The ONIX NEAR Network - A Community owned and governed NEAR Network

Ecosystem Projects
1

Onix is a meme-based network that derives its origins from the Pokemon character Onix.

ABOUT ONIX

The NEAR community with the support of the Open Shard Alliance (OSA) is pleased to announce the launch of a community-owned and governed NEAR network named ONIX. The ONIX network will be governed by ONIX Token holders and the ONIX DAO.

Abstract

NEAR provides an open TestNet for the community. The TestNet, in its current form, doesn’t have incentives to beta test projects and integrations. For this reason, an incentivized TestNet with real-world value where different actors specialize and provide services with use-cases and rewards is needed. The value will be driven by network utility, providing integrations with existing protocols, support dApps dev, and training for new validators.

Context

GuildNet is a community-governed, free TestNet on NEAR Protocol that enables validators to learn how to validate on NEAR and as an early-stage dApp development chain. The network relies on the Open Shards Alliance (OSA) guild to govern, manage and monitor the network along with devs to build apps.

Goals of GuildNet

GuildNet was initially created to onboard additional validators during StakeWars II and has continued since then. Through use, it was discovered that GuildNet played a central role in the overall ecosystem as a funnel for NEAR validators and early ecosystem adopters. It is through this utility that it was decided to incentivize the network to bring it to an independent operational state and to promote it as the community-governed TestNet! The overall goal is to create an adversarial environment to test and grow each successive protocol upgrade where validators train, create tools & sustain the long-term vision of MainNet.

USE CASE

The primary goal of the new ONIX network is to provide opportunities for greater decentralization through expanding the number of validators, shards, and lowering the seat price by a magnitude of 1000x from NEAR MainNet. The network will also serve as an incentivized TestNet allowing for experimental features of Nightshade to be tested while lowering the barrier of entry for validators, developers and web3 enthusiasts.

Launch Timeline

Q3-Q4

Key Facts

  • Genesis: 1 Billion non-transferrable x-ONIX will be minted for a 100% community sale on NEAR MainNet.
  • Holders of x-ONIX will be able to claim ONIX once the network launches
  • 100% of the tokens will be sold on Skyward will be unlocked, but non-transferrable
  • The ONIX DAO will receive the proceeds from the sale
  • The DAO will buy a portion of tokens with the sale proceeds for grants and operations
  • Validator grants will be available to existing GuildNet validators and new ones after the DAO has purchased tokens from the open market.
  • New Issuance and Economics: 15% of additional supply is issued the first year to support the network as epoch rewards, of which 90% goes to validators (14.5% total) and 10% to the protocol DAO (0.5% total). 30% of transaction fees are rebated to the contracts touched by the transaction and 70% are burned. Because of this burning, at high levels of transaction throughput, the network could become deflationary. New supply creation begins at Genesis.
  • Emissions after year 1 will be adjusted by the ONIX DAO, move towards a goal of 5% emissions or as determined by community needs and use.

Primary Goals:

  • Test NEAR Experimental Features
  • Training ground for Validators
  • TestNet for dApp development
  • Create an environment for specialized entities hardening the network: engineering networks providing:
    • Simulations
    • Integrations
    • Token economics
    • Bug bounties
  • Lower SLA / Uptime with communication
  • 1000’s of Validators, 100’s of Shards
  • Wallet, Explorer, RPC services

Tokenomics

See details: [ONIX Tokenomics v2 - Google Docs]

ONIX DAO Constituion

[ONIX DAO Constitution - Google Docs]

Conclusion

The Open Shards Alliance and the community at large believe an incentivized TestNet that is managed by and for the community is the next logical step. We invite the community to discuss the governance proposal at length and provide feedback.

18 Likes
2

Cool conception!

Glad to be one of the GuildNet validators and definitely will support the ONIX network as a validator as well

5 Likes
3

Also supporting this initiative as a proud GuildNet validator. Would be happy to see how dApp developers & validators alike find this TestNet env paramount to facilitating a scalable and secured NEAR mainnet :slightly_smiling_face:

4 Likes
4

Definitely supporting this Project, Open Shards Alliance is very implicated in NEAR Ecosystem !
Love it <3

1 Like
5

I like the idea.

What is the demand that will drive the token price?

