Why do we need manufacturing, it seems unnecessary?

There are many reasons for why manufacturing is a foundational requirement in our economy design.

1. Functions as a natural supply manager. People are less likely to pay manufacturing fees if the manufacturing process is inefficient (due to poor node staking) or unprofitable. This ensures that if value of VAPE declines, new supply will eventually slow or halt

2. Provides an added utility for nodes and an additional way for nodes to earn passive value. The three different buildings and steps allow for three different new node attributes, which in turn will allow some nodes to become disproportionately valuable on the secondary market (e.g., a node with a TVL of 10K may not receive much VPND from the node reward pool, but it’s the highest rated power source for the refinery — and in turn earns a larger stake in USDC fees from the Refinery)

3. Drives additional recurring traffic to VaporDEX. Manufacturing doesn’t require constant action, but it does require you to deposit and return later to withdraw and continue. The more times a user visits VaporDEX, the more likely they are to be retained — and the more likely they are to generate fees for the community

4. It ensures that while VAPE materials can be earned through a variety of actions — it’s still appropriately challenging to acquire a fully minted VAPE token. Minting a token should be a big moment, and manufacturing is a value experience that reinforces multiple design philosophies of ours

5. It ensures that if demand for VAPE is sustained or increases, both VaporFi as well as three different reward pools receive valuable liquidity for growth

6. A challenging manufacturing process means that while at most 21M tokens can ever exist, many will be lost and never minted if recipients choose not to invest additional time into manufacturing and minting them