A warmup period is a good tool to prevent unintended behaviour. Some thoughts from my side, also based on community brain playing out in the responses.

  • I do not follow why that extra transaction is necessary. As I see it an implementation would be possible without that constraint. I would like to hear the technical reason for this decision since I feel like I am missing something. /cc @Zeus
  • Having longer warm up periods punishes ohmies who help fill the treasury. IMO we want to encourage (4, 4), that is (1, 1) to (3, 3). A single epoch warmup period should be good enough to start with.
  • My understanding is a bit incomplete about multiple stakes. Say I have multiple bonds vesting and stake vested bond rewards multiple times per day or at least daily. Is the warmup period reset every time I stake anew? Is it only "warmed up" once and then I stake however I like? Does unstaking reset the warmup period? And if so do I need to execute that claim transaction every time over and over again? Maybe a more detailed description of a real world scenario would help my understanding to make an informed decision. If the UX is impacted drastically I would rather vote for no warmup period at all because the cost on the individual would be too high to impose for to me unclear benefits or problems we try to solve right now. /cc @Zeus

    I have a lot of the same questions xh3b4sd does. And a few more (see below).
    Is this 'extra' transaction a one time thing like when you first interact with a contract? Or is this every time?
    If i stake 1 OHM everyday for 200 days and then then go to unstake them 300 days later am i paying this 'extra' transaction fee 200 times each time when I stake? Or just one additional when I unstake?

      xh3b4sd the whole idea with hades on staking is you have everyone send a "Stake" transaction, where their OHM goes to the staking contract but they receive nothing back. On this tx, they say the recipient of the sOHM. For some it will be the same address that is staking, for some it may be different. The key is that they all look the same. Those who want their sOHM in their wallet then go to "Claim" at the next epoch. The "Stake" and "Claim" transactions must be separate, otherwise it would look no different from a normal transfer (the sender and receiver are readily apparent).

      Each time you stake you would reset the warmup. However, it's completely possible that you feel no need to claim in the first place. Claiming does not change your reward accrual, it merely transfers the sOHM into your wallet. You earn the same amount in warmup that you do after warmup. So, like in @cabanaboy1977's example, you could stake 1 OHM every day for 200 days without ever claiming the sOHM, and still have the same amount once you finally claim as if you did a claim every single day. The only difference is you do not see the sOHM in your wallet until after claiming.

          Zeus so in my example when you get to the end of 200 you would only have to claim once (saving 200 days worth of fees)? You won't have to hit claim 200 times either 😀

            def agree w asfi "showing stakers their accrued but unearned rewards during warm up period in the app will be important." with this, newcomers can still visualize and experience the fun of juicy rewards.

            wonder if it makes sense to only implement warm-up for direct staking not bonding (claim and stake) since when bonding, you're already kind of subjected to a 5 day warm-up. if so, the trade-offs would be....

            Direct Staking: warm-up, start compounding immediately but only keep the rewards if u stake past the warm-up
            Bonding: 5-day vesting, price discount, no warm-up

            Zeus If I understood correctly, this does not delay any kind of rewards. It just "soft-lock" for x epochs so you cannot withdraw immediately after staking and also enables HADES.

            100% of pending and vested sOHM would receive rewards from rebases right?

              Sting Staking

              Reads: The act of swapping DAI for OHM close to the next Rebase, then swapping Ohm for DAI again right after receiving the rebase, in order to avoid volatility and make guaranteed gains.

              Why is it a problem?

              Sting Staking is a problem because it allows for scalping rewards evading (most of) the volatility. If this was profitable, more users would do it, lowering the APY for everyone effectively, while never actually being staked for a considerable period of time (subjective).

              Why is it not a problem that needs addressing?

              Facts before Opinion. When I run the simulation taking into account slippage and swap fees, disregarding the volatility of the price and the volatility of gas fees, here's the result:

              It is obviously not profitable to do so, and since the current rebase will keep decreasing, it's safe to say it never will be profitable. Any profit someone could take from a short-lived investment is purely speculative and has little impact from the staking.
              Now here's with the minimum amount of rebases needed to be profitable, 5:

              As you may observe, you need to stay staking for a period of a little less than 48 hours in order to make a profit. And that's, again, disregarding volatility of price and volatility of gas fees (no gas fees are being deducted in the simulation).
              We can conclude that whoever tries to stake for a profit, will need to expose himself, always, to the market volatility.

