A good c-neuron to start with (as a test of this feature) would be System Canister Management, which is used to update the NNS canister.
@diegop answered many of my questions with respect to how DFINITY currently controls their neuron in this comment.
He also detailed a bit regarding the pager-type notifications each of the 9-voting members have for voting on urgent replica updates:
Putting together c-neurons that are gatekeepers to the actual protocol requires a much higher level of commitment than the current named neurons.
I mean no offense by this to any of the of the current named neurons, but being paged several times from 1:30am to 4am to get up to speed on an issue and make a coherent vote on it is not easy. It requires technical expertise on top of dedication. If a replica update gets pushed out and needs to be rolled back or a emergency patch fix, the c-neuron members need to be reachable and ready to go, even to the point of staggering vacation/time-off if membership is small enough.
As much as I’ve pushed back on this publicly, I honestly don’t trust the NNS community with voting at the code-change level right now. We’d end up with members who are whales and/or non-technical members of the community instead of those with specific expertise or at least high-level knowledge of the specific changes being made.
Realistically, I don’t think that DFINITY would approve of this either in the current state - even if you rally enough support in a governance proposal to approve of these changes, DFINITY would not implement them, and then any subsequent development efforts would be wasted since the community would not be able to gather enough voting power to pass a replica code change via the System Canister Mangement topic (where everyone currently follows DFINITY).
It’s for that reason that I recommend an the following experiment as a “half-measure”:
That DFINITY temporarily allow just a single, technically well-versed member from the community to become a voting member of the DFINITY neuron, to see if this community member can realistically assume non-governance topic voting responsibilities and meaningfully contribute to the DFINITY neuron.
DFINITY would allow the voting member in for 1-3 months to vote on a pre-defined subset of topics, and can obviously kick them out at any time DFINITY wishes to do so. If the voting member’s contributions impress DFINITY, then DFINITY may slowly gain more trust in the other members of the community to assume various responsibilities.
By DFINITY doing this, it would go a long way towards obliging and quieting the community’s concerns about not having a voice in the protocol, which has been a recurring and persistent discussion topic over the past few months.
I would nominate you, @lastmjs to assume this responsibility as a voting member of the DFINITY neuron.