It seems to me that GRT is great example how to NOT structure tokenomics:
GRT is a work token. The Graph Network consists of 4 participants:
- Consumers: End-Users that pay for queries
- Indexers: Provide indexing and querying services by staking GRT. The more GRT staked, the more they can index and earn. Providing bad queries will result in their stake being slashed
- Delegators: Stake their GRT with indexers to earn a percentage of the indexer fees
- Curators: Lock/bond their GRT tokens to specific subgraphs to signal the network what data should be retrieved next.
GRT has staking, but ultimately have an immense sell pressure due to:
- 60% distribution to insiders and VCs
- Sizable unlock 3 month after lunch where circ. supply went 4x + VC token unlocks (which may be a slow bleed, as opposed to an instant dump).
- GRT rewards for community (indexers, delegators, curators, etc).
- Inflation (800k+ tokens daily).
- Price action followed consequently and "community" was dumped on.
This is concerning considering the immense sell pressure that will likely outpace buy pressure, especially since the tokenomics have not been thought out well enough to allow for price appreciation. With a total supply of 10.1 billion tokens during the first three years, even reaching $3-4 per GRT (which is a generous estimate) would require it to reach 40 BMC. Therefore, if someone purchased GRT tokens at $1-2, they would only be looking at a 2x increase in value over the course of three years, which is not very impressive for the crypto market. I mean while a 2x increase in value over 3 years may be considered reasonable in the stock market, it pales in comparison to the 10-100x gains that many cryptocurrencies experience in just one year. While the project itself is impressive, the tokenomics are very concerning and it remains to be seen whether the GRT tokens will hold their value over the long term or if they will experience dilution and be worth less as time goes on (Pic #3).
Source: Twitter.com/graphprotocol; The Graph Docs; Coingecko. Show Less
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