Autonolas

Background

The Autonolas tokenomics model aims to grow a self-sustaining ecosystem of autonomous services. The scarcest resource in this ecosystem is software developers who, by contributing code, enable the composition of autonomous services. Therefore Autonolas’ tokenomics provides incentives for developers to contribute “useful code”, including whole services or agents or components within services. If developers register their code contributions as NFTs on the Autonolas protocol, they can receive a share of ETH donations made to the services using their code. Anyone can donate (in ETH) to services, for example, as a form of appreciation to developers who have contributed.

In addition to standard donations, Autonolas additionally offers top-ups to some donations. Specifically, donations are programmatically topped up by the protocol with freshly-minted OLAS if the service’s owner is a holder of veOLAS*.

For more information on the Autonolas tokenomics please refer to this link.

Proposal

This DAO governance proposal is designed to broaden the eligibility criteria for receiving OLAS top-ups. Currently, only contributions to services owned by a veOLAS holder* receive OLAS top-ups. Therefore, although developers who have contributed to other services remain eligible to receive ETH donations, they are effectively excluded from the OLAS top-ups.

To ensure OLAS incentives reach more of the active developers and incentivize further ecosystem contributions, this proposal aims to expand the conditions that trigger top-ups. Specifically, it proposes to extend the eligibility for OLAS top-ups to also include contributions to services donated to by an veOLAS holder*.

To make this possible, a modification to the tokenomics smart contract is suggested.

Implications

Currently, anyone can donate to a service, for example to reward developers who contributed. The proposed change means that any veOLAS holder* donating would enable OLAS top-ups.

This change is designed to:

• Increase the developers eligible for OLAS top-ups. Developers simply need any veOLAS holder* to donate to a service to which they have contributed. This is designed to encourage repeated contributions of open-source solutions within the Autonolas ecosystem, strengthening the ecosystem as a whole.
• Increase the incentive to lock OLAS for veOLAS, since veOLAS enables any donator to trigger OLAS top-ups for services to which they and other developers have contributed.

Moreover, this shift aims to increase the flow of OLAS tokens within the network, potentially creating a more dynamic and engaged community of contributors. This could, in turn, help kickstart the envisaged ‘flywheel’ of development, where an increase in valuable contributions leads to more donations, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of growth and innovation.

Conclusion

This proposal to add functionality to the smart contract to enable any veOLAS holder* to boost donations (in ETH) with additional OLAS top-ups is a crucial step toward recognizing and incentivizing contributions to the Autonolas ecosystem, accelerating its growth as a whole.

*Throughout, veOLAS holders need to hold at 10k of veOLAS to qualify for top-ups eligibility.

Technical implementation

Current implementation

Currently, the workflow is the following:

• donators call the depositServiceDonationETH() method on the Treasury contract
• The depositServiceDonationETH() method triggers the call to the Tokenomics method trackServiceDonations() which has a check against the donator address.
• Finally, the tokenomics internal _trackServiceDonations() method is called to collect service donations related information into corresponding data structures. In this method is handled the check for triggering the top-ups.

New proposed implementation (cf. https://github.com/valory-xyz/autonolas-tokenomics/blob/v1.0.1/contracts/Tokenomics.sol)

In order to trigger top-ups also with donator address it is only necessary to modify the _trackServiceDonations() method as follows:

• Add the additional donator address parameter to the method. This donator address can be passed as an argument when _trackServiceDonations() is called by trackServiceDonations().
• To enable top-ups, instead of only checking if the service owner has enough veOLAS contract can add the same check against donator address. Then top-ups are triggered if either the service owner or the donator has enough veOLAS.