@CatPirate Don’t feel like you are contributing anything to this thread of discussion. You don’t have to jump at every post made by DFINITY employees. It gets old, and most people would just ignore you. I know that you want your voice to be heard, but what you do seems only getting you the opposite.
6 Likes
Try this with average crypto Joe, which explanation will he understand?
- DFINITY just released XXX more coins into circulation.
- (insert your favorite explanation of why previous CS was wrong, and new CS is right)
It doesn’t matter if (1) is plainly wrong. I guarantee you it will be the dominating narrative if we do this.
These are my calculations on this topic with explanations:
- Total supply = all tokens on ICP Ledger [including total amount of ICP tokens in neurons (dissolve delay ≥ 0)]
- Circulating supply = all tokens on ICP Ledger [including total amount of ICP tokens dissolved in neurons (dissolve delay = 0)]
- During the calculations, all neurons in the network should be considered equally, regardless of who they belong to and whether they were received during genesis by their controllers or not.
- Maturity, IS NOT an ICP token and isn’t exchangeable exactly 1:1, so it should not be taken into account at all when calculating the total amount of ICP in circulation.
- I believe that this is the most logical and objective approach to this topic.
All neurons are these same, MATURITY ≠ ICP and that’s only true definition.
2 Likes
There was an entire section dedicated to maturity in the NNS and ICP Token Report, published earlier this week. There’s also a real-time display of maturity on the dashboard (as you referenced later in this forum).
1 Like
I am sorry, but one would think the long history of your published/visible unhelpful comments (frequently tied with ad hominems) would be more than ample evidence for the patience of moderators of this forum aiming for a reasonable dialogue across technical discussions.
I know many folks have just given to ignoring your comments, but your most recent comment disregarded my warning and I would be negligent as a moderator to not curate a good experience for folks.
Therefore I have silenced @CatPirate 's account for one month. I have written them the following message:
Due to multiple complaints, your account can no longer post or start topics for the next month (until May 7, 2023). You can still log in and view topics. After May 7, if you continue your previous behavior, the silence period will be extended and face possible suspension of your account in this forum.
10 Likes
I 100% agree with this
5 Likes
TLDR:
Since I am NOT working on this topic as @Kyle_Langham is (all I know is what is written in this forum just like everyone else), I wanted to hopefully simplify some of the complexity I see here and share my personal (non-DFINITY) opinion. I am just one voice and of course respect and acquiesce 
to the community.
Question at hand
-
One of @Kyle_Langham 's responsibilities is to further transparency (by making data much easier to access and to understand). A lot of it is due to to feedback from folks like yourself and broader crypto. He has worked a lot on this and continues, of course.
-
One of the common complaints he has heard from folks is that there are parts of ICP that may be reasonable or logical, but they differ too much from the norm to make comparisons helpful.
-
This is why @Kyle_Langham created this post:
The question he is struggling with is less “what is the most accurate way to represent CS?”
and more…
“How much should ICP definitions/terms modify to go along with crypto standards?”
Modifying to go along with standards may have short term repercussions (or none at all), but the question is how much adapting to standards is important and how much appetite there is.
My personal (non-DFINITY opinion):
-
I think we should clean up whatever we can to make things easier to compare.
-
I am not sure I agree that Foundation tokens should be outside the CS, but I recognize that if that is what many L1s and Foundations do, it is more important that we all drive in the same side of the road than to argue right or left.
-
I admit I am ok with the trolls of the world jumping on this if it means making ICP easier to understand and compare for broader base in the long run. I am not convinced it will be that meaningful or distracting since there already are trolls who spread FUD, but I empathize with those concerned.
-
I believe that other projects have changed the CS definition on CMC, and usually without any deliberation (and honestly no real correlation to impact). What is unusual here is that this is being discussed.
-
Quite frankly, I find the total supply and supply not locked in smart contracts more helpful definitions to the intent of what CS was originally aiming for, but I recognize that industry is converging on what CS should be. I think these number should be easily discoverable (and applaud @Kyle_Langham for making them so).
What my thinking hinges on
Like @Kyle_Langham I want to see the community’s perspective on this, but I also intend to make my own decision. Here are some areas where my current thinking hinges:
a. My thinking hinges on my understanding on what “driving on the same side of the road” is, as much as possible in an imperfect world. Data could change that.
b. My thinking hinges on my understanding that CS definition changes in other L1s have not been much more than short term blips or discussions after the fact.
c. I read CMC’s feedback from @Kyle_Langham (and know they are reading this forum), so I am using this as information.
4 Likes
If we do this, we do it for the right reasons - to make it simpler and more comparable.
The ranking thing should not be relevant.
4 Likes
But isn’t the whole problem here that there are no standards?
If the goal is to look like other coins we can define CS as 80% of TS and be done 
Simple and easy to calculate. My point about accuracy assumed that this measurement had real utility, but if it’s akin to picking which side of the road to drive on, I agree with @diegop that there’s no need to argue.
I also agree with @dfisher and @diegop that public impression on this particular issue shouldn’t inform policy. But imo doing this for the right reasons means obtaining a number that conveys something real to investors for them to base their decisions on.
