P-011 REJECTED: Pricing structure change

[TheoWayne]

Hey everyone,

I’ve been following the discussion closely and wanted to contribute some thoughts, especially considering Primate’s proposal and our goals for Tezos Domains. Which is to increase new users, as well as renewals. Here are my thoughts and recommendations:

Support New Users:
I strongly advocate offering free domain registration to new users as a way to kickstart adoption. We can attract a broader audience by eliminating the upfront cost barrier, especially during market downturns when affordability becomes critical. This would boost initial registrations while laying a foundation for long-term engagement and growth. For instance, similar initiatives have proven successful in other blockchain ecosystems, where lowering entry barriers has led to increased participation and community building.

Unstoppable Domains has dominated the Crypto Domain Presence online. If you search “Crypto Domains” on YT they are the only thing people are talking about. This is because of two important reasons, but for the sake of this argument, I will only point out the obvious one, which is that it’s free for new users.

Higher Renewal Fees to Deter Squatting:
While free registration encourages new users, it’s equally important to ensure fair use of domain names. Introducing higher renewal fees for inactive or speculative holders can effectively deter domain squatting. This aligns with our goal of fostering an active and engaged community, where domains are actively used rather than held passively for speculative purposes. For example, setting higher renewal fees after an initial free period helps maintain a healthy domain marketplace by encouraging ongoing utility and discouraging hoarding.

Rewarding Renewals with Free NFTs:
To really boost ongoing engagement, and ease the tension of my last suggestion, I propose rewarding users who renew their domains with free TED NFTs. These NFTs can be tied to the domains, adding intrinsic value and creating a secondary market for Tezos Domains assets. This not only enhances the value proposition of domain ownership but also encourages users to renew their domains regularly. The concept of digital collectibles tied to domain ownership has the potential to attract collectors and investors, thereby enhancing the overall ecosystem vitality.

It could be as simple as TED PFP, Banner, or even as complicated as dynamic NFTs in the vein of Plenty’s VePLY locks. Tezos Domains could have an NFT that displays the Domain name, duration registered, and other fun things like how many TedDAO tokens it holds.

Aligning with Primate’s Proposal:
Primate’s suggestion to adjust the pricing structure to accommodate both bullish and bearish market scenarios is well-timed. If I had to choose I would agree with Primate’s proposed 25/5/.05 as anything else without further incentives would make the squatting situation worse in my opinion.

Primate’s proposal for a revised pricing structure like 25/5/0.5, coupled with innovative incentives like NFT rewards, not only attracts new users but also incentivizes ongoing engagement within our community.

I look forward to hearing your feedback and working together to implement these strategies effectively for the benefit of Tezos Domains and its stakeholders.

Love,
TheoWayne

[Snorlax.tez]

Hi Theo

Thanks for the feedback and input for this proposal.

Really like your approach to this and the points you’ve made.

Support New Users:
I strongly advocate offering free domain registration to new users as a way to kickstart adoption. We can attract a broader audience by eliminating the upfront cost barrier, especially during market downturns when affordability becomes critical. This would boost initial registrations while laying a foundation for long-term engagement and growth. For instance, similar initiatives have proven successful in other blockchain ecosystems, where lowering entry barriers has led to increased participation and community building.

Tezos Domains along with other community members like myself have provided many, many giveaways for domains. I think a free domain is not needed. Everyone has had multiple chances to get a free domain and realistically if the prices get changed to 0.5XTZ for 5+ Character, its not expensive, even in best case scenario bullrun.

Higher Renewal Fees to Deter Squatting:
While free registration encourages new users, it’s equally important to ensure fair use of domain names. Introducing higher renewal fees for inactive or speculative holders can effectively deter domain squatting. This aligns with our goal of fostering an active and engaged community, where domains are actively used rather than held passively for speculative purposes. For example, setting higher renewal fees after an initial free period helps maintain a healthy domain marketplace by encouraging ongoing utility and discouraging hoarding.

I’m going to throw a random guess and suggest a good 90% of the active community holds more than 10 domains. The fact that there is still thousands of decent names still available to register means that there isn’t really a squatting issue imo, sure there is some people with 1k domains, but at the end of the day, if someone wants to spend their hard earned money collecting domains, then so be it. I would obviously disagree with people hoarding Tezos Based company names and project names, If I find one available to mint, I typically register it and try to give it to the company/project, and most of the time they just brush me off.

The whole squatting convo is quite of a big split in community, I just see it as people who spend thousands of dollars on domains directly from Tezos Domains are just early investors in the project and shouldn’t be backstabbed because it upsets people.

Obviously its just my opinion and others may not agree, but that’s okay, I do understand both sides.

Rewarding Renewals with Free NFTs

• I like this, I have thought about a proposal that I may publish in the next few months suggesting another airdrop of tokens due to the sheer amount of unclaimed or illegible tokens returned to the DAO. I feel a limited NFT hand delivered from the Core team for a future airdrop would be more ideal than just giving it to more airdrop hunters, of course there should be a base amount just like last time for common users, but next time around, the core team should really be rewarding DAO participants and more of the general community that are active on discord/socials.

• I like the idea of having a dynamic NFT, maybe one that changes colours during the duration of ownership, amount of $TED owned, amount of times voted on Homebase etc. almost like a membership tier type of thing that may or may not hold perks…

[VeryBadAcid]

How much of the TED token do I need to hold to have voting weight?

