Concerns With Creator Onboarding Visibility

Rally Registry
1

Hi Rally Community,

I’m writing to you out of concerns for the visibility and transparency in our beautiful decentralized community as it pertains to onboarding new creators. I’m aware that some time ago the community would see the proposals for all creators who expressed interest in joining the protocol. I too am aware that we previously voted in council members (5) to handle the work of selection and approvals. My understanding for this process stems from (and a few other reasons):

“These ‘fair launches’ are not meant to be private by default. That would be bad, to many of your points. The fair launch is meant to prevent bots and token jumpers from acting on a token the second it is live.”

The issue I’m surfacing has more to do with the insider information that comes from this workflow we have set in place. I understand the intentions of ‘fair launches’ and could not agree more with the principles of it, however, there is some metaphorical collateral damage that results from this practice.

As a protocol that lives, breeds, and feeds off of the onboarding of creators, the identities of these creators is hugely valuable knowledge, and is now only available to a select few. An example to illustrate the problems this creates is — Elon Musk and Donald Trump hypothetically propose a desire to launch a social token. A select group of ‘insiders’ gets the notification of this. In the process a huge business advantage is born. These 5 individuals may now spread the word to peers of theirs, in anticipation of the launch (and how could you blame them if they did!! We all pray nightly for large names to join this protocol). As a result, we have created an element of secrecy that is the farthest thing from the concept of ‘open and free’.

My suggestions is we give this issue some serious consideration and rectify this issue in an effort to provide the true clarity this platform deserves and needs to thrive.

3 Likes
2

I think a ‘fair’ launch is difficult as you need to gather people to coordinate on launch and there for insider info is part of that.

Also, the accessibility of say a DEX, Rally system is not always great for everyone as they got to adopt a new system in order to get in on the coin.

I think the ultimate is to have a mixed platform that includes multiple ways to access the token like a typical centralized exchange launch pad and DEX or watever else is required with detailed information on the token mint and if any was previously distributed that can be verified on the blockchain. (again not everyone as savy enough to know how to check blockchain data)

The insider information problem can only be counter acted with more easy-to-access trade/exchange systems and using transparency of the blockchain to prove that new more coins are being secretly created or even pre-distributed to insiders.

3 Likes
3

Hi Sirgram,

Thank you for your post. I think you misunderstand the reason behind the changes, what is meant by “fair launch” in the context of Creator Coin listings and precisely what information is made available to “insiders.” I want to allay your concerns about any possible information asymmetry here as it relates to the council, particularly around large creators.

I’m writing to you here as a community member that was voted in to the council having demonstrated my understanding of the protocol and my commitment to supporting creator communities and the larger Rally community.

First, what was the state of information transparency before the creator council? Each creator that passed business development was brought to a snapshot approval vote by RLY holders. The timing of their launch was known by essential Rally team launching the coin, and the Creator who would sometimes opt to announce to their community or more broadly. There were two tremendous downsides to this approach: 1. Creators could not control the announcement of their coin launch. 2. It made for a slower, unscalable onboarding process that necessitated daily active participation of RLY holders.

Now, presently. The creator council was voted in by the community of RLY holders, effectively delegating their votes in order to streamline the process of onboarding new creators to the network. Additionally, Creators could now be empowered to control their own coin economy from the outset, including the announcement of their new coin, and as some have chosen to do - the timing of the launch. And finally, 2 of the members of the council are employed by Rally, leaving 3 of us that are purely community members.

What information does the Creator council have? We see the applications, and we discuss and vote on candidates. We are not provided any information on launch timing. What this means, is we have no advantage to participate early in launches.

What is “fair launch.” Your quote from Kevin refers to listing creator coins in a fashion that provides all participants in a certain time frame equal opportunity to participate and to participate at the same price. This is actively in development, and the team has not shared the timeline for launch yet.

Your hypothetical demonstrates the risk of some information asymmetry that is present in the current system that was chosen by the community as trade-off to allow the platform to scale and provide the creators with control. It also provides greater protection to the very VIPs that would not participate in our protocol if we could not provide guarantees of secrecy to preserve their “business advantage” as a Creator. I also expect individuals at that level would require certain NDAs to ensure they could control every aspect of their participation. However, even if they did not, you must accept that some level of secrecy is necessary to conduct business in general.

Did Yearn announce they were in talks with Sushi, Cream, Pickle or Cover the day they received an email or chat to being discussing? Of course not. The announcement reached the community equally, probably through a tweet! Were there a few folks on the “inside” that knew about the talks or the agreements? Of course, they had to in order to execute on it. Similarly, Rally is taking reasonable precautions to protect the council from any information asymmetry that could put them or the protocol at risk. This is why we have the essential information to perform our duty in voting, but not the information around launches. I certainly don’t want the SEC knocking at my door - that is a strong incentive not to spread the word.

I hope you can now see how this very limited “secrecy” gives Rally itself a huge business advantage, and makes it far more attractive to prospective creators - our core business!

The community did weigh this in the past and made a sensible choice. Creators have been pleased to control the messaging, and to my knowledge the Council has continued to act in the best interests of the protocol.

Look, some level of trust is essential even in these “trustless” communities. Synthetix has a council, Balancer has a new council and they are all working to improve and run their respective protocols in different capacities. And while Rally is being built and developing, the goal will be to get to a point where creators can self-serve and the council is no longer needed.

I hope this is a satisfactory response. And welcome you to DM me on discord if you’d like to discuss further. The community call is also a great forum to bring up questions and concerns.