              In Conclusion

              This whole Warmup Proposal serves to add more complexity to the vanilla staking and (speaking personally) I'd rather have the vanilla staking actually feel Vanilla, Simple, Basic. There is no real problem being addressed, the most short-lived investments will be based on price volatility and not on rebase profitability. Time will pass, APY will shorten, and the statements I make now will still hold true.
              Having debunked that short-lived investments are not made possible or profitable by current staking mechanisms, those mechanisms should be kept as simple as possible. Short-Lived investments will keep happening, because in the crypto space there's only one constant: that the price is always volatile, and that's ok.

              I'm for this on the grounds of 1 week to be able to profit from the APY offered makes sense as a vetting period and considering this is typical for chains, FTM, ADA, ZIL and a few others. Granted they all vary from 5-21 days it doesn't deter new stakers it just encourages those to not chase profits, support the project long term (3,3). It can even help make them more interested in the project rather than a quick cash grab some of us may have thought in the early days of Olympus, boy were we wrong. My final thought is a minimal lock up period is acceptable, and we don't take any of the rebases / profits from them upon withdrawal as others do, we only don't allow the withdrawal of rebases if you leave during the warmup period, this is a very user friendly system in my mind.

              The staking process at Olympus is the most elegant, most rewarding process I have encountered. The elegance lies in it's simplicity and it should remain that way.
              I don't believe investors need a warm-up period. They stake because of the rewards - a warm-up period will not change that focus.
              The only recommendation I have is that after unstaking, there should be a 10 day waiting period before they can withdraw their funds and during that 10 day period they do not receive rewards. This also negates the need to offer a warm-up period. The 10 day, no reward period is penalty enough. If one commits to stake for 1 year but withdraws prematurely then they would not be entitled to the additional incentives being offered for that commitment, however, they would retain the standard rewards as offered presently and be subject to the same 10 day, no reward, waiting period.
              Regards Kev

                kevthepeg Yikes, I think nobody needs any of that tbh. We aren't talking about locked staking and locked staking so far is not going to have a way to "withdraw prematurely". I believe you got mistaken in what was being discussed. Outside of locked staking, that proposal is atrocious, waiting 10 days to swap? Not only that can't be enforced, it makes no sense here on vanilla staking. Cheers.
                I do agree with the no-warmup 😉

                  Having just read the discussion on Locked Staking I understood that this discussion was to consider the merits of a warm up period that would allow someone to withdraw from their commitment to stake if they wished to. Why else would you need a warm up period if you can withdraw at anytime?
                  Am I wrong?
                  Referring to the 10 day waiting period, it is common practice. I have serious investments in staking and understand the consequences of withdrawing early.

                    kevthepeg No. But how does disallowing trading for 10 days seem reasonable? You are not committing to stake for a long period, that's called locked staking, you're simply staking until whenever you wanna cashout, so the 10 day period just kills the whole thing. I want to ask for your reasoning,

                    after unstaking, there should be a 10 day waiting period before they can withdraw their funds and during that 10 day period they do not receive rewards.

                    so you want people to not be able to convert Ohm to Dai for 10 Days, put bluntly. To me, makes no sense, and complicates things. As utility, I can't instantly convert it on whatever I want. As an investor, horrible investment, huge risk of not only the volatility, but the fact I didn't earn any APY (which is what makes up for the risk of being invested) for 10 days.

                    I believe this is off-topic though, so feel free to hmu on Discord.

                      Albeit particulars of this conversation maybe off topic other considerations have merit given that we are considering modifying the existing staking rules. 3 days ago I suggested, perhaps on a different Olympus forum (at 73, I sometimes get lost around here 😷) that sometime in the future Staking Providers may be engaged to manage the staking for Olympus. If so, Staking Providers will insist on a 7-10 day delay period. I definitely agree with you, however, that it is a delight to stake and withdraw whenever without penalty so I will put my hand up to support the status quo and keep my mouth shut - it needs a rest anyway 😐🙂

                      Fresh Ohmie just joining. Some seriously great discussion here.

                      Just wondering past the core 'No Warm up' vs 'Warm Up' discussion; what would be the actual merits/disadvantages between the tiered warm up periods? Locking in for 4-9 Epochs and 10-21 Epochs seem interchangeable, as if someone is staked for 3 days, surely they're be happy to go to 7, no?

                      gamelokk I mean, DON'T we have that problem currently? I follow some mid-tier whale addresses and see them 3,3'ing for a week and then bounce, which causes price fluctuations.

