DFINITY Foundation’s vote on Governance proposal #80970 (“Spam proposal”) and #86639 ("Temperature Check")

Your edited post reads better than the initial temper tantrum. Nevertheless I would ask you politely to not speak on my behalf. If you think I hate Synapse you are flattering yourselves. I simply do not trust it anymore, and I think the promise of all that money corrupted what was an inspiring vision over how the IC governance should work.

You even did the math in the forum post that you co-authored with David.

The potential to raise funds that could be put to a productive use is enormous given how valuable the NNS is ($1.57 billion worth of ICP staked at current value). The proposal to redirect ICP from non-voting neurons could in theory place 1M ICP a month into a NNS treasury without increasing the overall pre-set inflation rate of ICP (10% going down to 5% over 10 years). 1M ICP a month is $6M a month. That’s a lot of money!

That is a lot of money indeed and that is exactly why people don’t see this temp check proposal as casual. Cause it’s not YOUR money. It belongs to the network. The network is now reacting to your proposal to take it away. I think the right reaction from someone that cares about governance would be to listen with more empathy.

So you see, Synapse’s voting power and the state of the IC governance is not what I have an issue with. I have repeatedly and patiently explained what I have a issue with: minting other people’s rewards to fund a centralized organization and its operations. And you and various other Synapse member have defended this funding mechanism and continued to advocate for it. So we are at a point where our views are very much opposed. Why do you find it an insult if I don’t trust you or Synapse anymore? After all, blockchain networks have been built around the concept that we can’t trust each other when it comes to valuable assets, so we need a trustless environment.

And because I hope this to be the last comment I leave on this forum post, I will explain here again why this doesn’t make sense to me(I’ve already tried to cover this both on distrikt and twitter.)

The concept of “abandoned ICP” is a huge red flag. If the network doesn’t find the act of staking without voting valuable it should stop rewarding. Period. If it does end up minting those rewards then it must mean it actually finds the non-voting neuron valuable and that ICP belongs to the neuron whose stake generated the minting of the reward.

Otherwise the system becomes illogical and unfair. Imagine you’re a newcomer looking to understand why ICP mints rewards in relation to the staked ICP in a locked neuron…but it keeps it for itself and its treasury. We are talking about creating a dangerous precedent.

Has anyone even bothered to stop and think over the legal implications of such an action? Was a legal advisor consulted?

I would like to invite you to review the 2-3 comments I left on this forum post and you will see the issues I’ve raised have nothing to fo with your comments.

They are as follows:

-abandoned icp and using it for anything but its intended purpose
-dfinity’s process of decision-making when it comes to voting on proposals such as these. Which to be frank @diegop I am still not clear if Dfinity considered the links presented in the temp check proposal as being part of the proposal.

@wpb I hope that brings more clarity and stops speculation about what exactly I am so bothered about and nonsense regarding “hate”.
Although it seems that no matter how clearly I try to communicate you change the subject into whatever makes you look more like a victim. This is also part of why we have trust issues atm. My hope is that eventually this lack of trust between us will be mended.

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Point taken. I have edited again to attempt to remove any type of speaking on your behalf. I don’t like it when people do that to me, so I fully respect your request. Please let me know if there is something else you think is out of line and I will be happy to edit so we can return to an intellectually honest conversation.

I respectfully request that you further consider your previous statements as well and edit so you more accurately capture the intent of my original post that started my rant. I think you were completely off mark on what you read into my comments and you misrepresented it here on the forum and on Twitter. Thank you for your consideration of this request.

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Fair point. I’ve also corrected my post.

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if we were able to channel the suggestions of proposals at the objective convenience of the governance through public contests and voting through the nns. we would solve opportunism. on the other hand to those rewards can then be divided evenly by the followers’ ceded voting power (voting power) given to that neuron through liquid democracy.

The extraordinary reward, being amount pre-established by the NNS (from unassigned ICPs), would encourage not only the appointment of new neurons, but also their active participation in governance. In addition, since the reward is a fixed amount to be distributed, the neurons with less voting power (for different reasons) would be more attractive to the followers since, in the case of proposing and implementing a proposal, there would be more rewards to be distributed discouraging the accumulation of power and encouraging decentralization.

@AndraGeorgescu just to be clear, the proposal is that those non-voting rewards are NOT created. So it would do exactly what you want it to do. The “unallocated ICP” or “abandoned ICP” was meant to be a number in the NNS that tells us how much was NOT created. It is not minting anything or creating any rewards. Honestly, I believe its harmless, but since its intent was to just keep track of it for historical reasons (and analyzing data trends), I would vote it is NOT tracked because of the political temperature around it. I think not worth dividing the community over something which was meant for data purposes.

Apologies, I think I may be missing something @AndraGeorgescu .

I thought I answered that here and you liked the comment, so it seems I did not. Can you help me see what I am missing?

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When I am talking about “abandoned ICP” I am talking about the temp check proposal to which Dfinity voted yes to. Not the spam prevention proposal which introduced this concept.

The temp check proposal that wanted to create a treasury and linked to this forum post that explains the concept in great detail: A Call to Action: Using the NNS for Growth

I believe that there is just reason for concern and dismissing it is not the best way forward. Also I don’t believe I’m dividing the community at all. If anything this proposal and its detailed forum post have managed to do that.

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@AndraGeorgescu so was I. My reply was in regards to the “temperature check” proposal, not the spam proposal.

