Gamified Governance (WIP)

Community & Ecosystem
#1

Summary
Why are we voting when we could be using our loot items to wage war for the future of loot?
The project is called loot afterall, not diplomacy.

Abstract

Loot is currently using a traditional governance model in which each ERC721 grants the owner one governance vote. With the latest revelations of item rankings, greatness, and categories, we have the foundation for a contract that uses our loot items as weapons for a battle. Instead of 1bag = 1vote, the governance contract would calculate the total hit points of each loot item, broken down into the three-item categories {Magic, Dexterity, Power}

See here for more details about item categories and rankings: Item Rankings, Materials & Attunements

Details

Calculating item HPs

Item categories {Mage/Magic, Hunter/Dexterity, Warrior/Power} will be based on Item Rankings, Materials & Attunements.

The hit points for an item will be governed by the following simple formula:
greatness*item_ranking

  • Greatness is derived from the loot contract and was recently made more accessible by the loot exchange team. Source code available here: https://github.com/lootexchange/lootexchange/blob/main/apps/web/services/getGreatness.js and public API here https://www.loot.exchange/api/metadata/6986 (note the /api/greatness/# endpoint appears to be down at the time of this writing but metadata endpoint provides greatness too)

  • For item ranking, the item at the top of its respective category will receive a ranking of 5 with each subsequent item being decremented by 1. For example, for chest mage items: {Divine Robe = 5, Silk Robe = 4, Linen Robe = 3, Robe = 2, Shirt= 1). For Rings: {Platinum/Power= 5, Titanium/Magic = 5, Gold/Dexterity= 5, Silver/Dexterity= 4, Bronze/Dexterity= 3}

This formula provides each item with a power rating between 0-100. For example, a greatness 15 Divine Robe would be credited with 5*15 = 75HP for battle. Each item’s power rating will be associated with one of the three item types: {Magic, Dexterity, Power} so in the Divine Robe case, it would be 75HP of Magic.

When an owner offers their loot in support or opposition to a proposal, they will be providing a certain amount of Magic, Dexterity, and/or Power.

A few technicalities to point out in this formula:

  1. The proposed formula results in items with a greatness 0, regardless of item ranking, being credited with 0HP. While it’s tempting to modify the formula to give all items minimum greatness of 1, please consider the following:

    1.1 The loot contract assigns items a greatness 0
    1.2 By sticking to the basic formula of greatness*item_ranking, the contract provides a compelling range from 0-100
    1.3 This proposal includes a leveling component in which items with greatness 0 would be able to level up to greatness 1 (or higher) after their first appearance in battle
    1.4 There are a growing number of us who feel compelled to view greatness as a function of age and/or experience in battle. Viewed through this lens, greatness 0 items are effectively “new in box”, therefore we can’t be certain how well they will perform in battle.

How to Win the Battle

A proposal will be deemed won in battle if it achieves one of the following:

  • Greater than 99% dominance in any single item category (i.e Magic)
  • Greater than 66% dominance in any two item categories (i.e Power and Stealth/Dexterity)
  • Greater than 50% dominance in all three item categories (i.e Magic, Power, and Dexterity)

These percentages will be configurable via on-chain voting/battle to ensure they maintain proper balance

Calculating XP from each battle

At the end of each battle, XP is awarded to the items that participated in the battle. The allocation of XP will be as follows:

  • The total amount of XP allocated to the winning side will be based on the following formula:
xp_for_winning_side = total_items_staked_by_losing_side * 10

Using the above formula, in a battle where all 64k items are used in battle, with exactly half used for each side, the winning side would receive a total of 32k * 10 = 320k XP.

Allocating XP from each battle
  • The author of the proposal receives 0.5% of the total amount of XP allocated, applied evenly to the items they staked in support of the proposal. (This percentage will be configurable via on-chain voting/battles)
  • If the war is won by a single category such as magic, those items will receive all of the XP for the battle (except the % given to the author of the proposal)
  • If the war is won by two categories such as dexterity and power, those items will receive all of the XP for the battle (except the % given to the author of the proposal)
  • If the war is won by all three item categories, all of the items on the winning side will receive an equal share of XP
  • Items staked for war earlier in the proposal process will receive more XP than those staked at the end of the battle. This prevents people from gaming the system and staking late for the winning side in every battle.
Leveling up items XP

  • Items will level up via their greatness score. Items will level up in a manner consistent with how the contract issues greatness, meaning that Divine Robes will level up via the following greatness levels: {0,3,6,9,12,15,18,21,etc}. For the purposes of this proposal, leveling up from greatness 3 to 6 is considered one level upgrade.

  • The amount required to level up will be:

     xp_for_next_level = current_level * 2

    So for example, leveling up a Divine Robe from greatness 0 to 3 would require 0xp which means it could level up to greatness 3 simply by participating in governance. The subsequent upgrade from 3 to 6 would require 6xp.