1 Like
6

I don’t think selling all supply through Skyward is the right solution:

  1. The token distribution will be targetted towards big NEAR holders - only people who has abundance of NEAR will buy this tokens
  2. Bear market is bad for doing a sale. Conservative people will prefer to keep NEAR rather than selling it for a new risky token. Again this will direct the distribution towards people with abundance of NEAR.
  3. Making a whole supply on sale on Skyward is really bad from the economical evaluation. The whole market cap will be sold in one run, making the market cap rather low, especially in the bear market. Quick math. If you think that the market cap should be $50M (which is really small for a chain), then there is no chance that people will spend $50M in one run for a test net. Especially during the bear market. However there is more chance that people will spend $5M for 10% supply.
  4. Selling everything will expose the whole market to pump & dump scenario. Since most of the total supply will be owned by wales, they will have all power and to manipulate the market easily.

I don’t think updating the inflation contract will change much:

  • most of the tokens will be owned by whales
  • they will stake and continue to dominate

Instead, I really advice to consider selling only a minority share of the token supply, and use the rest of the supply for funding projects, tools, DAOs etc…

3 Likes
7

Think it’s a great move, similar to Kusama on DOT and Assembly on IOTA. Great to have an independent playground for new Nigthshade/Near protocol features.

2 Likes
8

I agree to Robert. To stabilize token price we need to have to support demand on it. It would be better to consult with somebody who is strong in tokenomics to avoid common mistakes and pitfalls. May be, most active community members, node runners, code developers should have some bonus on token distribution. But still ONIX token is the next step of community development.

2 Likes
9

brilliant. excellent plan. only thing not super convinced about is doing full launch on skyward.

1 Like
10

A bear market is the best time to launch a token. You only have dedicated people involved and not the people trying to turn a quick profit. Whales and speculators are inevitable.

There isn’t a fairer way of distributing tokens than a 100% sale. Everyone is buying at the same price and there aren’t any backroom private sales.

If the sale is less than 100% of the mint there needs to be a clear plan for the allocation of those tokens. It isn’t healthy for a project to sit on a large quantities of tokens.

I do have one concern with a 100% token sale. The DAO needs to have tokens to delegate to new validators. 10% of supply would likely be enough for this purpose.

Let’s not forget the primary goal of this network is to support the development of NEAR and the acceptance of a higher level of risk than mainnet can’t accept. If Onix is successful as an investment, great, but economic evaluation isn’t the primary goal.

1 Like
11

The token price is purely a derivative of the function it plays as a utility token to the incentivized TestNet.

12

The current proposal identifies that the ONIX DAO would purchase tokens from the open market with the proceeds, dependent upon ONIX token holder voting approval.

The ONIX DAO also receives part of the protocol emissions each epoch, and ONIX Token holders could vote to seed DAO with a higher percentage for some time.

However, it appears there is a general consensus that the ONIX DAO should hold some tokens in reserve. In this scope, the tokens would be used for:

  1. Grant delegations to validators
  2. Tokens as rewards to contributors
  3. Grants for ecosystem development

A critical dependency on the launch of the project is the token voting mechanism via AstroDAO. This would be required since the ONIX token holders are the voting power in DAO. It is scheduled for the end of Q3 to early Q4.

Prior to the token sale, there would need to be a community call to establish the percentage of tokens that the ONIX DAO would maintain, if any.

13

This is a great point and aligns with the current vision. Will set up a call within the next week to discuss the percentage. 10% sounds reasonable; let’s see what the community can agree on.

14

Do I can buy 100k of tokens for USD 10k and then sell all of them for USD 15k, which will potentially drive the token price down. (10% is a lot! to buy!).

So 90% of tokens won’t be in DAO, won’t be in any foundation. It will be in hands of speculators. We are talking about potentially big project.

15

We had hoped to get more community input on this proposal, based on this, there is not strong enough support/need, and with the potential legalities around the token, this proposal will not move forward at this time. Thank you to all that replied and showed interest!

16

sorry to hear that. it sounded like a great plan. but, in my humble opinion, getting robust support for ANYTHING nowadays seems to be quite a challenge. it seems harsh to let that be the determining factor. indeed, this could mean that the plan should be as simple as possible, so that it is executable under current circumstance. but I would think that it is undoubtable that in the long run such a plan would be super important.