What's a president to do?
Its been just under a year since I was last president of DCITY, and lots of things have changed. I want to first comment on the price of SIM - after writing several posts about buying SIM, SIM is now even lower. I will keep my mouth shut for a while, if you set your sell at 0.003 like I told you, you probably sold your SIM, but if you are still holding the bag (like me), it could be a long ride from here.
Current Political Climate
Taxes are high, this is mostly because prices are low. As president supposedly I control taxes, but right now my options are for taxes between 81.5% and 132%. This is a tough range to play in, it doesn't give me a lot of options, but there is still a button or two to push.
There was some expectation that SIM would rise after 3rd edition, which it did..... for a few days. Then it seemed to head back down to where it began, and continue lower, as the top SIM holder started to sell. There are a few big players in this game, and if they want out, the price is going to go down no matter what we do, this is assured.
And maybe they are right! It might be time to allow some players to cash out their chips and take their results home with them.
Break the game
Just for a bit, I have decided to break the game. That means that taxes will start off at 122%, too high to really do anything about. I will then move them down and experiment with a 'marginal tax rate', where the benefits from Mining Technologies, DeFi Tech and Law Firm will be extremely important between 0 and something. And remember, when we get zero income, players HIVE rewards are reduced by 70%.
I expect there to be further capitulation. And maybe the game and its players need it. I would rather not 'wait it out', but let the players sell what they have and give them nearly no competition in the market. This defi 'gaming' experiment just needs to give the money printers a short rest while players make their choices. The price of SIM and cards could in fact go down depending on how players interpret this play over the next days, but I believe that we will return with not only more joy but also a healthier attitude about all that DCITY is and has been in our lives.
No you cannot lose money, even though it turns negative. Remember that we are still mining TECH cards, Prevention cards, Background cards and Citizen cards, and the cost of disasters is null since we aren't getting any SIM anyway. So its not all bad.
Fix the Game?
Personally I think that the idea of taxes might give players the wrong idea about the mechanics of the DCITY defi farming platform. In life, when I add value, the government takes part of my income, someone might say - 'taxes are theft'. But in dcity, since the game algorithmically prints inflation each day based on certain rules, I don't believe taxes represent the same theft, but instead a flow control valve for the inflation printing. I don't know if there is enough words to change this perception in people's heads, but we can try.
The game will be undergoing a governance change within approximately 1 month. Additionally lobbying options will be added that will rank cities by additional stats, allowing the reward pool to be distributed slower and wider, and perhaps 'fairer', among all players. There will also be an overall reduction in the amount of rewards shared each day, based on how much lobbying we do for the reward pool. At that time, holding SIM power will be even more important for determining who gets paid.
Currently, the president (me!) has just crude control of a few taxes. But through the luxury tax and insane tax rate, I can cut everyone's rewards by 70%. A temporary restriction of the reward pool is, although hamfisted, probably a fine thing in the long run, the only downside of this method is that it actually benefits the zero income cities on a relative basis, as I cannot further increase their penalties.
I think Jelly makes a great observation here, and its one that I think is worth commenting again, I will be heading down to a more marginal tax rate soon where we can continue to 'play' the game with well balanced cities.
What am I waiting for?
In a word: Capitulation. I want to see what happens, and as always I will be monitoring a few lists. Let's start with the SIM holders list, which has changed mightily since the last post:
Also let's not forget that the market is actually a large holder of SIM right now:
There is ~7.5 million SIM on the market for 0.00152 or less, over 9000 HIVEs worth. Much of this is held by 
Even just down at 0.00117, we have a lot of work to do to ever move the price again, let's see what happens over the next couple days.
The game happens on the market, that's because its a #defifarming platform, with some gaming characteristics. I am open at all hours to receive your comments about this policy on this post, or in the DCity Discord.