Right now, fees are paid in ETH which is volatile.
If fees were paid in DAI (stablecoin pegged to USD), it would be easier for traditional corporate entities, and each of us, to understand and use Livepeer.
Discuss.
2 Likes
I agree with the stable coin… but the problem with most of the stablecoin (DAI in this case), is not listed in major exchanges yet.
yah agreed. Some product questions that don’t have simple answers…
- single collateral or multi collateral DAI?
- what happens if the DAI peg breaks?
- any other stable coins that should be supported?
There are answers, but the reason I say they aren’t simple is because they may create a crazy-complicated user experience, and requirements for what needs to be built across every Livepeer tool to support something like “services can be priced in any token.”
Definitely a good objective to get stable coin support though!
I think this is a solid idea as well, but a few things to consider:
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Definitely multi-collateral DAI over single collateral DAI. The entire system will be shifting to MCD by end of year 2019 and sunsetting the SCD product shortly after that. No reason to incorporate SCD into Livepeer if it’s just going to be obsolete. Another aspect to consider is that the MCD contracts will not be battle tested for a little while. So this initiative should be considered, but tabled until we have better info about MCD
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It might be worth it to keep both ETH & DAI as fee payment options in the event that the DAI peg does break. Just utilize some sort of on-chain swap (i.e. Uniswap) to issue the staker whichever currency they want
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For the time being, I think it’s wise to just consider DAI due to its censorship resistant/trustless nature. Incorporating one of the fiat-backed stablecoins introduces counterparty risk to the Livepeer system
I disagree, it could be an option in the future but should not be definitive.
ETH is still way more liquid than DAI , so converting earnings from ETH to USD will cause less slippage then DAI to USD (bills gotta be paid too).
It’s kind of the same reasoning why paying fees in an ERC20 token specific to a platform is a bad idea. There is often not enough liquidity to convert earnings into real money.
Sending ETH is also cheaper than sending DAI.
ETH and DAI are both real money
Well regardless of what is real money or not the point I was trying to make was that of liquidity.
I’d add that not all livepeer users/orchestrators might necessarily be convinced of the benefits of DAI.
Perhaps ERC20 PMs can be on the grant wishlist or a hackaton project. There’s a few other potential things there like ZK PM redemptions.
Can you share you data points which support your assertion that “not all livepeer users/orchestrators might necessarily be convinced of the benefits of DAI.”? For example, what concerns have been raised about it?
Having this as something that the community decides on, or builds, is a nice idea…
However the final gatekeepers for upgrading the protocol are the holders of the private keys for the contracts - so it likely won’t happen until those humans consider it to be a priority, and it would seem that they don’t yet.
I’ve just paid almost $6 dollars (0.0276 ETH) to unstake just 25 LPT. This is absolutely unacceptable.
There was some good discussion in Discord recently about enabling a node to continuously adjust pricing based on the current ETH/USD exchange rate as an alternative to using Dai for payments. I’ve included the chat logs below for reference.
Discord Chat Logs
[22-May-20 11:27 AM] dob#6746
I noticed the “fees should be paid in Dai” thread bubble to the top of the forum recently. There’s a lot of tradeoffs and complexity to consider here, but this is a good example of the sort of proposal that would now be possible for someone to champion through the LIP + Polling process.
[22-May-20 01:11 PM] NicoV#7103
I recently posted a first idea on how to do stable USD pricing without having to resort to anything like DAI
I plan to expand on it once I got some free bandwith đź’˛USD Transcode Pricing - HackMD
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[22-May-20 01:14 PM] NicoV#7103
There’s quite a few arguments against stablecoin integrations into the PM protocol in the forseeable future, too many for me to be comfortable with.
[22-May-20 01:15 PM] NicoV#7103
The above proposal can even be expanded to alter LPT economics and make it a utility token on top of a staking token while still having stable USD pricing if we would want to , haven’t thought about the implications there just a wild idea that I just had
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[22-May-20 01:16 PM] NicoV#7103
The proposal above can be an external plugin as well because we can change the price through the CLI/webserver endpoints
[22-May-20 01:17 PM] Gavin | figment.network#8446
Would be cool to use LPT to back a dedicated Livepeer stablecoin.
[22-May-20 01:18 PM] NicoV#7103
well the gist is that the asset price is decoupled from the service price (pixel pricing) so we can adjust pixel pricing based on the target USD price we want to achieve and the current price of the asset we denominate our pricing in
[22-May-20 01:18 PM] NicoV#7103
don’t need a seperate coin or anything, just a service that checks exchange rate and sends a request to your orchestrator to periodically update your price per pixel
[22-May-20 01:20 PM] NicoV#7103
eg currently if eth price would fall by 50% I would have to double my wei/pixel to get the same USD for my job
[22-May-20 01:21 PM] Gavin | figment.network#8446
ah okay, so use a collection of oracles and then service providers could accept whatever as currency (as long as it’s supported by the protocol)?
