REN Darknode Staking Pools

I had a question regarding developments of Ren Darknode Pools in which a group of people could pool their REN tokens together to make Darknodes in the event one or more people weren’t able to make the 100,000 REN minimium to run a Darknode.

  1. Is this an actual development in the works (Didn’t know if it was a rumor or fact)?

  2. How would this feature affect voting rights and governance among Darknodes once it happens?

My concern is that if you look at how Bitcoin mining pools work currently a little over 74% of the hash rate is owned by just 6 mining pools…

LINK TO BITCOIN HASH RATE DISTRIBUTION
( Coin Dance | Total Bitcoin Hash Rate by Mining Pool (today, all chains) Summary )

That’s pretty centralized. I am concerned that allowing poolings of REN within the protocol could lead to the same effect, and how that might affect voting and governance once that’s implemented. I know that’s down the road and that the “Greycore” will be the next phase of governance, but think it’s something to think about.

I don’t have a problem with someone creating a pool outside of the protocol. Like if a company wanted to say create their own pool outside, and get a bunch of people to invest and a run couple of Darknode collectively. Those getting involved would be incentive to create their own governance structure with regards to voting based on the amount of nodes they have per those staking with them, and distribute their RenVM fees to their customers respectfully.

I think this type of setup versus adding it to the protocol directly would allow for better governance, would keep the simplicity of the protocol and not end up like the history lesson of Bitcoin.

These are all my speculations as a student working on a degree in Economics. I am weary of implementing such a feature this early in REN development.

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It is not the Ren team itself that is developing pooling capabilities, but several third parties are working on this. See for example https://www.renpool.io/

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Oh, I see! Thank you for the information. I will check that out.

I don’t know if this is something of a comparative, but the Darknodes Online has the top 15 operators only controlling about 17% of the total nodes.

Certainly though will need to have some mechanism to make this project more attainable and scalable as market value increases. If Ren does indeed try to goto $10, people aren’t going to have a free $1 million sitting around to lock into a darknode. Most will probably cashout leaving a more centralized model and suppressed market price.

But you never know, maybe the market goes crazy for Ren one day. Put a pic of a cute little fluffy bunny or something, maybe a pug with a bow-tie, as the face of the token and it explodes.

Could you elaborate on why you are certain Ren won’t scale if price increases? I do not see the correlation between scaling and the cost of REN.
IMO there is no obligation to make Ren more attainable, unless required by the security of the network. Last year a node cost less than $6k. Unfortunately some people missed this opportunity and will be forever priced out of running their own node. The same is true for holding a whole BTC or 32 ETH.

True, but most people do not have $1m to invest in property, and $1m+ properties can be a good investment.

With respect, this assumption does not hold up logically. If I sell all of my nodes to one entity the project will become more centralised. If I sell my nodes to two or more entities, the project will become less centralised.
Also, it assumes that “most” will cash out. I do not think this is a fair assumption. My nodes are BTC printing machines. If they continue to print enough BTC I will literally never sell them.

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Fair points, and certainly agree that all we need to do is hang on to a node and it prints crypto for us.
It will be interesting to see how this evolves if the market price of REN increases. I was thinking this would be self-limiting process, but we’ll see I guess. The pool sharing may be a good idea.

Something that has been eating me is the Thorchain. In looking at the promise of performance, and little in the way of project leadership, I’m pondering that Rune may end up being shown as a Ponzi, fronted for some exchange. I just don’t see how so much has been put into REN project, but then all of a sudden Rune nodes with a huge1million requirement, market cap over $2B, and promote something advertised much more seamless than REN, along with much higher rate of returns. I don’t see how something like that could actually work out unless it was fronted by an exchange with massive liquidity pools. If something too good to be true compared to the amount of work being done in REN, it seems unlikely to me that there’s a solid foundation in Rune.

Anyway, the concern I have with REN is a possible self-limiting model as the market price increases.

A mild exodus at the close of this epoch?
currently net effect -33 (46 joining up and 79 bailing out)

I noticed the BTC has eroded from two epochs prior at 23, to 20, and now to 16.

Market price increase from $0.30s/.40s to $0.65 over the past month. Still off from $1.00 it used to be at earlier this year when REN was being promoted to hit market price of $10. Probable some node owners seeing a good time to cut and run with the erosion of BTC getting transacted per epoch.

TVL is recovering nicely, this morning getting to $906mil (all assets)
Market cap/TVL still showing a good undervaluing at 0.64 (using the more up to date TVL in the Command Center )

Comparative Rune sits at a Market cap to TVL ratio of 83 (which is total bs), and which I think is just a grouping of liquidity pools fronting an exchange. Just think if you a public company’s P/E stock ratio at 83, you’d be setting up for a massive correction. And then probably a reality check that they really don’t have anything behind the curtain anyway, except the “bifrost”… wtf ever.

Interesting to see what us REN DN HODL’ers will experience in the next epoch to come. If the market value would just finally equalize to the TVL, I ponder alot of us would be sitting in a really good position.

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