Our intent is simple: we voted to keep the conversation going. The links were seen as examples of the conversation.

We did NOT vote to approve a half-baked idea (which was not even in the proposal itself). No offense to the proposers, but idea is clearly still in progress.

I do not think you are “dividing community”.

If you are referring to this quote by me:

The “unallocated ICP” or “abandoned ICP” was meant to be a number in the NNS that tells us how much was NOT created. It is not minting anything or creating any rewards. Honestly, I believe its harmless, but since its intent was to just keep track of it for historical reasons (and analyzing data trends), I would vote it is NOT tracked because of the political temperature around it. I think not worth dividing the community over something which was meant for data purposes.

I am saying the data metric may be needlessly dividing the community (I cannot stress HOW unimportant it is to the spam proposal’s mechanism), so I would vote to just remove it. It was seen as a metric for data purposes only.

I am willing to admit if I may be missing something. I am ok trying again, i honestly do want to address your points so I am ok if providing some missing information

I assumed your reply was about the spam prevention proposal given the that it focused on this.

The “unallocated ICP” or “abandoned ICP” was meant to be a number in the NNS that tells us how much was NOT created. It is not minting anything or creating any rewards.

This is true only for the spam prevention proposal but not for the temp check proposal.

The temp check proposal specifies that the treasury concept they are proposing has been discussed in the forum post linked within the proposal itself and it introduces all the aspects of “abandoned ICP” that raise concerns.

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You are right. The math was presented as an example of the “potential” that “could in theory” fund a treasury. It’s a maximum boundary that would not exceed existing governance reward inflation. It was presented as one of several ways a treasury could be funded. Unfortunately, we did not also present a “do nothing” option in the funding option list

I’d like to know why you think that I think that this is my money? Will you please provide references to something I said that justifies this accusation?

I respect this opinion, but the NNS does not pay governance rewards to people who do not vote. One very reasonable option is to do nothing with the undistributed governance rewards. My stated preference is to use it to fund people and organizations that can become contributors to the IC. This is a fundamental difference of opinion. I recognize my argument is not resonating with the loudest voices. As such, I have not been advocating that we move forward with the treasury idea.

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Ah fair enough, vague writing on my part.

Ah yes, you are correct. The forum links in the “spam proposal” and the “temperature check” proposal do have different ideas on “abandoned ICP.”

To connect a few things I have said under one roof to make it clearer:

  1. DFINITY interpreted the “temperature check” proposal to be asking “should conversation continue?”

  2. DFINITY did read the links as examples of the conversation. If the conversation was (for example) a lot of racist troll messages, DFINITY would have voted NO. Since the conversation was about legitimate disagreements on IC design, DFINITY voted YES in order to not accidentally kill any open design conversations from the community. We try to encourage participation, whether we agree or disagree.

  3. You @AndraGeorgescu have pointed out in other messages that we DFINITY perhaps misinterpreted the “temperature check” proposal. I think that is a fair and reasonable point. I can only answer how we interpreted it. You may be right our interpretation was incorrect. It was a subjective call so best we can do is be open about how we understood it.

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@AndraGeorgescu i hate to put you on the spot, but since my intent is to be maximally helpful… did I address your questions?

Thanks, but do you think your response is conflating the difference I described between governance motion proposals, which deserve real democracy, and protocol governance, which should be governed by the NNS?

I agree for the reasons you stated.

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I meant you in plural, as in the people that are already making elaborate plans on how to manage this money in fair and transparent ways. Why don’t we first figure this out and stop all these plans like the one proposing to fund the incorporation and operations of a not for profit foundation with “abandoned ICP”

Yes I believe I understand how Dfinity voted now

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This is literally the same thing I said but presented somehow as opposed so I am a bit confused at this point. Wenzel we might actually be agreeing with each other for once :joy:

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Fwiw, maybe a more interesting question is what we learned about this, and as I wrote above, I think DFINITY learned a lot about how to scrutinize “temperature check” proposals or “should this conversation continue?” or how we communicate it before and after.

We do not think we did great here. It would be disingenuous to say, “Here is what we did and why it was right.”

More honest version is “here is what we did, why we did it, and why we think it was not great.”

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I feel apprehensive about even posting this because it seems like this thread has gotten quite heated. I’m still not sure I understand everyone’s perspectives but hopefully that’s OK.

I’m posting this anyway because I want to encourage others to ask “stupid” questions and feel like there’s an environment where it’s safe to do that. I hope this is received in the manner it is intended.


I’ve spent some time trying to understand what people mean by “abandoned ICP”, tracking it, and all of the concerns around it.

I think what people may actually mean by this loaded and unfortunate term is “the difference in the amount of ICP that would have otherwise been minted” and that’s what’s of most interest.

Or rather, what the actual inflation value is vs. the inflation schedule that was originally proposed.


From what I’ve gathered, some of the proposed ideas (like @lastmjsfunded contributors seem quite logical;

ICP is minted for activity that the NNS deems is valuable. At the moment that is limited to being a node provider and voting.

If at some point the NNS decided that minting more ICP for some other activity was valuable then maybe that could happen.


Questions:

  1. Do people object to that in principle? (introducing new activity and minting more ICP, details obviously important)

    If not, or to at least keep that option open, capping the above to the originally planned inflation schedule seems important.

  2. In which case, is keeping track of the ICP that was planned to be minted as it happens the only way to ensure that?

    Can we figure it out retroactively if necessary? Are people also opposed to that?


Thanks :bowing_man:

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