Cheers,
Grand

5 Likes
4

Issues with fair launch, where will they announce it? Discord, twitter, youtube? Those platforms besides discord are all platforms anyone can follow and click the link on, all you need to do is follow everyone that Rally.io on twitter follows to catch a coin drop link, and unless youre a twitch streamer, discord channels aren’t always that popular, active, or created to do that promotion.

What would fair launch do in my eyes? It just lets everyone know there’s a coin that you can trade to in 24hrs vs having to blindly reload and convert. I like many others enjoy and support a variety of music/streams/businesses but DEFINITELY dont want my discord or phone blowing up from being involved and active in dozens-hundreds of groups, how do you think people would feel who genuinly show support, if they found out they weren’t included in the “fair launch” because they didn’t have the insider trade on a new cryptocurrency, because thats all “fair launch” is, is insider trade.

1 Like
5

This is the real issue, the information is segmented into so many different platforms. As much as I like Discord, Twitter, Telegram and even DeFi itself is becoming its own separated userbase, I know lot of crypto interested people that are not yet into DeFi protocols but they know Binance or Coinbase. This leads to a load of inbuilt information asymmetry based on people’s knowledge of crypto and we all know that gaps not not closing anytime soon as much as we’d like it. People want that email sign up experience and that is it when it comes to getting in on coins/tokens.

There isn’t one protocol out there to help with the creation, distribution of pricing of coins.

To be frank, I think Binance right now is the most effiecent, central place for most people to get in ‘early’ (as a buyer) or as a lister (coin creator) because the system is not complex to navigate. The problem is Binance and all major platforms for that matter demand crazy listing fees and on top of that coin creators have zero control and again segregated. They are better off starting their own crypto exchange where they can do anything with their own coin and market built-in which is not impossible with open-source DIY tech.

I think this topic of fair distribution is an interesting one but based on personal crypto knowledge and what community you are part of.

1 Like
6

Not sure of course what your definition of “genuinely show support” would mean.

But if it would be fans of a specific streamer, artist, gamer, speaker, etc, than there’s no issue at all to keep being updated on the progress of that specific creator. As a genuine fan, I’d assume one would be following ALL used socials of that creator, no matter what (Insta, FB, YT, Linkedin, website, TT, Discord, etc). Besides that, one would probably know the preferred / main channel of comms of one.

And being such a fan, there would not need to be the necessity (and hassle) to keep following “dozens-hundreds of groups”.

7

This might be slightly off topic but I wanted to put it out there anyway since I think it relates to the idea of providing a little more news regarding new creators… without giving too much away… but enough to add a little bit of excitement for the future: I think it would be cool if the ‘Coming Soon’ feature of the ‘Discover Creator Coins’ start getting used again for any creators who want to use it. This would be in addition to them spreading the news on social media to their followers if they choose. Of course, all of this would be at the creators discretion. Overall, I think it would benefit a lot of new creators and the community in general to have some idea of which creators might come on board within the next few weeks. Of course, we wouldn’t know the exact day or time of the coin launch. It seems like the ‘Coming Soon’ feature hasn’t been utilized for several months or more… just thought it would be cool to see it used since its already built into the interface etc.

2 Likes
8

What you’re saying, is like saying if you dont go to church you’re not a Christian; you’re calling people out who dont spend their time on social media closely stalking artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, etc like they’re the Kardashians. I HARDLY use twitter, and I don’t even follow anyone on Facebook. But according to you, in order to be a fan I need to dedicate my life keeping close watch on everyone I like and would support.

Not to mention, finding out what creators to look for that will have coin drops is EASY, it’s literally only a few clicks of a button, not going to share how on here for obvious reasons, but the thing is right now you cant find out the time or day of the drop unless it’s announced, and if you haven’t noticed, announced coins have much more and higher transactions, all that will happen is instead of a bunch of transactions, there will be a bunch of applications for the “fair launch” or whatever you want to call it. “Fair launch” solves absolutely nothing, it’s a unnecessary complex “solution” to what should be simple fix to make yourselfs feel or try to look smarter compared to other platforms. All “fair launch” will do is allow whales to easily secure more tokens, and create two waves of transactions instead of 1, people who have the slightest amount of common sense can simply find and join in on the “fair launch” without actually supporting, sit back, and relax for it to be “unfair launched” to the new wave of “who’s gonna be first!” so the “fair launchers” can start to sell the thousand(s) of coins they got “fairly” for cheaper than the rest.

9

Also it sure does give the people behind Rally a chance to be the 1st ones to buy in on the “fair launch” instead of having to wait like everyone else for the “unfair launch” having putting everyone through the process of launching a coin. It’s not like Rally is doing this for free, or without buying/converting in-out creator coins whether it’s their own money or not; in retrospect, Rally board are the biggest whales of them all, whose to say devs wont take advantage? The same devs trying to implement a way that would help make themselves more money? Haha no… yall probably just want your 8888RLY buys to 4444CC tokens or less to become 8888CC tokens plus, because you’ll know when to “fair trade” before anyone else and can mad profit off us.

10

Well fair enough, but if you’re following a specific creator/artist/celeb and you’re following its daily youtube video for instance, or following its twitch streams or listening to its radio show etcetc, I’d assume such a creator would anounce it via that specific channel at least.

So you as a fan, would be (pre)informed, just with everyone else that’s following such a creator.

But if that’s not satisfactory, what would be a good solution in your view?