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

Developers
166

Because I did not propose what you claim I proposed. You are referring to a forum topic that was intended to spark deliberation and never made it to a formal NNS proposal. The only proposal that came out of it was to question if the discussion of a treasury is even worth having and if so should it be done in a working group.

I appreciate your opinions on this topic, but I would appreciate if you will stop trying to speak for me. I’m happy to represent my own opinion and answer your questions about my intentions when you ask.

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167

I’d honestly prefer if the conversation stayed un-edited, I think it gives a better example of everyone’s intentions.

I won’t list all of my questions / concerns that were sidestepped or ignored, but here’s a sizeable example;

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168

I can respect this position, but I definitely don’t agree. We are human and make mistakes, change our minds, evolve our thinking, etc. I think the final edit is a better reflection of true intention. Hence, I’m happy to edit when someone helps me identify flaws in my thinking that need to be corrected.

169

Come on Wenzel, you linked to that forum post in your proposal. You are speaking for yourself…I’m just listening…

170

I don’t really have anything to respond to in this post, but wanted to let you know that I agree by doing more than just a like. Thanks for sharing. I think these are all important points.

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171

You are right. We did link that forum topic as an example of of ongoing discussion of the treasury idea, but it was not presented as a concrete idea. The full proposal text is provided below for easy reference. It explicitly states that the temp check “proposal was not intended to represent any concrete ideas.” It also explicitly says it was intended to “gauge interest” and that “specific details” would be “developed in working groups and approved by the NNS at a future date”. There were explicit instructions about what a yes vote means. A yes vote did not mean approval of a treasury, how it would be funded, or how it would be used. A yes vote only meant “you support further exploration of the NNS Treasury idea”.

Start Quote - Proposal 86639 motion text:
This proposal is a Temperature Check of the NNS governing body to better understand if there is general support for the NNS Treasury idea that has been in deliberation in several locations including Twitter and the forum. This proposal is not intended to represent any concrete ideas. It serves to gauge interest from the voters about whether the NNS should independently own and control an ICP treasury. Specific details around purpose, funding mechanisms, and fund distribution would be developed in working groups and approved by the NNS at a future date.

We are asking you to vote to approve this proposal if you support further exploration of the NNS Treasury idea. Vote no if you believe the NNS Treasury idea should not be considered further.
End quote

Just like everyone else, I’m growing tired of repeating myself on these details. I’m not inspired at all about moving forward with the treasury idea.

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172

Wenzel again, I get all this…and to be honest I wish you would stop repeating it as well. I’m passed it.

As stated days ago let’s assume this is the start of the working group!

Your proposal to talk about a treasury passed and I’m trying to talk about it…meanwhile the only ideas you’ve put forward are the ones in that forum post which have been raised by several individuals and then just brushed aside…

So unless we can clearly provide reasons for creating a treasury and funding it then I agree we should just park it for awhile until we achieve sufficient decentralisation and the network matures a bit.

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173

As Wenzel suggested, the proposal was to explore a working group to discuss it further. Not to present concrete ideas. I am glad to see it passed.

As a result, we will look to establish a working group in the coming weeks. We want to get input from everyone - both proponents and critics of the idea - to see if we can reach a rough consensus and move forward. Hopefully we can but of course it’s possible we won’t.

I’m super excited about the prospect of multiple organizations like Dfinity - maybe 10+ - that can push forward the dream of an internet computer. So many folks are rightfully worried about how centralized voting is today. This is one avenue to help fix that.

I’m personally ok with inflation that comes from non voting neurons if it’s subject to various caps.

I know some folks don’t want inflation from non-voting neurons. Ok - so vote against it! Personally I think we’ll all benefit tremendously if we put up with a limited amount of inflation that only affected folks who don’t vote. Most arguments against this are based on a hardline principle which I am not convinced by. I’d prefer to live in a world where the Internet computer wins rather than one where we keep our principles and lose.

I’d open to be convinced otherwise. So if you’d like to convince me and others like me, please provide arguments rather than moral principles!

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174

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on how to solve this problem. I suspect you would agree that all three categories of people (proposers, voters, beneficiaries) should always be people who have the long term best interest of the IC in mind.

