for the Meta Pool protocol.
This is something that we need to build from the ground up, we are putting you meta token holders front and center of this, by giving you the opportunity to express yourself and also the channels for you to voice your opinion. More on this as we progress, but like we said before, we are just starting the protocol, we are building as we go, we are the front of the innovation of the near ecosystem.
18. When is the right time for me to claim my rewards, is it for 3 weeks or few months?
Normally what we do, you can harvest every week, or every day, you are getting the allocation of the $META.
There’s no right moment, you can harvest any time of the day, week or month. The $META awarded to you are not being distributed to someone else, there will be a slight change on the amount of $META that you will get, because what the contract is doing is pulling all the rewards into one pool and distributing that evenly between all of the LP providers and the staking providers as well.
We will try to create a post on this, to explain better and also to do a detailed description on a use case, that way is more transparent to everybody.
19. I’m very curious. Will there be a chance that the 10% APY will increase? For example, 20%-50% or more perhaps?
Not for the staking rewards, it’s what the validator nodes are providing to you, this is what’s going to happen: you are getting awarded $META, we are displaying the amount being rewarded, what we would do after the IDO, and after we have the price discovery process ended in a price on $META, is that we would have the data in order to display an API based on the meta rewards.
You will see a slight increase, maybe 15% or 20%, it varies, it depends on the price of $META. More on this, maybe by December 20th you will see that change.
20. I hope the rewards and META tokens will increase also, because my friend staked for a couple of weeks, but her rewards barely reached 1NEAR. Don’t you think it’s too small? I hope it will increase though so more people are encouraged to stake.
That depends on the amount of NEAR that you are staking, we have no control whatsoever on the amount of rewards that the delegator nodes are providing to the stakers. We need to explain better to newcomers how staking works, this is something that we are going to be providing, the means to the ambassadors into the community, we are going to be putting some bounties in order for them to create specific content, it would be good to provide to the whole community.
21. I hope the minimum staking can be lower to 5 NEARS cause some of the people I know are quite hesitant to stake cause the NEAR price is too big. 10 NEARs is already 5000 pesos in our country and that is already so expensive. I hope it can be lowered to 2NEAR or 5NEAR.
The reason why we are allocating 10NEAR is because we are distributing your staking to more than 51 validator nodes, also we need to take into account that we do not want to congest the network. If it’s 5 NEAR it would be 0.1NEAR to each validator node, this would create a lot of traffic on the network. The amount of gas fees that the Meta Pool contract has to pay would increase significantly, this is time to make the protocol sustainable.
22. I read in your article that you can use META Tokens or stNEARs for lending and borrowing. Does that mean that we can use them if we want to buy something on the NFTGames on NEAR? like airdrops, or a character, etc.? If not, will there be a possibility?
Yes, for sure, not on the $META itself. That’s more for stNEAR, although we will provide incentives on meta, we are providing these because you are using the Meta Pool liquid token, so if you are participating on the ecosystem with the stNEAR token you should be rewarded with $META, that means you are participating with our protocol behind it, so there would be some $META rewards.
We are starting conversations with a couple of games, and hopefully we would have an announcement sooner rather than later.
For lending and borrowing, stNEAR it’s going to be the token used, the digitalized asset for those Dapps, Burrow cash and OIN finance are going to use it, and there are some announcements coming off the ranks.
23. As I know, $META is a governance token, but how could it be used right now? When could we use this token for its intended purpose?
We are going to be setting up some farming on ref, because there’s no utility for it. There’s no way for the Meta Pool community to vote with the meta token, we have to provide some utility for now and that’s going to be through farms in the different dex’es and Automated Market Makers (AMMs) in the NEAR ecosystem, that would be short-lived until we kick off the token voting on the Astro dao.
The intended purpose of the token is to vote on the governance of the Meta Pool protocol.
24. What are the expectations from the sale?
We are putting 2.8% which is 28M $META and we will see what the community and the market says, there’s a lot of value there.
When you are participating on the IDO, you are going to be using your stNEAR, for the network effect to begin, you grab NEAR, you stake it in Meta Pool (how to stake tutorial in our Gitbook).You grab your stNEAR, that stNEAR is accruing $META and the near rewards from validator nodes, then you grab that stNEAR traded in skyward for $META, and rest assure, your rewards are still there.
The only thing that you need to do is either go to ref finance and buy stNEAR, we will be launching a swap NEAR stNEAR as well on Meta Pool, hopefully by the end of the year, and buy stNEAR back, if you’d like to liquid on stake or delay on stake you can do so, and then you would earn your NEAR rewards, plus the $META rewards on it.
If you are long on Meta Pool and NEAR, there is going to be a lot of upside, and then we have the stakers week after that, so rest assured, bring your NEAR, stake it on Meta Pool, and we will make it worth your while.
Thank you very much to the Russian community for hosting me, I hope I answered a lot of questions, I know there’s open questions, we will create the different post on medium, distribute them over to you, and open new channels, we should open one for the DAO, start discussing the voting, DAO and also talk about meta.
Regarding the IDO, we managed to solve the problem, try to withdraw before December 8th, 13:00 UTC, we will have to go through a manual process in order for you to retrieve your stNEAR, it has not been lost, it’s been allocated to your account.
We think that all your questions are really valuable, so please join our Discord and find your community.
Our ambassadors are waiting for your questions and suggestions. We have right now a great global community and cool regional ones: Vietnamese, Russian, Thai, Philippine, Korean, Chinese, Hispanic and Indian.
And remember, to be tuned follow our Medium and @meta_pool on twitter!
Keep on Staking!
