Thanks @Curia - This is a very fair and thoughtful critique, and we genuinely appreciate you putting numbers behind the concern.
We broadly agree with the core point: Tropykus shutting down didn’t just change an integration detail. It reduced the available liquidity depth and the “ceiling” for how compelling prize sizes can be in the short term. Our pivot to Sovryn was primarily a survival move to keep TYKORA functional and to preserve the work already completed (including the audit), but we don’t claim that Sovryn today offers the same depth that Tropykus had.
Your analysis also highlights the real structural dependency: a prize vault is an engagement/retention primitive that performs best when the underlying stablecoin + lending ecosystem is already sufficiently mature. If the accessible supply base is thin, prize magnitude can struggle, and incentives can become self-limiting, exactly the cold-start / PMF risk you describe.
That’s why, in our M1 closure update, we explicitly asked the community whether the Sovryn path makes sense or whether waiting / re-evaluating is the more responsible choice.
From our side, we see two realistic paths forward, and we’re genuinely open to community preference:
Path A — Proceed cautiously with DoC-only (Sovryn) as an “ecosystem experiment,” not as a guaranteed growth engine.
This means being transparent about the prize ceiling under current liquidity conditions, keeping the rollout conservative, and using sponsor-mode deposits as a non-inflationary way to improve early prize salience—while accepting that near-term outcomes may be modest if broader liquidity doesn’t grow.
Path B — Pause/Delay M2/M3 until deeper markets exist (or until a stronger dual-asset setup is available).
We agree this may be the most rational choice if the community’s view is that Rootstock is not yet at the stage where a prize vault can deliver meaningful behavioral pull. In that scenario, we can keep TYKORA in a “ready state” and re-activate when conditions improve.
We also share your view that the best long-term answer is more than one viable yield venue and ideally more than one asset vault. We’re watching alternatives like LayerBank closely - if/when DoC + USDRIF markets there reach meaningful depth and stability, TYKORA’s strategy modularity makes that integration feasible without changing the core prize-vault logic.
So rather than trying to “spin” the Sovryn pivot as a full replacement, we’ll say it plainly: it’s a workable stopgap, but it may not be the optimal moment to push a full production expansion. We’re happy to align with whatever the community believes is the right call given Rootstock’s current stage.
Appreciate the candid feedback. It’s exactly the kind of ecosystem-level realism we want to incorporate before moving further.
JXLabs Team