There are two problems, the first being what I believe prompted this SLURP to begin with, which is the perceived problem with having what is technically an unlimited supply, though in practice there is no material difference between having a large reserve of SDL and minting them on demand. It’s not a problem I really care about, but this would solve it anyway.
The other problem is one that has mildly bothered me since the beginning, which is the idea that new NOPs will receive an allocation of tokens proportionate to what we believe their “value add” would be, but what does that mean in terms of hard numbers? Would it not make more sense (thinking long term here) to build a mechanism that rewards node operators based on their measurable contributions, rather than proportionate to the number of stSDL tokens they hold? I realize this is a technically demanding request and it’s not something I expect to exist any time soon. I believe on the NOPs side, very little would change in terms of what is already expected from using the platform - socialized slashing, easy access to cross-chain collateral, and the ability to direct stLINK integration into DeFi, but with this change there would be a clearer process for how their performance is judged and how their rewards are disbursed.
On the liquid SDL/stSDL staker side, it was already expected that platform revenue would be shared with liquid stSDL stakers, I don’t recall the current % split but I arrived at the “liquid SDL/stDL = 3 nodes” number from the “Resulting Total Supply Distribution” table in Eric’s post, which put the “community” supply distribution at just shy of 20% of the NOPs’ supply, divided by 15, that arrives at the equivalent of approximately 3 nodes (yes I rounded up). Stakers do not provide node services but their collateral is nonetheless desirable and SDL is at turns a driver of LINK coming to the platform (and therefore stLINK being created), of LINK staking allocations being fairly distributed (since we know that staking space will be limited and competitive), and rewards could be viewed as a form of passive slashing insurance obtained by staking stSDL.
Rather than trying to force what seem to be dissimilar needs into the same tokenomics, I would think that retaining NOPs governance power and relegating revenue sharing to a more transparent mechanism would make up for their lack of stSDL - their tokens are currently already locked anyway. If there is concern that the lack of stSDL means nodes can no longer make proposals to unlock some tokens later on to sell, perhaps the newly empowered Treasury could cover those needs instead.