-
Galaxy Research suggests providing voters with a broader range of options to select Solana’s deflation rate and determine the outcome based on a weighted average.
-
This proposal aims to address the polarization in voting that arose from the SIMD-228 case.
-
Max Resnick from Anza expressed concerns that voters might attempt to skew the results in their favor through extreme voting.
Following the community’s previous attempts to adjust the inflation issue of SOL, Galaxy Research has proposed a new ‘market-driven’ voting method to determine the future emission curve of Solana.
The proposal, known as ‘Multi-Election Equity Weight Aggregation (MESA)’, suggests that validators vote on a range of options to indicate varying levels of support for a higher deflation rate, rather than the traditional yes, no, or abstain.
If the number of ‘yes’ votes reaches the required threshold, MESA will determine the outcome based on a weighted average related to different types of ‘yes’ votes.
Galaxy stated: ‘Instead of throwing darts until the community is satisfied with a single proposal, it is more efficient to directly ask everyone’s needs and finalize an overall plan.’
MESA appears to respond to discussions following the SIMD-228 proposal. The SIMD-228 proposal introduced a dynamic deflationary issuance model that adjusts token issuance based on staking participation. Despite record voter turnout, the SIMD-228 proposal ultimately failed due to polarized voting results.
Galaxy noted that the binary voting system does not adequately reflect voter preferences regarding SIMD-228, even though the community seems to agree that SOL inflation should be reduced to some extent and that excess collateral payments should be addressed.
In contrast to SIMD-228, MESA retains the existing deflation curve, which adjusts over time and includes planned annual reductions at each period.
According to data from Solana Compass, Solana currently has an initial inflation rate of 8%, decreasing by 15% annually, with a target inflation rate of 1.5%. The current inflation rate for Solana is 4.6%, with 64.7% of the total supply currently staked.
Limitations
In response to Galaxy’s proposal, Max Resnick, chief economist at Anza, a company focused on Solana’s development, stated that MESA could cause ‘a lot of trouble’ during the voting process.
‘Assuming I believe the best policy is 25% per year—how should I vote to make the final policy as close to 25% as possible?’ Resnick wrote in comments on the proposal.
Resnick indicated that while voters ideally would express their preferences honestly, in practice, participants tend to predict possible outcomes and vote for extreme options to shift the average in their preferred direction.
The researcher stated that he continues to support the dynamic, market-based SOL issuance method proposed by SIMD-228. ‘A dynamic issuance curve is safer during economic downturns and cheaper during economic booms,’ Resnick said.
Nevertheless, Resnick agreed that providing voters with a broader range of options could lead to less polarized outcomes.
‘Yes/no voting forces people into different camps, leading to unproductive dialogue,’ Resnick said. ‘People inevitably focus more on ‘winning’ rather than helping Solana succeed.’
On the other hand, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, suggested using median weighting instead of the proposed weighted average.