1 Like
To be honest, this is the initial main question:
-
How much do we want to spend energy creating a metric that best represents the nuances of ICP vs How much energy do we want to spend energy adjusting to go with as close to standard as possible? This is a very valid question and I do not think it has an obvious answer. I just posted my own opinion that CS is most helpful as a comparable metric.
-
I do not discourage and in fact even ENCOURAGE that we continue adding metrics to dashboards to allow users to understand the nuances of ICP ecosystem. That way we have our cake and eat it too:
- provide high-level metric for comparing apples to apples
- provide data so people diving to understand can see how the ecosystem breaks out, etc…
You are right @Jonathan . @Kyle_Langham is doing his best to provide some patterns, (maybe “patterns” is better than “standards”), and it’s possible that even if one agrees we should focus CS on industry patterns, one may disagree with what those patterns tell us. That is question #2 if one agrees what direction CS should take
1 Like
I agree that it’s important to increase transparency in every aspect and the CS is very important. However considering 1/ the lack of standards and 2/ potential reactions from people not familiar with ICP, is it possible to defer this exercise until when the market situation starts to improve?
To summarize the feedback I’ve received, below is the concerns expressed, organized in order by the number of community members who have expressed them. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything:
- Narrative/Price - the change in CS may create FUD around market manipulation and negatively impact price.
- New metric - DFINITY should create new and more meaningful metrics.
- Staked ICP - tokens locked on the NNS should not be part of the CS.
- DFINITY tokens - all of DFINITY’s tokens should be included in the CS.
- Maturity - Arguments both for and against including maturity in CS.
I will be discussing these concerns internally within DFINITY to determine the best path forward. My current thinking on each items is:
- Narrative/Price - (a) I think this forum thread is a great counter argument against any FUD. (b) CoinMarketCap expressed that coins update their definitions of CS, but this is the first time it’s ever been done transparently and (c) I did a statistical analysis of large jumps in CS and price performance for 7 days and 30 days and found no correlation. From a statistical point of view, this topic is completely independent of price action.
- New metric - I fully agree with this and plan to continue that work with Coin Market Cap.
- Staked ICP - Excluding NNS staked ICP from CS would take us away from our goal of aligning with our peers as I have found no examples of a coin that does that in the top 50 coins (great example - 100% of ETH tokens are in their CS). Coin Market Cap also confirmed that their usage of the term “locked” is in relation to an escrow-like situations, not staking as a utility of the coin.
- DFINITY tokens - this argument, based on the unique fact that the foundation does not control the IC but rather is a contributor to it, is valid and requires more thought.
- Maturity - The industry is pretty consistent in supply being limited to minted tokens. That’s true for inflation calculations and supply metrics. Including maturity would take us away from our goal of aligning to the industry.
8 Likes
Should this read “Excluding NNS staked ICP…”?
2 Likes
Good catch. I’ll edit the post. Thanks!
1 Like
Thank you all for the great conversation and feedback. I’ve created a NNS motion proposal for this topic: Proposal: 117360 - IC Dashboard.
Please continue to share your feedback and thoughts in this thread.
3 Likes
%100 agree that maturity doesn’t have to be in CS. Simply because the maturity is not ICP and the maturity accumulated and staked again, cannot be transformed into ICP. Thank you very much for all the work!
3 Likes
Just out of curiosity, or to play devil’s advocate perhaps… what changes (if any) are code changes in this motion proposal? will it be to update the API’s?
To be honest, I am trying to (slowly perhaps) increase my voting standards and am struggling with my decision on this proposal. I will be watching the conversation and I’ll vote on my own accord (as always), however, in full disclosure I am leaning towards “No”. This might be something that could be tabled and discussed again later IMHO, not right now. I reflect and echo the rest of the concerns. I’m not going to keep spinning that record lol
There is no need to redefine the circulating supply of ICP. It is a little too early for those changes. I personally do not think fitting into the current market rankings is necessary for the growth of the ecosystem
This definition put Bitcoin market structure at risk. By knowing the total supply governments can team up and control Bitcoin market structure at their pleasure. They can buy and dump whenever they want with high certainty hence controlling the Bitcoin market flow. Of course there exists a resistance, but by knowing circulating supply they have enough information to control BTC and benefit to having a say when the price is to be high and low with high precision. I tend to be more defensive, but my overall general thought is that NOT KNOWING TOTAL CIRCULATING SURPLY IS A SAFETY PRECAUTION TO AVOID A RAG AND PULL. Not knowing total circulating supply further allows the market to react naturally to demand and supply.
1 Like
If:
ICP Circulating Supply = [Total Supply of ICP] minus [Liquid Tokens Owned by DFINITY]
it means that:
ICP Not Circulating Supply = Liquid Tokens Owned by DFINITY
I don’t think it’s reasonable to exclude the tokens of a given network participant just because he has a lot of them. Doesn’t such a definition put DFINITY above all other ICP token holders?
In other networks, a given foundation is usually the only developer. In our case, it was supposed to be different…
Yes, I think this is a logical argument that ICP Circulating Supply could/should equal its Total Supply. We discussed this option internally and decided it was best to follow our goal of aligning to our peers (which usually do not include foundation liquid supply in the circulating supply). CoinMarketCap also acknowledged this difference in our conversations and also expressed unease with a definition that produced circulating supply equal to total supply (even though some coins have already gone that route).
We (the ICP community) could explore the option of saying all coins are circulating.
4 Likes