[22-May-20 01:22 PM] NicoV#7103
Yeah , set of price “oracles”. the PM protocol would still work with ETH under the hood
[22-May-20 01:22 PM] NicoV#7103
but the resulted USD gained would be way less prone to ETH fluctuation
[22-May-20 01:23 PM] NicoV#7103
Changes to the asset being used for the PM protocol would require protocol changes to the contracts
[22-May-20 01:23 PM] NicoV#7103
they don’t support ERC20 right now
[22-May-20 01:23 PM] NicoV#7103
And I think having many acceptable currencies will fraction the network in terms of what deposits/reserves a broadcaster holds and what an orchestrator is willing to accept
[22-May-20 01:29 PM] Gavin | figment.network#8446
And I think having many acceptable currencies will fraction the network in terms of what deposits/reserves a broadcaster holds and what an orchestrator is willing to accept
@NicoV do you regard this to be a desirable or undesirable effect?
[22-May-20 01:30 PM] NicoV#7103
undesirable
[22-May-20 01:34 PM] NicoV#7103
It’s just a means of settlement anyway, as long as the end result is a stable stream of income not impacted by asset volatility it doesn’t matter what the underlying settlement layer is so why not stick to the most liquid and efficient one and keep a heterogenous network in that regard. At least that’s my opinion on the matter.
[22-May-20 01:36 PM] NicoV#7103
People want to pay their deposit/reserve with DAI? fine, we can build a uniswap plugin in front of those funding operations
[22-May-20 01:38 PM] NicoV#7103
I think it’s good to think about it in terms of what needs to be part of the core protocol and what can be secondary services
[22-May-20 01:52 PM] dob#6746
yes very good point about how this could just be handled via a service, rather than needing to modify the protocol. Orchestrator and Broadcaster sets their price in USD (or other local fiat), and a service just keeps their node up to date to adjust the ETH rate under the hood automatically.
[22-May-20 01:53 PM] adam#9992
Yeah I like that approach a lot
[22-May-20 02:00 PM] NicoV#7103
And other than the complexity there is just not a single stablecoin I feel 100% confident in using at such scale right now.
Even DAI has debt ceilings of 10% for USDC and WBTC each, that means 20% of current MCD can possibly be in currencies that are subject to custodianship
[22-May-20 02:00 PM] NicoV#7103
I’d rather wait and see how that space evolves
[22-May-20 02:00 PM] NicoV#7103
Also what would happen to your deopsit and reserve when your CDP gets liquidated, etc etc
[22-May-20 02:19 PM] chrishobcroft#8162
So I know this might be totally off, but it occurs to me that by extending the PM to include DAI, this same mechanism could be used to allow payment in LPT.
I don’t know whether this is something people consider a good idea or not.
Is there also some game to be played here by integrating with onchain liquidity pools (like Uniswap / Kyber), where demander-of-service pays using their desired ERC-20 (or ETH), provider of service receives their desired ERC-20 (or ETH), and all the mechanics under the hood still work on trusty but fiat-unstable ETH which already “works”
[22-May-20 02:27 PM] NicoV#7103
Sure that’s possible but that doesn’t have to be part of the core protocol right, it can just be a client side addition or if you want to do it atomically write a wrapper contract.
[22-May-20 02:28 PM] NicoV#7103
So I know this might be totally off, but it occurs to me that by extending the PM to include DAI, this same mechanism could be used to allow payment in LPT.
From an interface perspective yes as they are both ERC20. Practically however you would still have to hold deposits and reserves in the respective currencies you would plan to use if one would build something like ERC20-PM
Notes
One thing worth noting is that this design reduces asset volatility exposure, but it does not eliminate it. Furthermore, asset volatility exposure is only reduced during the payment flow, but not during the withdrawal + trade flow. Suppose that a node operator wants to set prices in terms of USD. Continuously adjusting a node’s price in ETH terms so that it corresponds with a desired value in USD terms can ensure that at the time of payment receipt, the node is receiving its desired value in USD terms. However, the ETH/USD exchange rate can fluctuate in between the time of payment receipt and the time at which withdrawn ETH is traded for USD.
Thank you @yondon for capturing this here.
It’s so easy for important and useful communication and information to get lost in the bowels of Discord chat logs!
is this a possible solution ?https://connext.network/
is it possible to use livepeer withe site https?
what is the possible IOTA ou STELLAR?