Cooking with governance: Introducing Marinade Non-fungible Chefs
Now that Marinade has revealed its grand menu for 2022,it is time to focus on the latest details surrounding MNDE, the governance token.
Now that Marinade has revealed its grand menu for 2022, it is time to focus on the latest details surrounding MNDE, the governance token.
First, some background on MNDE and its short existence: Marinade launched its app in August, 2021 and minted the MNDE token in October. At that time, plans were revealed to make MNDE the governance token of Marinade. Up until now, Marinade has operated with an executive team in order to move as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, the grand plan has been to transition to a DAO governed through the MNDE token.
So speculators of MNDE or allies of Marinade have farmed the tokens through a weekly schedule of liquidity mining, waiting for the true utility for the token.
That time is upon us.
Starting very soon, MNDE holders will have direct, on-chain control over the direction of Solana’s biggest and tastiest staking pool. The NFT governance launch is just weeks away, so it’s time to unpack the mDAO’s upcoming system, its governance principles, Marinade’s secret sauce, and, as usual with Marinade, a sweet little something to finish with.
Serving DAO Governance
Among the few governance platforms available on Solana, the Marinade DAO has decided to build its on-chain governance using Tribeca. Chefs liked that it is being built on Anchor, a framework that also powers Marinade programs and it will be relatively easy to modify and adjust.
The core concept of Tribeca/Marinade is locking tokens: that means users deposit and lock their MNDE token and get voting power relative to the time of the lock. In a typical recipe, the voting power then continuously decays until the tokens completely unlock and can be withdrawn. Marinade is going to put a custom spin onto this proven recipe with its NFT.
Non-fungible Chefs
When depositing MNDE tokens into Marinade governance, the transaction will mint you a unique NFT with a cute Marinade Chef. This NFT features several unique properties:
Let’s unpack each item to cover the implications, starting with the most important one:
Ownership
Since a Chef is minted whenever tokens are deposited into Marinade Governance, each Chef NFT stands as an ownership receipt. Only the owner (holder) of the NFT can withdraw the deposited MNDE tokens. If there is an ongoing vote at the same time as the ownership changes, the new owner will be able to recast the votes. Owning a Chef in a wallet and authenticating via Grape will also grant the Marinator role in the Discord.
Lock
The underlying MNDE is perpetually locked for 30 days, ensuring maximal voting power. The Chef’s owner can start the Unlocking process. While unlocking, votes cannot be cast and NFT cannot be transferred (or sold), but an option to re-lock is offered. At the end of this 30 days cooldown, Chef NFTs will be burned and tokens can be withdrawn.
Liquidity
Since MNDE tokens deposited to governance have a 30 day cooldown period, it might be preferable for some to trade the whole position sooner. Chef NFTs will be tradable on secondary markets soon after launch.
Levels
There will be 5 levels of chefs, representing increasing threshold amounts of MNDE locked in governance. Chefs of each tier are visibly different in size with a simple principle: the bigger the chef, the more MNDE they represent. The MNDE amount is also written in the metadata. In a future update, you will be able to grow your chefs between the levelsby locking additional MNDE. Levels follow a simple progression:
Level 1: 1000–4999 MNDE
Level 2: 5000–24999 MNDE
Level 3: 25000–99999 MNDE
Level 4: 100,000–249,999 MNDE
Level 5: 250,000 MNDE and up
Rarity
NFTs wouldn’t be fun without a random combination of traits. The rarity of attributes in chefs is completely disconnected from its Tier, creating an equal field for governing Marinators to get a rare Chef. Note that rarity does not equal scarcity here, as there will be an unlimited number of chefs to be minted.
Sweet tooth
Was that a lot to digest or is there still room for something sweet?
Marinade Limited Edition NFT
NFT Chefs will open the mint with a limited edition of tentacled and multitasking Octopus Chefs, available in 3333 pieces, spread across the levels, available until the supply runs out. After the Octopus Chefs are gone, they will be replaced with different animal chefs. The goal of the limited edition is to acknowledge and reward the early Marinade governors as they prepare to steer the DAO throughout 2022.
MNDE Staking APY
Profit sharing will be an important part of Marinade’s flywheel. Before profits reach a significant level to make the distribution noteworthy, a temporary solution will be in place: additional ownership will be distributed to governors who want to vote on the kitchen topics. Or, to put it simply: locking MNDE tokens into Marinade will earn additional MNDE.
We are weeks away from launching the MNDE DAO governance thru NFTs. So get your MNDE tokens ready to mint a cute Chef and begin governing. In the next installment, we will cover the latest MNDE tokenomics details. Stay tuned!
If you want to learn more about how the NFTs were created and how they will look like, you can take a look at this introduction video.
About Marinade
Marinade.Finance is the first non-custodial liquid staking protocol built on Solana. Stake your SOL tokens with Marinade and receive mSOL (“marinated SOL”) tokens in return that can be used in decentralized finance (DeFi). mSOL is the most widely integrated collateralized version of SOL. The price of mSOL goes up relative to SOL each epoch, with rewards being accrued into your stake account.
Marinade’s delegation strategy stakes to 400+ validators that are selected automatically by an open-source, fair formula based on performance, commission, and decentralization.
Marinade includes mSOL->SOL swap, so you can “Unstake Now” and receive your SOL immediately for a small fee. You can also directly exchange between mSOL and SOL on secondary markets at the current rate. Finally, you can unstake your SOL with zero fee by waiting 2–3 days for the Solana cool-down period (Delayed Unstake).
