Does Recovery Protocol Make Sense to SURGE?

I was a little off this week because, again, the national electric system collapsed. It's frustrating—without electricity there's no internet, no way to stay connected or keep up with what's happening in real-time. That's why I completely missed the @leostrategy announcement and the subsequent debate that followed, which I know generated a lot of discussion. But I've been catching up since power came back, and I want to share my thoughts about it so far.

LeoStrategy launched a Peg Recovery Protocol, which I don't see as wrong for the RWAs, but it kind of is a rip-off for SURGE holders.

Why? SURGE was pitched as a weekly yield-bearing token (15% APR on each token) where holders get liquid stablecoin payouts that can be redeemed in the future at 0.02 LSTR per 1 SURGE. They stated:

SURGE is for investors who want fixed income while waiting for the LEO and LSTR economy to rise dramatically in price.

Whether it takes a few months or a few years, you get paid to simply sit back and wait for LEO/LSTR to rise in value.

In another post while they explain how SURGE works they say:

For every $0.01 SURGE is trading below $1, buyers can obtain a higher effective yield (paying less than $1 for something yielding 15% at $1 par). The lower SURGE's price, the greater the effective yield which increases demand for SURGE

Another:

The more that SURGE decreases in price, the higher the effective yield becomes.

And that was true, at least until this week, because many users buy cheap SURGE and lock in a better APR. The SURGE price is lower (in HUSD terms) because of the low price of Hive. Many Hivers bought at 4 Hives (0.80 USD at the pre-sale) and are selling for 7 to 8 Hives (around 0.48 USD). Maybe the mistake was not launching a SURGE:HBD pool, but the lower SURGE price wasn't a problem for those who believed in $LEO's potential due to the 0.02 LSTR per 1 SURGE conversion and weekly payouts. At least that was the case until this week when the Recovery Protocol launched and SURGE yield stopped.

SURGE was never a stablecoin—it was always a perpetual, no-expiration option to convert to LSTR (meaning 1 SURGE equals 1 dollar when LSTR reaches $50). Stopping the yield because SURGE doesn't hold the $1 peg doesn't make sense. I understand why they did it with the RWAs, but not with SURGE, because the peg was never the promise.

When they introduce SURGE they say that a portion of the initial SURGE sale is set aside for HBD payouts covering a minimum of 6 months worth of payouts. Just to note, the pre-sale was completed six months ago.

Let's go back to the Recovery Protocol. They stopped liquid yield payments and rebased them into automatic buybacks. Yes, they claim the value is "still being paid" via buybacks, but it's NOT the same when you needed that income. Theoretically the price must go up and be close to the peg, right?

It's still too early to tell. But what we can do is some math.

Their words:

In simple terms, if $1,500 per week in SURGE yield is obligated in terms of stablecoin yield; that yield will be used to purchase $1,500 per week of SURGE and permanently hold it in the RCBF.

The reality is that only the top 50 of the SURGE richlist holds 427k tokens right now, meaning at least 1231 HUSD weekly yield that should be used to buy SURGE off the market and contribute to closing the peg.

But there is no buying around this volume. The daily volume of SURGE trades merely gets up to $100.

None of the buyers are related to @leostrategy and the 15 visible buy orders don't add more than 50 SURGE. The depth of the sell orders is less than the 1231 HUSD from the yield. With only 800 HUSD the price of each SURGE will go up to 0.84 HUSD. With decreasing walls of buy orders with the other 431 HUSD the price can be defended if the remaining holders don't feel betrayed by this change and don't go into exit mode.

Honestly there's vagueness around where the buybacks are happening and whether they're actually having an effect. The first buyback should happen this week but still nothing. If "all yield is folded into buybacks effective immediately" what are they waiting for?

I agree with @alohaed that most of the woes could have been avoided by using some form of governance for LSTR. Instead, holders and investors depend on centralized products.

The only option right now is to wait and see and potentially take the loss or the profit. If I miss anything share it in the comments. The blockchain is auditable, you can run the numbers and the math yourself.

PS:

• For users, for investors, for @leostrategy, for all, don't try to grasp more than you can handle.

• Staked ACE is giving 0 yield when it should be giving a 10% APR. I don't know if that is part of the Recovery Protocol too or something else is happening.

• The sLEO in LeoDex is not harvesting the fees. Hope that starts paying again to help strengthen $LEO.

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