                        Zeus So HADES sounds like an interesting concept and should perhaps carry more focus. As it is currently, sOHM represents a claim on OHM. OHM have value, and thus sOHM have value. Stakers currently have custody over sOhm while the treasury holds custody over OHM. With Hades, it sounds like Treasury will become main custodian also over sOhm. Treasury can use the new value, not only of the OHM but also the claim over OHM (sOhm) to generate returns on treasury funds. Thats good for Treasury. As an individual user though, I would lose custody or need to continuously claim rewards (and incur X gas fees). The key thing I think is transferability and the enabling of other ecosystems to build with Olympus assets in scope. I believe I can currently transfer/sell my sOhm to anyone. With Hades it sounds like the right to claim gets inprinted into the smart contract upon start of staking. and then can only be claimed by that designated wallet. I am leaning towards more liquid is better than less liquid. Doesnt this drive us more to less liquid? The treasury should be able to acquire a predictable flow of funds without having to limit liquidity. US Treasury notes as illustration, is perhaps the world's most liquid instrument of all? But maybe I misunderstand Hades?

                          There's a lot of constructive feedback here that makes for a healthy discussion and I can see all of the valid points for each option!

                          Personally, I can see net positives with two options- leaving things as is with no warm-up and introducing the 4-9 epoch warm-up.

                          Leaving things as is creates a healthy equilibrium for all market participants. As @gamelokk mentioned with the dividend payments analogy, scalpers can profit in these short term scenarios but the dip also gives Ohmies a chance to continue their OHM accumulation. The more we move towards excluding certain market participants we start to box ourselves into a smaller pool of participants. The Olympus design is so successful because it embodies free market mechanics. It could be risky to introduce a warm-up period considering locked staking is potentially on its way. I think if locked staking doesn't get implemented then a warm-up period becomes essential.

                          On another note, the 4-9 epoch warm-up period could essentially eliminate this sting staking/short-term profiteering and enables us to use Hades with staking.

                          Quoting @Animaker,

                          the minimum amount of rebases needed to be profitable, 5.

                          It seems this is the 'only period' where the ultra-short-term stakers are profitable (obviously all variables aren't taken into account). We would need to gather some more data on this to make sure that is the case. If we were to introduce a warm-up @Asfi 's point on being able to view the rewards for that period becomes important from a psychological standpoint. Being able to see the rewards over the warm-up period acts as a little delayed gratification tool. The period also isn't long enough to clash with something like locked staking. I think my main concern for any warm-up to be introduced is sufficient data on the different periods that are being proposed.

                          Keen to follow this as things develop!

                          Really great discussion, and strong arguments. What I'm about to say is mainly gut feeling because I obviously don't have any data to support my arguments. That's why I agree that the team should gather and present those. I'll be playing devil's advocate here and just focus on basic principles of proposal.

                          First principle woud be that we are all here to make money. Now most of us believe in protocol, and long term profit it will bring. Minority are trading whales utilizing protocol rebase mechanism and market structure for fast profit.

                          From protocol perspective problems are USTS and Hades on staking. USTS is mainly tied to whales scalping, and Hades is feature that team believes is esential for protocols longterm success.

                          Big question for the team is: Are we destroying protocol basis i.e. Simplicity, for the sake of its feature i.e. Hades? Are we not seeing the forrest because of the tree?
                          Such things happen in each tech led project, it's natural and in good faith, but can have severe consequences down the road. Can you share how many holders is using Hades?

                          My gut feeling is that both USTS and Hades are primarily used by those same scalping whales, because both work in their best interest. On the other side, majority of us small position protocol believers just slurps and stakes, not caring about extra layer of anonimity. To suceed Protocol needs a couple of good faith whales and army of small investors. That's why I would argue that whatever team does it should focus heavily on deply understanding small investors and how to make them feel safe (in crypto terms), welcome, and wagmi.

                          Taking above into consideration, I feel that creating amazing locked staking offer will minimize USTS through lowering unlocked APY.

                          That leaves us with single question: Is Hades on staking critical for protocol success?

                          12 days later
                          3 months later

                          Zeus Think I would want to see the data first to warrant such a thing. I'm a freedom guy, so I never like seeing controls like this. Although, I do understand where it is coming from. It seems OHM is pretty stable, so why implement something like this? I haven't been keeping up much, so if the data is out there showing a detrimental impact from people unstaking after a few epochs, then maybe. Ultimately, what does the data show?