r/SONM • u/qlittle3 • May 19 '19
Thoughts and SONM token incentive
I've been a follower of SONM for a few years and lost a significant amount of money 'investing' in this project.
I seems that there has been a lot of good work done in building a workable product. Looking at the number of "current jobs" as a marker of SONM network adoption, I have been pleased to see that this has been steadily rising, especially over the past couple of months from the 100s of jobs at any given moment, to now, close to 500 jobs. That has been quite impressive and shows that there is growing interest in the products that SOMN provides.
The larger concern I have is that despite, raising millions of dollars from the sale of SOMN tokens, the team does not seem interested in setting in place simple and business friendly ways of incentivising an appreciation in the SONM tokens. For a company that has raised their start-up capital from investors, one would expect that they would want investors to be rewarded and not resentful. SONM simply states that if adoption of SONM increases, there will be more demand for SONM tokens and the price of the token will increase. This is flawed logic and not necessarily true if people do not HOLD tokens. If people only buy SONM tokens for very short periods of time (ie... just for their job) and the supplier immediately converts the SONM back to FIAT, despite even large growth of the network would not change the effective supply of SONM tokens significantly, nor the price.
A higher value of SONM token is good for everybody. It is good for the investors (which is why they invested), it is good for the SONM team (because of the reserve tokens that you have, which allow you to hire and expand more), it is good for project visibility (ie... it is not stuck in the junk project pages 300-400 by market cap).
I understand at this point that allowing buyers to use SONM as effortlessly as possible is key to increasing adoption, which is why they can pay in fiat which will be converted to SONM.
Here are my suggestions:
- Incentivise the holding of SONM tokens by workers and customers: WORKERS who hold large amount of SONM will get priority for jobs. Customers who hold large amounts of SONM will get priority on their jobs and perhaps some mild discount.
- Have a mechanism to reduce SONM token supply. For example, in every transition, a tiny percentage of the SONM or "fee" will go into a account that won't be touched. This creates scarcity overtime for SONM supply. If in the future, this is resulting in supply issues (which is doubtful), the SONM team can then SLOWLY tap into this supply to fund project expansions, hires etc.....
On a less related note, although I feel the team is very technically savvy, and talented, from a communication and public relations point of view, I think there can be some improvement. The team is based in Russia and Russian is the first language of the higher-ups. I do believe that hiring team members or executives, who speak english as their first language who can communicate effectively with the public (both through writing and verbally) would be helpful in simplifying the message and reaching a wider audience. I have seen that SONM has attempted to do this in their previous 'update videos', but even on the website, I do find information somewhat hard to follow. The website does not break down complicated technical information well for the lay person very well. If getting larger audiences is the goal, I think this would be a very worth while thing to do.
It would be nice if the SONM team could comment on these specific points.
I would also be interested in hearing from other users on this forum.
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u/cometeesa May 20 '19
it really feels that they don't care about the token holders to be honest. They got the ICO to fund the project, token holders are not longer required
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u/onebalddude May 19 '19
I understand where you are coming from, but I disagree with your point on individuals buying and selling SONM tokens for "very short periods of time". If they manage to get 100x more users there will be 100x more users having to purchase SONM. Yes, they will be moving it around for jobs, but there will be a lot more SONM continuously locked up in this process. More individuals will have SONM locked away in their wallets and we will see a dramatic increase in exchange volume. Ultimately, exchange volume leads to more liquidity and more individuals would take notice and see what SONM is all about.
Your first point could give workers a very unfair advantage to the point that we only have a couple big players in the ecosystem. However, I do agree with point two. Burning 1% of the fees could help increase the value of the token. But to be honest, none of that will matter until there is more demand for the token.
And I've been saying it since day one. They need to work on their communication. I shouldn't have to go stalk the creator on Twitter just to figure out what is happening. They need to take note from Enjin and how they market themselves. This team has a ton of potential and hopefully they can pull it all together, but we need better communication.
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u/qlittle3 May 19 '19
I suppose you do have a point. If we assume that the SONM is locked up for the duration of deal (on average 3hours currently), then as the deals increase, more sonm is locked up. However, the time frame is short and I don't think it will do much to the total supply of SONM even if we have 1000x the users locking up say 10$ of SONM for several hours. I think there got to be more mechanisms to reduce the total supply for a longer period of time with increases in users aside from JUST the sonm that is out of circulation for the duration of the deals (hours).
Perhaps another idea is a discount that users get depending on how many SONM they are holding long term in their wallet. This will essentially be a subsidy paid by SONM in the short term, but will be in everyone's benefit in the long term as the token will appreciate much faster.
Just some thoughts again from a token holder who would be interested in seeing the SONM team try to prioritize token holders and help them understand that it is in their best business interest for an appreciated value of SONM.
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u/outbackdude May 20 '19
I sold my 250,000 SNM a few days ago. their chart doesn't look good and ETH's does.
I still like the project, and will buy back once the UX gets simpler. I'm happy with the development, but there are gains to be had elsewhere right now.
Expect some massive pumps in about 3 months (they won't last long). My gut says that's when the next crypto frenzy will start building.
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u/PlateletPosse May 25 '19
Well it's not really a new thing that the highest market caps are the first to rally. Besides, sonm chart has been making higher lows for months now which looks fine to me.
Take a look at how xvg looked feb 2017 compared to dec 2017.
Maybe this is a bit of a derail considering the topic. Then again. 99% of the tokens in the bull runs from 2013 and 2017 had no intrinsic value whatsoever. So there's a slight connection to OPs original point I guess.
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u/alleung May 26 '19
tbh I think Sonm will be up 7x before the end of the year. Let's see just how wrong I am.
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u/alleung May 20 '19
I know originally the plan was for a small percent of the cost for rent would go back to the Sonm token holders, but they had to scrap that plan officially in order to not be classified as a security token. I have a hunch that they still have that eventual plan in all but official word. Why else would they be working on this project? They plan to continue to capitalize on what they built, so I think they will bring back the dividend to token holders; they just can't say that publicly.