Minipools to purchase newly minted RPL with their commission

Governance
1

Recently there has been a significant level of chatter about the tokenomics of RPL being self-referential. The value of RPL comes from people needing RPL to become a minipool in order to receive commission → mostly in the form of RPL.
The main pushback against this has been that as a minipool operator you’re not getting only RPL but also ETH commission from rETH holders. While this is true, it still leaves us with RPL only maintaining/growing in value while the number of minipools is growing faster than RPL is inflating.

I believe a way out of this is by reframing the main value proposition of RPL as the control of a treasury that is being fed by minipools purchasing the newly minted RPL with a percentage of their commission. Done right this will create a more long-term sustainable tokenomic for RPL as well as a sustainable treasury for continued Rocketpool development.

How will this work?
Instead of the node operators getting a fixed 70% of the newly minted RPL, it is instead set by the percentage of minipool commission that’s provided to the treasury in exchanged for RPL. The new RPL that’s not bought by the minipools is then added to the treasury as well.

Simply put, it will look like this:

  • If all the minipools set their commission to 100% ETH and 0% RPL, then 100% of newly minted RPL is sent to the treasury. There’s no debasement since each RPL now controls a proportionately larger pool of RPLs.
  • If all the minipools set their commission to 100% RPL and 0% ETH, then the treasury gets 100% of the eth generated by the pools. Each RPL controls a smaller share of the treasury, but the treasury is worth more.
  • Market dynamics will ensure node operators will funnel a percentage of commission that is based on the current market price of RPL - maintaining a stream of ETH into the treasury without the need for a fixed commission cut at the protocol level.

This should provide a healthier long-term outlook for RPL as well as allow us to unlock things like EOMs.

What do we think about this direction? Is this something we’ll want to explore further?