The issue I see is that we are confusing what “overpaying for security means”.
The current SOL staked value amounts to ~$53B, which is securing a TVL of ~$15B. Since the cost to control Solana is 66% of SOL staked, we have ~$35B securing ~$15B. That’s for sure an overpayment.
However, this scenario may change in the future and determining / claiming if the current curve is overpaying for security is not so easy.
To see this we can define a “Security Ratio” as TVL / Stake rate and checking for the condition
0.66 < TVL / SR
we can see how different growth assumption may change the overpayment statement.
For example, if we assume a growth of:
- SOL price growth of 20% a year - in 10 years, this means 1 SOL = $866.84
- TVL growth of 62% a year in the first 4 years and 10% growth in the following years - this means Solana DeFi will reach Ethereum TVL in 4 years
the current curve overpays for security for ~2 ys.
Of course, if we assume that SOL price appreciates faster than TVL, the current curve overpays for security even in 10 ys from now.
Now, you can play a bit with parameters to see under what conditions this overpayment holds here. However, this is not the point, since no matter what are the assumptions, no-one knows the future. The point is that this statement depends on how TVL over SOL price will change, and there are instances where the current curve is not overpaying for security,
This is another misconception. Data shows that small validators do rely on commissions (cohort 3 - 0.05% < SOL Share < 0.5% - and 4 - SOL Share < 0.05%), with ~50% of each cohort having commissions > 0.
And as you said, it is important to understand what will happen if market conditions change. If you look at dynamical evolution of this behaviour (e.g. 50th percentile of commissions by cohort), you can see that medium-small validators (Cohort 3) just changed this around epoch 600 (Apr 9, 2024), and Cohort 4 is just lowering it now.
This is because APR from market dynamic just went up by a lot, allowing small validators to charge less and less commissions to attract stake.
Overall, I agree that Solana should join other ecosystem like Ethereum and Cosmos to have a dynamical emission based on network willingness to move capital. However, we should be aware of what data says, without moving to fast with claims not backed with data. Data rn point to a “too aggressive reduction” and actually we should have more data driven analysis with different models / comparisons.