My struggle is this…
We have an environment where the community wants everyone to have the freedom to make proposals. Presumably this also means people involved in named neurons should have the same freedom. Speaking for myself, I didn’t create / get involved in a named neuron with the understanding that it would require me to not participate in governance deliberation or make proposals. That seems counter to decentralization principles if that is a prerequisite to named neurons.

We have a liquid democracy system that allows accumulation of a lot of voting power by small neurons through liquid democracy. It also gives them no visibility to their follower identities and gives them no power to reject followers or to subdivide the liquid democracy that is cast. All they can do is vote for what they believe is best and we have to assume that anyone who chooses to follow them is doing so because they trust their ability to make good decisions.

There is also a wide variety of opinions on what it means to be a beneficiary. Anyone who votes is certainly a beneficiary, but the benefit could come directly or it could come from second order effects (funding things that make the ecosystem grow).

Please don’t interpret this as me arguing that you are wrong. I agree with your concern, but I don’t know how to solve it given the governance participation that is encouraged. I’m very interested in knowing what you think is the right answer. I hope for a more nuanced answer than just aligning the three categories of people (proposer, voter, beneficiary), who should all be acting in the long term best interest of the IC, as evidence of bad optics or corrupt behavior. What is your proposed solution?

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175

My solution

In the interests of not increasing inflation with the NNS minting rewards from neurons that have not voted, a source of ICP that instead of being burned generating very little deflation would be all the ICP of rejected proposals coming from Spam, opportunism or proposals rejected by the community could go to a pot of rewards for the proposals that are accepted by the community.
This would not change the current ROI of rewards nor would the NNS increase the inflation from coining “unassigned” ICP from rewards from neurons that have not voted.

What continue with this?

on the one hand discouraging absurd or spam proposals and encouraging active participation in convenient smart solutions at any given time, and decentralization on the other.

Suppose that the pot of ICP minted from the proposals not accepted by the NNS is 1000 ICP at a given time, then conveniently a neuron X finds an improvement or solves a problem, the neurone X proposes to the NNS and its proposal is approved.
Now suppose that Neuron X has a voting power of 100 ICPs, of which 10 ICPs are from itself and the other 90 ICPs come from 9 other neurons that follow it with 10 ICPs each.
Those 1000 Reward ICPs from the pot would be assigned to the maturity of all those neurons via Neuron X with a 10% weighting for each of them, that is, 100 ICPs for each one.

what can we expect with this?

The extraordinary reward, being amount pre-established by the NNS (from rejected proposals), 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 proposing and implementing a proposal, there would be more rewards to be distributed discouraging the accumulation of power and encouraging decentralization.

Obviously, this at the same time would encourage the active action of the community to look for the right partner periodically, discouraging passive voting and the stagnation of power that leads to apathy and corruption.

for example, before creating a given Governance proposal, a contest of proposals will be held with a certain duration so that the community has time to develop on a certain convenient topic.
To avoid the opportunistic rush of followers, once the proposal is uploaded by the neuron to the NNS, it will no longer be possible to follow that neuron during the voting process.

The winner decided by Nns would upload their proposal to vote to be implemented. if it is implemented then there is a prize. in this way we would squeeze the greatest potential of governance and community intelligence

Make it clear that those neurons that vote independently following or not a winning neuron of the proposal, will also take their reward +~ predictable by the current tokenomics @Sabr

176

Hi there @Accumulating.icp , apologies for the late reply. It hard to keep up.

Honest answer: we (Dfinity) don’t have a stance. We evaluate each proposal for what it does, costs, benefits, how concrete it is, and it’s possible outcome.

Could we create such a stance? Yes, we have many policies (usually when something happens many times). And we also have many things we judge on a case by case basis.

My personal opinion:

I suspect and assume (but could be wrong) you are asking this because you believe spam proposal was created as a way to make idea of an NNS treasury more palatable. Quite frankly, I see it different for multiple reasons:

A. As I have written before, I don’t foresee a situation where a player “checkmates” the community and paints them into a corner. I think that is highly unlikely.

B. The players all played fair. They all listed their biases and intents. You may disagree but they were open about what their biases were and the spam proposal even called out their bias, while making it clear it was not part of the proposal. I think that is fair play in an open debate.

C. The spam proposal is valid and in and of itself. There have been many, many, many spam proposals. Many have been evaluated. Most rejected. Some have passed. Each spam proposal opened up both costs and opportunities because it created trade offs, to me this is just another proposal that opened doors and closed doors in a long line of them.

