Geodnet GIP-7 Conept Proposal + upcoming Geodnet changes

This is now out of date with GIP-7, GIP-8, and GIP-9 opened for discussion. New forum post:

https://moken.io/forum/382/geodnet-gip-7-is-now-gip-7-8-and-9-tldr-here-is-the-not-short-summary

Geodnet has published a Medium article to begin socializing what might be included in GIP-7: https://medium.com/geodnet/geodnet-improvement-proposal-7-c2313f643b9b

This is not yet an official proposal, so it doesn’t have the small details and things will probably change.

The overall purpose of GIP-7 is related to earnings stability and getting listed on a CEX; not specifically called out as part of the GIP is that Geodnet is planning to fully transition from Polygon to Solana to work towards their CEX listing.

Not specifically included in this GIP, but documented as actions the Geodnet Foundation is implementing:

1. Work towards a Solana $GEOD CEX listing

2. Open Kamino liquidity valuts

3. Move away from QuickSwap for buy-back-and-burn

4. Release the Geo-Pulse Lite app on the Solana Seekr phone (RTK-enabled cellphone?) and provide $GEOD rewards for using it

5. Introduce the Geo Play app on the Solana Seekr and other compatible phones for an AR-based game to find $GEOD tokens. Think Pokemon Go but finding tokens instead of pokemon.

The specific voting topics of GIP-7 include:

1. Restrict transferring $GEOD from Solana to Polygon

2. 20,000 location NFT mint limit

3. Performance staking

Topic 1: transfer restrictions
Currently Geodnet provides a wormhole to move $GEOD from Polygon network to Solana, however what people might not realize is it can send the other direction as well. In preparation for the transition to Solana they will close down the Poly>Sol wormhole path. (pro tip: their wormhole is very cheap for moving funds between Polygon and Solana; convert to $GEOD first then send between the two chains for pennies)

Topic 2: NFT restriction
Currently the first station to achieve a 30 day RRR >98% in a hex will be awarded a location NFT. This NFT secures that station’s earnings in a dedicated reward pool so that it’s unaffected by other miners being setup in the same hex, as well as each NFT providing the owner a voting role on GIPs. The rewards mechanic is the mechanic that deployers rely on to have consistent earnings and to be able to properly plan their ROI schedules. Geodnet claims that after evaluating network performance that they no longer believe they need 100k stations to cover the global map and therefore don’t need to make a strong push to encourage people to deploy. Additionally they state that the benefit of the 20k NFT limit is to help speed-up reaching the point where token burn exceeds weekly rewards distribution; since each hex has 2 rewards pools (NFT and non-NFT), this effectively caps the NFT reward pool to just 20k hexes instead of ~100k NFT hexes for the global map.

Topic 3: performance staking
This proposes to add a new staking mechanic for Solana $GEOD where someone can stake $GEOD on an NFT station that is performing >98% RRR and after the staking period the station owner and the staker split the yield rewards.

In general topic 1 and 3 are good - moving to Solana and introducing staking rewards will help liquidity, encourage token holding, and provide another token revenue source for station owners. I would support this part.

Topic 2 needs more debate. Although I can see what Geodnet is trying to do, ultimately they still don’t have wide-spread coverage of South America and almost no coverage of Africa…without location NFTs to guarantee earnings it becomes a much more risky choice to continue to deploy Geodnet stations. I’m not in support of this decision.

I’m hoping Geodnet also learns from GIP-6…in that one they crammed many changes, and not all of them related, into a single GIP and forced it through to pass, including changing the scope and what it did after it went up for vote (and you couldn’t change your vote). It would be good if they remove the NFT-limit topic to its own GIP so it doesn’t delay adoption of the other two proposals.