[Snorlax.tez]

Firstly, you need to buy $TED or if you have $TED already you need to go to https://app.tezos.domains/ and sign into your account, then you’ll need to locate Governance & Rewards for example:

then Click deposit, and it should show you how much TEDv you’d get. You need to proceed to convert to TEDv for voting.

[TheoWayne]

Thanks for the feedback!

I have many ideas as to how to onboard new members most of which address the squatter situation by proxy. Been thinking about it for at least 3 years but that’s for a whole nother proposal! haha

To expand on my pitch, offering a free domain to new users isn’t just about the cost—it’s about the concept. Theoretically it would be a “Test” domain that is slightly different and more restricted from paid domains. (Just winging it, an example could be domains that can only be claimed once from wallets who are connected via social log-in for verification purposes, and give them a much shorter ownership period like 30 days before they have to purchase it.)

While we do have a chance to be different with Web3, we now have competitors like Unstoppable Domains on Polygon. A new user learning about Web3 for the first time is more likely to claim a test domain than purchase one for an ecosystem they are unfamiliar with. (That’s not even diving into what domains they offer like .crypto or the tech). Free Domains for new users a very popular method in web2, the catch always being the high renewal fee. With this addition, I think we could even increase the current price scale honestly.

Admittedly, lowering the price of 3D domains to 25 XTZ would boost sales, but I don’t see those sales coming from new users. It feels like we’re lowering the price so we can buy more ourselves. That’s why I support Primate’s suggestion of 25/5/0.5.

I’ll be writing more detailed proposals here, and I look forward to discussing these ideas further!

[Snorlax.tez]

We could introduce a subdomain system where the DAO holds a singular name such as name.tez and users can register a subdomain for free such as snorlax.name.tez, I’d imagine implementing a free trail name would be costly in time & funds, not only that, if a trial name was introduced, how would this effect the 7 day auctions for expired names?

There is alot to think about and learn from other naming services and what works for them etc such as ENS, SNS & UD. I think its just down to the popularity of each chain (UD excluded).

I’d imagine in the future, maybe Q4 2024 or start of 2025 a 2nd airdrop may be introduced which will gather new & older users back but it has to be fair for people still here after the 1st airdrop rather than giving to new users mainly as the numbers of new users will most definitely out-weigh the OGs.

The Pricing Structure Change is more than having cheaper names for people still here. 25 XTZ is still not ‘cheap’ if 1 XTZ = ATH. Until there is a Dynamic USD/domain price paid in XTZ it will always be a ‘what if’ situation and will always may cause a problem as end users are risking spending more on names, of course this is out of free will but the last thing users want to do is to worry about future cost or to put 5+ years on asap, either option is a worry. Nobody wants to spend more than they should. A solid USD price was my first suggestion however this would prove costly to the DAO, in the future I can see this happening, but at the moment a price adjustment free from the DAOs expense is the way to go currently.

I’ll be writing more detailed proposals here, and I look forward to discussing these ideas further!

Great to hear, will be interesting to see your ideas! If you need any help with anything, my DMs are open on X(twitter) or Discord.
If Project A proposal is successful all DAO proposal help and info will be available on the site.

[TheoWayne]

@Snorlax.tez

We could introduce a subdomain system where the DAO holds a singular name such as name.tez and users can register a subdomain for free such as snorlax.name.tez, I’d imagine implementing a free trail name would be costly in time & funds, not only that, if a trial name was introduced, how would this effect the 7 day auctions for expired names?

sub domains would be the way to go. As for auctions, this would be for new users. If a domain has already been purchased then there is no need for a new subdomain. Once the trial ends they would buy it as normal, (and lose it as normal) haha

@Snorlax.tez

The Pricing Structure Change is more than having cheaper names for people still here. 25 XTZ is still not ‘cheap’ if 1 XTZ = ATH. Until there is a Dynamic USD/domain price paid in XTZ it will always be a ‘what if’ situation and will always may cause a problem as end users are risking spending more on names, of course this is out of free will but the last thing users want to do is to worry about future cost or to put 5+ years on asap, either option is a worry. Nobody wants to spend more than they should. A solid USD price was my first suggestion however this would prove costly to the DAO, in the future I can see this happening, but at the moment a price adjustment free from the DAOs expense is the way to go currently.

Getting more users and renewing should be the goal for sure. For this current proposal i’d just vote on the options available.

However this has been a sneak peak into the full marketing proposal im writing. I don’t think the price was ever the issue, but lowering it would bring more users, and so would an airdrop. The only issue is these are temporary fixes. I think small changes like website updates, and more colorful marketing would go a long way to help ease these issues!

[Snorlax.tez]

Confirmation of results from P-011

Outcome: No Change

[Kevin]

1D - 10,000 xtz/yr

2D - 1,000 xtz/yr

3D - 100 xtz/yr

4D - 25 xtz/yr

5D+ - 1 xtz/yr, with tiered pricing model based on duration of registration (e.g. .9 tez/year if 2 years, .8 if 3 years, etc)

[Kevin]

Also (in place of) a hypothesis pricing model straight out of the gate, I think we should start with single auctions for the 1D domains.

Perhaps starting with: a.tez

Putting 100% full focus on marketing and hyping up that auction. Getting attention from inside and outside Tezos.

• The outcome of that (however much it for which it sells) will inform the proper pricing model for 1D domains
• After that we can choose to continue to auction one 1D domain at a time, or implement a standard model for releasing the rest all at once. (auctioning one a time will likely bring in the strongest returns in terms of revenue and in terms of new user acquisition)