D. I think judging and investigating biases is a rabbit hole. The best thing we can ask for is that people be honest about their bias (which authors were) and for the community to actively read and judge the written proposal at hand.

E. I personally don’t judge in any moral manner WHY anybody proposes something on forum or to the NNS. I like best to evaluate it for its benefit to the IC, give feedback if I can, and move on. I do this because i want to be a welcoming community to the wildest ideas and the dumbest questions. This personal tenet is important to me.

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177

David, I’ve made many counterarguments and you ignore them…but I’ll summarize:

  • I agree it would be great to have 10 foundations driving the development of the IC
  • What’s stopping us from creating those foundations? Funding?
  • So your suggestions/arguments are to create that funding by extracting value from people who have bought and staked ICP on the NNS via inflation they won’t benefit from and/or lower rewards.

I’m sorry if you think my moral principle of not taking value/money from people who have staked ICP to fund your foundations is an issue. That’s pretty telling actually.

I’m still waiting for you to make a specific argument about why you can’t raise funds to support the growth you want for the IC and why you need the NNS to fund it.

You are trying to change the status quo not me…the burden of proof is on you to convince us why 1) we need a treasury and 2) how we are going to fund it.

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178

Good question @Accumulating.icp . Clearly if my original statement leads to this question, I did not write it very clearly.

What I tried to say (a bit clumsily!) is that the proposals are judged for what they do, both costs and benefits. But concrete ones.

You used the word “agenda” but we don’t look at agendas, we look at what the concrete outcomes, as well as options created and options reduced (there are many design decisions we have taken or not taken because it reduced potential doors we want to keep open).

If someone submits a proposal that makes NNS awesome and Tokenomics but their agenda is “I want to make money to support a political party in Mexico”, I personally don’t think we should care as a community.

Inversely, if a proposal fixed X problem but it led to more inflation or slower NNS or hurt a portion of the IC ecosystem or whatever, I may think the costs is too high for the solution it solves.

179

ZCash is a good example of funding public goods organizations. 20% of mining rewards go to 3 organizations to further develop the protocol.

ZCash token holders are not worried about theft and runaway inflation. They are grateful there are experts who can further the development of their coin in a sustainable way. Money to fund public goods has to come from somewhere. I am totally unconvinced by the theft and runaway inflation argument.

https://twitter.com/lastmjs/status/1585761078209830913?s=21&t=t9tH1SKCNTTUvng2RIVeaA

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180

Thats true the zcash 8 year gang are completely onboard with the 20% and are happy experts are looking out for their best intrests

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181

Umm when you change the rules and take rewards that would’ve gone to voters…aka take something that’s not yours…what do you call it?!

Also, if the miners aka node providers want to put a % of their node rewards into a treasury then that’s up to them.

182

Still unconvinced.

Rewards would not have gone to voters. It’s a small amount of inflation to the monetary supply that’s subject to a cap.

You are also confusing the mechanism of how the 3 ZCash foundations receive funding. The amount is determined based on a percentage of mining rewards. It’s not reducing the mining rewards by 20%. One could equally say the IC should fund its treasury by providing additional inflation as a percentage of what node providers are currently being paid. It’s over and above. Not a reduction.

All the arguments against the treasury thus far are mired in emotion, scaremongering and appeals to vague principles and false accusations of theft. Please convince me otherwise! I promise I’m open to changing my opinion if it’s convincing

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183

I can’t be reading this right. So rather than it being the responsibility of the proposing party, to prove to / convince others why this feature is needed, it is the responsibility of opposing parties to prove why it isn’t needed? And in the name of “well your ideas aren’t good enough”? This has to be a joke.

This is crypto. We’re here because of a lack of transparency in authority & the need for decentralization. “Trust me, I have good intentions, your just scared for no reason” is not good enough.

I am not opposed to a treasury, but I’m opposed to the idea of

  1. The treasury being controlled by named neurons in their current state. They are extremely centralized, with 2 named neurons casting 66% of voting power.

  2. The treasury coming at the expense of stakers rewards.

Prove to me why this is nessecary, not the other way around.

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184

Mate, I don’t need to convince you…I’m not trying to change things. And I don’t really care about zcash…

Also, the rewards would’ve gone to voters so either you don’t know what you’re talking about or you’re full of it…

185

On the subject of why some people think the idea of treasury is worth exploring: