Thanks Anvil. Yes, I think it all comes down to VP transferability. The NNS is designed to make transferability hard. VP cannot be traded in a fungible manner (having to sell your entire II or canister, makes it hard). The IC is unlike any other chain (it’s governance heavy). If the NNS is compromised, quite literally everything is vulnerable.
Assume a highly resourced actor/organisation wants to destroy the IC, and imagine we live in a future where code contributions from external contributors is commonplace. This person/organisation could mint lots of cICP and acquire a large amount of influence on the network. They could simultaneously contribute changes to the codebase that improve the IC, all the while preparing the stage for a malicious action in the future (which is hard for anyone to spot). Assume they’ve managed to introduce some sort of backdoor, kill switch or other vulnerability that only they know how to exploit, and only they know is there (because of the phased approach they have taken to introduce it). By having a large portion of VP on the network they are far more likely to be considered trusted contributors (why would they try to destroy a network on which they have such a large stake?).
Now imagine they begin selling their cICP in large batches, striking a balance between maximising their sale price while exiting their position a soon as possible (say, within a month or two). Once they’re out, they can trigger their malicious code to action whatever their attack is intended to do.
why would they try to destroy a network on which they have such a large stake?
This question doesn’t make sense anymore in the context of something like cICP (if cICP holders are to be afforded NNS VP).
I’m still very unclear on why you wouldn’t just make proportional representation relate to NTN stakers, rather than cICP holders (after all NTN is the governance token for the protocol - so they have the ultimate power at the end of the day anyway). At the moment NTN is fairly centralised, but I would happily start buying up NTN knowing that each token I hold contributes to my influence on the NNS (in order to further decentralise it - given that the NNS is also currently highly centralised). With proportional representation, I know that each token I hold makes a difference (unlike something like WTN).