Expanding the loot items via the +1 modified

When you level an item to greatness 20 or higher, the item receives a +1 modified per the original loot contract. This event results in a new item of that type being created but with a greatness of 0. The new item will be auctioned off nouns-style with some portion of the proceeds going to the owner of the +1 item and some portion going to the community treasury.

I am publishing this as a work in progress and welcome any/all feedback. I intend to continue updating this draft weekly to work out the finer details.

2 Likes
#2

Really liking this idea. Gamified governance sounds like a lot of fun and exactly what Loot should be.

The class, HP, XP and levelling systems all work really neatly. We’ve got elements of these in The Crypt but could certainly align with all of them for a standardised way of scoring loot battles in future. So not just governance battling but battle across all Loot derivatives.

A couple of thoughts:

  1. All loot bags contain 8 items of different class, HP, XP and greatness yet all get used together in a single battle action. I think this all works in your proposal but some interesting things happen - like all items in a loot bag having the exact same XP; Magic items getting XP in a battle won by Power.

  2. The HP (greatness * power) becomes a huge influence on each NFTs value. As this is being added retrospectively this could swing the value of NFTs in ways that owners couldn’t have predicted so could be deemed unfair. I’m not a loot bag holder so would be interesting to know what any think.

  3. Have you thought about how the governance battle code will be written and deployed? Is there a dev team? Or would this be community built?

#3

Maybe the rift.live is the place where levelling up happens?

1 Like
#4

Hi 5p0rt5BEArD, thank you for taking time to read the post and respond.

All loot bags contain 8 items of a different classes, HP, XP and greatness yet all get used together in a single battle action. I think this all works in your proposal but some interesting things happen - like all items in a loot bag having the exact same XP; Magic items getting XP in a battle won by Power.

The contract that maintains the leveling data would do so per item, not bag. While I wanted to include a contract that sought to itemize the loot bags as part of this proposal, I’m trying to keep the scope limited and reduce gas costs to participate (i.e not requiring everyone to mint 8 item NFTs per bag). Under the hood though, if you won the battle via a magic victory, only the magic items in your bags would receive the reward XP.

The HP (greatness * power) becomes a huge influence on each NFTs value. As this is being added retrospectively this could swing the value of NFTs in ways that owners couldn’t have predicted so could be deemed unfair. I’m not a loot bag holder so would be interesting to know what any think.

I agree this is a sensitive topic but loot was intended to be a game primitive. Initially, all we had to value the bags was a rarity but we now know that dom encoded in both item rankings (0-5) and greatness (0-20) into every item providing us with a power rating of 0-100 for each item. For some, this means that their resulting position from a governance perspective will slightly decrease, meaning some may end up having slightly less than 1/8000 of a governance vote. That said, this model also rewards users and levels up their items when they participate in governance so the active users will quickly end up with more powerful bags, giving them more voting power.

Have you thought about how the governance battle code will be written and deployed? Is there a dev team? Or would this be community built?

If the community supports moving to a gamified governance model, we would issue a proposal to the loot DAO to fund formalizing it into a contract design and implementing it.

1 Like
#5

I like the idea of governance being based on participation in some way. And I think this has a good core for long term vision. What makes sense to me is to build something (perhaps alongside Rift or just with it) that focuses on the leveling mechanism. If this really works and becomes an active part of the Loot ecosystem then it can be integrated. It seems hard to me to force some time of participation based governance.

Perhaps the Rift team has ideas about long term vision for using the Rift for governance.

#6

I really like this Nate,

I’m biased here, but the Rift is a perfect fit for this. XP & levels for governance makes perfect sense to me, and I think being able to use the bag/items Level from the bags that participate in the broader Loot verse would make it even better.

This would give the loudest voice to those that play the most in the Lootverse.

The Rift has a leveling mechanism, check out the XP Table. It’d be trivial to implement something that leverages this level data, and rewards XP for participation.

This also opens the door to trade-able items, but that’s a whole other conversation.

#7

There is a project starting now called The Rift which is doing something similar, though it is not taking into account the Loot Items but the Bag as a whole, allowing you to level it up over time and if accepted by other projects through participation in the many Loot projects that are springing up.

https://rift.live/

i am not saying that is what needs to be used, but i do think a participation concept is better than a breakdown of the contents of the bag, when these were minted they were equally priced and now by sheer luck some will have more governance power which i think is not fair, a participation approach will be much fairer as the more you participate in the Loot Verse the more say you have how it will evolve.

#8

Some good clarification there, thank you. I’ll follow up on one point:

That’s interesting but I’m not clear on how the battle is won by a class. If its won by > 50% dominance in all classes does that mean all items earn XP? Also not sure what % dominance means - which may be to my lack of DAO/governance knowledge.

Finally, even though I have a vested interest in the lootverse I don’t (yet) own any og loot. So I’m not eligible for voting on this proposal. It’s so good though, it could be the tipping point to me forking out for an og :slight_smile: