[PROPOSAL] Sunflower Land Team Revenue

[adamhannigan]

The purpose of this proposal is to discuss a mechanism that will enable the creators of Sunflower Land to receive funds to build the project.

The game has been bootstrapped completely by open source developers without any funding. To reach our true vision and create the future of the MetaVerse the team will obviously need a line of revenue to support building the game and the community.

The goal of this proposal is to find a means to produce a revenue which would be used to build out the vision for the game and incentivise contributors. We are a community project, and open source all proposals for community consensus. Please be respectful of those sharing their ideas.

The metrics below are based on acquiring an initial reserve to build the game out. Once the team has sufficient funds a more farmer friendly model can be adopted.

Expenses

• Launch costs are around 10-20K
• Infrastructure costs will be roughly 10K monthly (depending on players)
• Legal + Miscellaneous costs will certainly arise at some point
• We will need at least 8-10 full time employees to build the next milestones in the project (New resources + the creator economy - community crafting where you can launch your own NFTs, tools and resources)

$1 MATIC to play

When creating a farm, players will be required to donate 1 MATIC - 10% would go to a charity of your choice and the rest to the Sunflower Team.

Pros 👍

• Team will receive funding from the start to cover operating costs
• Disincentives bot/skim farmers from creating multiple accounts at a low cost

Cons

• 1 MATIC to play

Withdraw Fee

When withdrawing resources from your farm to your wallet, a withdraw fee would be taken. This will be used to fund the project and support future features like the Wishing Well Liquidity Pool. https://github.com/sunflower-land/sunflower-land/issues/207

Note: These fees are likely to reduce once the team has built a reserve of funds to build the project. The team will not raise fees at any point unless the community votes and agrees on it.

• Less than 10 SFL - 30%
• Less than 100 SFL - 25%
• Less than 1000 SFL - 20%
• More than 1000 SFL - 15%
• More than 5000 SFL - 10%

Pros 👍

• Players are encouraged to hold and use the tokens on their farms
• Farm skimmers (people playing at low margins only to sell the token) are taxed higher than loyal and good players
• Team can use the SFL token for features, liquidity providing or other means
• Players encouraged to build up their empire on one account, instead of multi-accounting
• Once you have the token, you can swap/transfer it as many times as you want without being taxxed.

Cons

• Players need to factor in the withdraw tax to any sort of ROI they develop.

Transaction Fee - $0.1 Fee

In Sunflower Land, players can decide when to sync their data on chain. We anticipate a user would sync to the Blockchain every 1-3 days. Each transaction incurs an operating cost that architecture must support and the team must pay for.

When transferring or withdrawing data from the Blockchain, include a flat 0.1 MATIC fee.

Note: This fee does not apply to saving your farms progress. It only applies when you wish to transfer your assets on-chain.

Open Sea Royalties

Add a royalty fee onto NFTs that are traded on secondary markets. For instance, on Open Sea items apply a 10% on all sales which goes to the teams wallet.

Vote

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[AncientHorse]

I support this idea and like the fact a premine could be avoided.

[silici0]

Since we love the transparency, i would says that since we could check fee rate and the wallet is receiving that fee, everything will be ok. The major problem is that with the token variation price, it maybe hard to control the necessary amount on monthly bases.

On the future lets say that wallet is super health, you always can use fee to burn and control economy.

[adamhannigan]

Since we love the transparency, i would says that since we could check fee rate and the wallet is receiving that fee, everything will be ok. The major problem is that with the token variation price, it maybe hard to control the necessary amount on monthly bases.

On the future lets say that wallet is super health, you always can use fee to burn and control economy.

Definitely. Once the wallet gets healthy and a DAO is formed these sort of ventures would be achievable. The team and community can decide what would be best for the projects health and where the funds can go.

This fee could go to 0 or it could remain and fund other areas in the project such as the idea you mentioned :)

[Pranav-yadav]

Taxing token buyers instead of Players seems the best approach. I support the proposal of Token Sale Fee 👍

[defido]

I totally support a tax mechanism on the token if you put that into place. It's the best way to get instant funding from the buy & sell of the token.

2% is too low though, I would suggest 6-8%. That makes sure at the start you can fund your project. Then, once you become more successful, it can be lowered.

Better to have a higher amount of money to make the game better, than to have not enough, otherwise the innovative ideas the community will love to see and the things you want to build are always out of reach.

Going down is always welcome, going up causes complaints.

[zeldamajora]

as a player i don't mind to be taxed 2% for swapping my hard earn Sunflower Land Token knowing i'm contributing to build this awesome game.so yeah for the fee as a buyer or seller . a 2% as a buyer and let's say 2% or 1% as a player

[adamhannigan]

@defido That is a good point, going up will cause a lot of issues. We can always go down.

Perhaps a 5% fee is a good middle ground here.

[defido]

@defido That is a good point, going up will cause a lot of issues. We can always go down.

Perhaps a 5% fee is a good middle ground here.

I will happily ape into 10%+ coins, and have so very often. If your project is rocking even 10% doesn't bother me. Clifford_inu has a 15% sell. It hit 100M MC in one day. Baby Doge is doing fine at 10%.

You guys smashed it last time, if you hit that scale again, rewarding the community by going down is great. But yeah, going up, always unhappy customers.

5% is fine, but honestly if you said 10%, but 5% of that goes directly into development/team and 5% into marketing/whatever else is needed. I wouldn't bat an eye.

I personally think 5% isn't enough, but it's a team decision. These things cost real money to run. If it was me, it would be 7% at least. As then I have room to split % into the areas that are needed. At 2% I can't split anything at all.

[Rofrtd]

@defido good points here! Lowering the tax is always welcome. Thanks for your feedback!

[adamhannigan]

The other approach we can take is that we tax sells and not buys.

This would encourage people to hold onto their tokens and encourage new people to join the community and hold.

[Rofrtd]

The other approach we can take is that we tax sells and not buys.

This would encourage people to hold onto their tokens and encourage new people to join the community and hold.

Yeah I think is a good option too, but this would tax all the players rather than the buyers only! But would definitely encourage people to hold.

[defido]

The other approach we can take is that we tax sells and not buys.

This would encourage people to hold onto their tokens and encourage new people to join the community and hold.

Tax buys, otherwise they buy and never sell and you're in the same problem of a lack of funds to fund the project. Selling you could set a different tax rate, which is becoming common.

It's like giving someone an iPhone to use from the Apple store and then only getting the money back in 2 years when they sell it.

You actually shift the funding burden into yourselves and have to fund it yourselves just to keep up with demand. The more you grow, the more it costs, but you made $0 as people were onboarded.

The idea would be that they play the game and make back the taxes, just like any real world taxation. It's a farm, farms pay taxes. Assets cost money to buy, yada yada.

I think you'll find the players will get pretty clever and start making spreadsheets and tax tools to know how to still make a profit. Of which they still will.

These are just my thoughts, the only ones that can know if they can sustain the server & people costs, will be yourselves :D

[Rofrtd]

The other approach we can take is that we tax sells and not buys. This would encourage people to hold onto their tokens and encourage new people to join the community and hold.

Tax buys a little, otherwise they buy and never sell and you're in the same problem of a lack of funds to fund the project. Selling you could set a different tax rate, which is becoming common.

It's like giving someone an iPhone to use from the Apple store and then only getting the money back in 2 years when they sell it.

You actually shift the funding burden into yourselves and have to fund it yourselves just to keep up with demand. The more you grow, the more it costs, but you made $0 as people were onboarded.

The idea would be that they play the game and make back the taxes, just like any real world taxation. It's a farm, farms pay taxes. Assets cost money to buy, yada yada.

These are just my thoughts, the only ones that can know if they can sustain the server & people costs, will be yourselves :D

And we can use the same idea "We can always lower the tax" in the future if needed.

[defido]

The other approach we can take is that we tax sells and not buys. This would encourage people to hold onto their tokens and encourage new people to join the community and hold.

Tax buys a little, otherwise they buy and never sell and you're in the same problem of a lack of funds to fund the project. Selling you could set a different tax rate, which is becoming common. It's like giving someone an iPhone to use from the Apple store and then only getting the money back in 2 years when they sell it. You actually shift the funding burden into yourselves and have to fund it yourselves just to keep up with demand. The more you grow, the more it costs, but you made $0 as people were onboarded. The idea would be that they play the game and make back the taxes, just like any real world taxation. It's a farm, farms pay taxes. Assets cost money to buy, yada yada. These are just my thoughts, the only ones that can know if they can sustain the server & people costs, will be yourselves :D

And we can use the same idea "We can always lower the tax" in the future if needed.

Tax is 10%, community outrage and then OK, 'we lowered taxes'.

Tax is 0%, we're changing it to 10%, COMMUNITY RAGE.

Don't worry about taxes, focus on the game play and things, focus on funding it to be a GREAT game, the more that goes into that, the less anyone cares about % this or % that. The more you scale, the less taxes are needed, the more you find your footing in in-game revenue, etc etc.

This is a community decision? I vote TAX US. 👍 Others might think otherwise. Maybe there will be a happy medium between bottom line and community sentiment.

[Synedes]

I loved the idea as I have another one, you can add a donation (as in v1 where we donated to other institutions) but a donation that we do for the project itself.

[Rofrtd]

I loved the idea as I have another one, you can add a donation (as in v1 where we donated to other institutions) but a donation that we do for the project itself.

As in another option for donations, still have the NGOs and SFL as donation options.

[spencerdezartsmith]

The other approach we can take is that we tax sells and not buys. This would encourage people to hold onto their tokens and encourage new people to join the community and hold.

Tax buys, otherwise they buy and never sell and you're in the same problem of a lack of funds to fund the project. Selling you could set a different tax rate, which is becoming common.

It's like giving someone an iPhone to use from the Apple store and then only getting the money back in 2 years when they sell it.

You actually shift the funding burden into yourselves and have to fund it yourselves just to keep up with demand. The more you grow, the more it costs, but you made $0 as people were onboarded.

The idea would be that they play the game and make back the taxes, just like any real world taxation. It's a farm, farms pay taxes. Assets cost money to buy, yada yada.

I think you'll find the players will get pretty clever and start making spreadsheets and tax tools to know how to still make a profit. Of which they still will.

These are just my thoughts, the only ones that can know if they can sustain the server & people costs, will be yourselves :D

Yep I agree with this. Taxing the buys makes more sense. The more the game grows the more the funding grows the better the game gets. Repeat 😄

[adamhannigan]

@defido @spencerdezartsmith @Rofrtd @silici0 @AncientHorse @Pranav-yadav @Synedes

I have revised a few options on this Proposal including the 'Withdraw fee' and the 'NFT fee'.

After playing around with the tax fee approach it introduces a few problems:

• Liquidity providers are taxxed
• Players are encouraged to sell
• People will opt for centralised exchanges.

I'm leaning towards the Withdraw approach but would appreciated your thoughts. The 'Withdraw fee' is a mechanism which will favour loyal and long term players and people to farm on a single account. It also makes it much easier for newcomers and liquidity providers to swap the underlying token.

[Meowgikarp]

1. Agree that a withdraw fee would work better - however, from the player perspective, I'm not sure if the smaller "investors/players" will cry foul because visually it looks like taxing the poor and allowing the rich to extract wealth easier. In addition, players with multiple accounts will be "taxed" when transferring SFL from one of their own account to another. For example if I have 3 accounts and I want to transfer my SFL to one "main account", I will need to pay the fee. This might actually be a good thing because it discourages multiple accounts. On the other hand, it also will cost more for me to withdraw the SFL to swap for other resources, such that I would rather use barter trade rather than use SFL.

2. Another way is perhaps a locked SFL mechanism, similar to Defi Kingdoms. For example, at farm level 1, 90% SFL you gain from each harvest is inherently "locked" and cannot be withdrawn. The locked SFL will only be gradually unlocked over time. However, you can still use locked SFL immediately to purchase in-game only items like NFTs and seeds and stuff, you just cannot cash it out directly. Also, the higher your farm level, the more % of your harvest are unlocked (e.g. lvl 5 farm = 70% of SFL of harvested plants are "locked", lvl 10 farm = 45% SFL "locked"). Certain NFTs might also allow a small number of SFL "unlocking" each day. This will incentivise players to build up their farm, enjoy the gameplay and be rewarded for it. It will also ensure that "bots" which manage to get through the checks cannot cash out immediately.

[Meowgikarp]

Oh yes I also wanted to say that I fully support taxing of some form to ensure that the team is funded sufficiently to run the game, inject liquidity when required, as well as perform some airdrops/marketing stuff. These are important aspects of ensuring stability in the game.

Keep up the good work Sirs !

[ Discord nick- Train88 : p ]

[InuBakaBo]

Glad you like my withdraw fee suggestion!

[adamhannigan]

@Meowgikarp The locked SFL sounds like a really nice idea.

This is something I would like to explore, but will be a bit too much work to implement for our launch date.

[InuBakaBo]

Yes I agree with @Meowgikarp, the locked token system is another mechanic that I have seen been implemented on multiple different games/projects

[AncientHorse]

Just an idea and I'm not sure if it's technically possible. What if instead of the burn pool being at Quickswap, Sunflower Land had its own uniswap based pool and all the fees went to the devs? This has a couple benefits:

1) Whether someone is buying or selling, a small fee goes to devs (albeit smaller than 5% but with a much much higher volume). The player would pay the normal exchange fee except this fee would go to devs, funded by an LP they couldn't directly withdraw from. 2) When SFL is sold, it would only be sold 50% in volume because of the paired token could also be sold (wmatic, dai, etc.). 3) Over time, because of the burn, the liquidity would be so high this pool would almost always have the best exchange rate. 4) A link to sushi and quick could also be provided so players knew they had a choice but if a "Support the Devs" note was on the official pool, I suspect overwhelming majority of players would use the official pool based on how passionate they are in Discord.

Players could still choose to shop around for best exchange rate but the game could provide a link to Sunflowerland pool by default. Apologize if this is a silly idea and I know that would be another huge piece to code prior to launch day.

(edited to modify assumptions) (edited for another idea because I'm liking this idea)

[defido]

The

@defido @spencerdezartsmith @Rofrtd @silici0 @AncientHorse @Pranav-yadav @Synedes

I have revised a few options on this Proposal including the 'Withdraw fee' and the 'NFT fee'.

After playing around with the tax fee approach it introduces a few problems:

• Liquidity providers are taxxed
• Players are encouraged to sell
• People will opt for centralised exchanges.

I'm leaning towards the Withdraw approach but would appreciated your thoughts. The 'Withdraw fee' is a mechanism which will favour loyal and long term players and people to farm on a single account. It also makes it much easier for newcomers and liquidity providers to swap the underlying token.

The CEX issue is only short term, it's not likely to list on a major exchange very soon, and in that time, the taxes raised could fund months, then they can be turned off again anyway. Which is where in game sales taxes or 'touching the metamask sell button' come into play. Such as a small MATIC fee for every time you harvest.

As well as selling upgraded farms and other things for in game revenue.

The buy/sell tax is only short term, until the game matures and the in game sales can compensate. At least I think so.

[adamhannigan]

@AncientHorse Great idea! But a lot of effort for our launch 😅 An in-game Auction house mechanic will appear one day which is better rates to and facilitates swapping of in-game items and resources

[adamhannigan]

@defido Great points.

It definitely is the frame we need to look at this problem - What is a short term solution that can fund the startup of the game and give us 6-12 months of development.

The game will largely turn into an NFT creator economy game and that is where we will make the revenue.

[defido]

@defido Great points.

It definitely is the frame we need to look at this problem - What is a short term solution that can fund the startup of the game and give us 6-12 months of development.

The game will largely turn into an NFT creator economy game and that is where we will make the revenue.

Taxing helped SAFEMOON & BABYDOGE scale, then SAFEMOON went down and still survives. I honestly think make it 10% flat and make it simple. You can always change it later, and as you say, you're an NFT game in the end. This is a short solution and 10% is fair. I actually don't hear many complaints in the BDC community about 10%. If you want to sweeten the deal, allow some reflections and remove them later too.

This is a short term funding thing, and maybe an ICO, but I feel they're against the community part.

Whatever it is, a lot of suggestions are really complex. You can add taxation to a marketing wallet in solidity in about 5 minutes and turn it off in 1.

[adamhannigan]

@defido Do you have any examples of the source code used for these mechanisms? My understanding of the SafeMoon model is that the tax is reflected amongst the holders, and liquidity is burnt (not sent to the developer team).

Both of these models rely on:

1. Team is incentivised by a huge pre-mine
2. The team is providing significant liquidity (SafeMoon excludes themselves as LPs from this tax)

Introducing a tax could discourage liquidity providers. Similar to Sunflower Farmers, it will be the community that provides the LP.

[defido]

@defido Do you have any examples of the source code used for these mechanisms? My understanding of the SafeMoon model is that the tax is reflected amongst the holders, and liquidity is burnt (not sent to the developer team).

Both of these models rely on:

1. Team is incentivised by a huge pre-mine
2. The team is providing significant liquidity (SafeMoon excludes themselves as LPs from this tax)

Introducing a tax could discourage liquidity providers. Similar to Sunflower Farmers, it will be the community that provides the LP.

You can take a look at the OSS contract we are working for projects to launch with, it has single contract address and we are working with a bridge to be the first permissionless bridge (They're doing the bridge, we just wanted to create a nice token launcher that launched multi chain and on a bridge from day one), no more BSC only.

BUT, it has reflections, burns, wallets etc.

BDC holders have over $100,000,000 in liquidity locked I think. They will stake it, if it's worth it.

If you're new to reflections as a holder, you'll find it doesn't discourage anyone from staking/holding. But it surely fattens the holders wallets and they love joking about it when people sell.

https://github.com/defido/DefidoContractForGood/blob/main/contracts/Token.sol

[adamhannigan]

@defido Thanks for sharing, this is extremely useful. One concern with this approach is that it adds a lot of complexity to our ERC20 token. The testing/auditing required would likely stretch out our release date - given that most of our focus is on designing the game itself (not the token).

[defido]

@defido Thanks for sharing, this is extremely useful. One concern with this approach is that it adds a lot of complexity to our ERC20 token. The testing/auditing required would likely stretch out our release date - given that most of our focus is on designing the game itself (not the token).

Do you mean adding just the buy/sell tax? That's just the UNIROUTER setup, which has been audited 1000x times from Sunday, as it was forked mostly from SAFEMOON V2 contract, which passed CERTIK.

But yeah I understand that theres a difficulty between "we need money pretty soon" and "we need to make money from in game items".

In that case, just taxing the in game player whenever they interact with their wallet for a transaction is the absolute easiest. It's like a CC payment in that case. 1% of every transaction + 30 cents etc etc

People were making an absolute mint, charging a % every-time they transact is not negative to me, they're still making money, and they're playing to make money. Which means, that you also need to make money.

[adamhannigan]

@defido The tax on the transaction definitely would be the quickest development approach.

Some numbers:

We have 50,000 beta sign ups. Conservatively, let's expect we have 10,000 on launch day. Each player will save once to the blockchain per day. Given a 20 cent fee, this will earn the project 2,000 USD per day.

At a minimum, we would need to earn around 5,000 USD to support building out a team.

We could consider taxing more heavily on the withdraw functionality. I.e. if you are withdrawing 1000 SFL (and the rate is 1SFL-1USD) you would be taxed up to 10USD (assuming you were going to sell on an exchange anyway)

[zeldamajora]

i suggest to go for withdraw fees and transaction fees and adding donation to the dev team like in v1 with charities ( a donation 2$ for exemple for every account old and new ones ) to boost the reserve initialy

[RogGarcia]

It might be interesting, in addition to the possible fees (I agree with all of them), some kind of spontaneous financing, within the mechanics of the game. If the reward chest is still in V2, instead of redeeming it, we could donate the value contained in it to the development of the game, in exchange we would receive a non-tradable token, which would be necessary to craft unique NFTs to be released in the future.

[adamhannigan]

@zeldamajora What do you think people would be willing to pay? 1 MATIC sounds reasonable - 0.1 Charity donation included

[AncientHorse]

@zeldamajora What do you think people would be willing to pay? 1 MATIC sounds reasonable - 0.1 Charity donation included

Honestly, this is more than reasonable. I support it 100%.

[noprudhon]

@zeldamajora What do you think people would be willing to pay? 1 MATIC sounds reasonable - 0.1 Charity donation included

Very reasonable indeed, considering the cost of most of the P2E out there, that's virtually nothing as an entry level, yet it can benefits you (and us in the long run, since you'll have more funds to make a better game). I also support it 100%.

[stevew00dy]

I like the idea of a max cap offchain. So at the end of 24 hours prompt to save, after 3 days prompt to save again, after a week force to save.

Also if resources reach a threshold prompt to save, if they exceed that threshold by a % then force to save. This will stop any shock mints hitting the blockchain that can derail the economy.

[stevew00dy]

I think the donation to charity should be 25% - It feels like a better number and 0.25 Matic per player is still lower than the 0.3 that you recommended in the first version.

25% charity 50% operations cost 25% future growth

[zeldamajora]

lower

i think that for a start 0.1matic charity donation is good after a certain period it can be raised to 0.25 ....be sure that if the game has the needed budget it will continue to fund charities more and more but if not and the money goes elsewhere the developement of the game will get slower and that's what we try to avoid here...so to resume here : funds for the projects first and then charities

[adamhannigan]

@stevewoody82 Great to see your face pop up in the Github issues 💪

20-30% is where I want to see the donations going. Based on some other comments, it seems easier to reduce the funds going to devs instead of increasing them. Starting at 10% means we can always go up if the project is financially fit. If you initially give too much to charity and cannot finance the project it will be a bit tougher to take the money away from the charity donations (at least I would feel unethical about doing that 😓 )

[silici0]

Looking in the NFT games, they having removing stakes, starting using FEE to pool and burn. Keeping in mind that fee can be at different percents accordingly with amount that user hold or how long the player is holding. For example, withdraw in the first week will have 20% fee than 15%, after 2 weeks 10%.. with mechanics like that you can increase LP, burn to keep price healthy. Another example is how much you hold will increase or decrease fee rate..

Maybe NFT crafting shoud reward creator, LP, devs pool and burn some tokens ;)

[Ramtin9]

Idk if it has been suggested before or not, you guys should add an in-game charity tap to pay any amount of Metic or SFL, for players who want to volunteer and help the team (apart from the initial 1 metic).

[adamhannigan]

@Ramtin9 Yes, we want to gamify donations and give the player something in return! I.e. to access something to that chops down trees faster you would need to donate to a deforestation charity. To collect water, you need to donate to the charity project.

In these cases we would want majority of proceeds to go to the Charity ❤️

[stevew00dy]

Some comments in the Ambassador chat are talking about how it shouldn't be called a donation anymore as it's not all going to charity. Rather a *fee

This made me think about a narative where a popup at the start - builds the lore around the Goblins.

Goblins have taken over your farm ... They are willing to let you take back ownership but you need to talk to them first. Click to continue

(Pay 1 Matic to get control of your farm)

Goblin Leader WTF You gonna do about it .... Pay me !

Reason - If you can make people laugh, they might overlook a one time fee, also it sets the tone with the lore around the gobins. There could also be a read more icon that explains the breakdown of the cost.

[percusshon]

Will the SFL required for withdrawal fees be reduced when the half-life is reached?

[adamhannigan]

@percusshon Over time we will adjust this based on the difficultly it takes to earn that much SFL.

In the future when it takes a week to earn 10 SFL (for example), the tax would likely be lessened so it does not impact players who worked hard

[MaddiFurr]

I think overall this is a smart approach to this issue. I also stand behind the fact that devs should be paid for their hard work in some way. I would like to offer one suggestion, the ability to donate either MATIC or SFF to the project from within the game. Completely optional but a way to help support the devs.

Can't wait to get in!

[arianebrandao]

I can't agree with the "Withdraw Fee" values, they are very high. Maybe lower a bit the quantity of SLF required for the percentage and allow 0%-2% in the minimum percentage.