Incentive Budget and Framework for Strategic Growth

[gauntlet.xyz]

Thanks @BlockworksResearch, we appreciate the thoughtful feedback. We will address some of the other questions later this week.

To answer this question:

@BlockworksResearch

Targeting user cohorts: The analysis recommends targeting small to large users, since it successfully attracted whales but did not effectively attract other cohorts. While we want to grow the pie and diversify user demographics, we also want to be aware of rewarding potentially misaligned users (i.e. mercenary capital, sybils, etc.). What is the rationale behind targeting users based on size? What are strategies in mind that can target specific cohorts?

Gauntlet conducted a study to investigate whether the size of a user’s investment influences their response to incentives. The results showed that users with small to large investments (those who have staked between 0.1 and 100 SOL), have lower retention rates after initially being attracted by the incentives compared to users with the largest investments (whales). This suggests that users with smaller investments are more likely to be seeking short-term opportunity as opposed to long-term investors, indicating that the incentive rewards may not be effectively allocated to these users. Based on these findings, Jito Foundation will be announcing new strategies aimed at encouraging users with small and medium investments to invest for longer periods and incentivizing those with large investments to increase their investment size to reach the whale category. Our goal is to engage users across all investment levels.