The Guardians of the BORG took control of the Protect and Choose program a year ago. Since then, we've made substantial progress from our initial efforts, but we're still refining the program to maximise its impact and longevity. Our commitment to the community drives us to provide a system that encourages any participant to express their opinions. With over 150,000 responses gathered from engaged community members in our sessions, it's clear that we're on the right path.
In this article, we'll cover:
- Updates regarding the upgrade of the Voicing Power
- The Burn’s adapting to the Quarterly rhythm
- Modifications regarding our inflows and outflows
- Our future aspirations for the Guardians
Voicing Power Update
While the current system received general appreciation, SwissBorg’s Loyalty squad has been working on a new in-app scoring model named the “Borger Journey”. This program has a target to improve readability and accessibility of the score for all SwissBorg users by seamlessly integrating the voting power calculation into the app - and displaying it with our usual intuitive style.
Although heavily inspired by the voicing power, there are some slight differences. Notably, we are removing penalties for non-premium users and installing a minimum threshold of 2000 in order to be eligible for rewards. This is a steep increase from what was communicated prior, so please bear that in mind.
We will be elaborating more on the intricacies of the program as well as many other benefits from it during the Keynote, so make sure you tune-in to hear more about it!
(This part of the article will be edited with the updated information after the keynote)
Adapting the Burn to Quarterly
In total, the Guardians have burnt close to 1,500,000 BORG tokens!
This has been done incrementally to maintain predictability in the system. However, as we were aiming to burn more than what is being injected in that pool on a monthly basis, we can no longer use the current system. This, in turn, means that we can also take this opportunity to remove the ”burn cap” a lot of community members have been talking about.
This means that from now on when we have Borg tokens “to be burnt,” they will burn fast.
SwissBorg’s inflow
Every month, SwissBorg uses a portion of the monthly profits to purchase BORG and distribute it through the Guardian’s Program. Although the system isn’t changing in itself, it is important to note that we will be implementing monthly and quarterly thresholds to make sure the program stays predictable to us on the accounting side and never overspends profits that could be used to develop the next big features that will make SwissBorg the strongest wealth management app out there.
Indeed, the month on month mechanism of the program could eventually burden the yearly final outcome in the event of plan changing course.
The very purpose of the Guardians is to expand and grow BORG’s ecosystem to make it more popular than ever, and we believe that this action is necessary to ensure that happens - without damaging the company by misallocating vital budgets.
Cap for buy (both upper and lower limit)
We believe that caps go both ways; if at certain points in time, we end up underspending, it is normal to overspend also on other occasions; this is why the Guardians will always conduct monthly buybacks of:
- A minimum of $10,000 USDC
- A maximum of $150,000 USDC
In addition, the Guardians have committed to and will continue to commit to an additional buyback of 125,000 USDC every quarter to maintain a sustainable inflow of BORG into the pool.
Lastly, we will be adding a “Christmas Bonus” to the rule that will buyback an additional amount after a good year. This will be executed largely depending on whether we underallocate a lot during the period at the Management Team’s full discretion.
This bonus will prioritise rewarding Guardians who hold their BORG and increase their holdings throughout the year (not just at the end).
We are still improving this system, and modifications are always possible, but we believe that this decision will help us in our mission as Guardians.
The Guardian’s Outflow
In terms of how much we spend, the formula was thought out on a monthly basis. This means that when the time to go quarterly came, we had to come up with a different one to prevent the Guardians from simply using three times less than they did prior to the change. The calculation for the ratios will continuously be done through the Sustainability Score, which is a direct metric derived from SwissBorg’s profitability. We announced during the last update that the formula would be a percentage of the total BORG available in the pool; it is worth noting that we will be rounding it down to the closest 50,000 BORG.
The formula is: 7.5 + Average Sustainability Score
This means that if the Sustainability scores for a quarter are of “2.3, 3.6, 4.5” we will have an average of 3.5 and we would use 11% of the total available BORG for the session.
If I were to use this number at the time of writing, it would represent 700,000 BORG!
This should guarantee that we have reasonable amounts to use on a sustainable basis. It goes without saying that, like anything else in our program, this amount can be adapted if deemed necessary.
Our future aspirations for the Guardians
As you may have noticed, we enjoy building programs step by step. We started out extremely simple with three choices, and we iterated through all of the sessions by adding complexities and intricacies. When it became too complicated, we adapted and reverted the changes.
There is no one existing method for a regulated entity to embody governance, but we want everyone to have a voice. This is why we created option 4, which lets anyone in the first month of each quarter suggest what we should do with a portion of the Guardian’s pool - the community then picks the best choice according to them. Nowadays, we are adding more power by giving the community the choice between design options or scoring systems, and tomorrow, we would like to be able to answer more important questions through the Guardians. For example, we should use part of the pool to speed up efficiency for squads or create campaigns with creative ways to reward benevolent contributions to our ecosystem.
As of right now, we are looking to slowly bring the Guardians closer to the app. The first step is making it appear in the Loyalty program, and we are super happy this was done successfully!
Who knows what is to come…
In the meantime, I would like to thank everyone for participating in this quest with us. It’s a bumpy ride, and we are likely to witness more changes, but we’re moving in the right direction.
See you next time, Guardians!
