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

Very fair questions @mechaquan , I can answer those I can.

  1. This motion in question reduces the incentive to spam. The proposal of raising to 10 ICP just makes spam costlier. Both are valid tactics. Both may be ultimately done, maybe we need to both reduce incentive for spam and also make spam costlier to ultimately address the problem. That is very possible.

That being said, I will answer why your solution will NOT solve spam by itself:

  1. Assume motion proposal costs go to 10 ICP.
  2. If the tokenomic incentives remain, there are many people who would make more than 10 ICP per day from proposals in rewards. To them, the higher cost means nothing. Also, we have seen cases where people “crowdfund” the motion proposal cost. How many people can pay 10 ICP and still get rewards? Many. But maybe it is more insidious, if 20 people can receive 0.5 ICP per day each from a spam proposal, they can all pool it together… again, something they would only do if there was an incentive. And we have seen this happen before.

I disagree the spam proposal was created to “pump a treasury” and I am not honestly not sure what more evidence I can provide for this in this thread. So let me reverse it: what data or evidence can i point out to convince you the spam proposal design is there to solve spam? Maybe the fact that it was actually proposed a while back and it was re-introduced? Not sure what evidence you are looking for. If you tell me what, I can be honest what evidence I know of and do not know of.

I agree. No it is not in same category as a security risk, my answer above only used a security risk as a metaphor to illustrate the design process: just because bad event X has not happened in a while, it does not mean it is fixed if the underlying cause still remains.

Being direct: I do not know what evidence to the contrary you are looking for. For example, I often ask myself, “I would change my mind if X was true” when crafting my own thinking. There are elements my beliefs pivot on. What is the X that would change your mind?

  1. I have shown in this thread there have been many, many spam proposal2
  2. I have shown the spam proposal tokenomic incentive remains (and likely to even grow with echange rate proposals change)
  3. I haves shown that even if we accept the spam proposal and implement it, it does not necessitate or require any sort of NNS treasury so one does not follow the other.
  4. In this thread I have linked to multiple open threads and discussions so nothing is secret, all pretty much in the open

What would convince you there is no secret ulterior motive between proposals? Or that one does not require the other?

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This is a misunderstanding of the motion proposal in question: Spam proposal design.

The spam proposal deliberately calls out that it does not touch this issue (if it had, DFINITY would have voted against it).

DFINITY voted on the proposal in question, not their forum post.

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@mechaquan upon further reflection, I do not think I properly gave you the credit I do think:

If you believe spam could trivially be solved by “raising to 10 ICP” and you see a more complex proposal that involves tokenomics incentives, I think it is reasonable for your spider sense to think, "If the complex proposal just an smokescreen for something else… like a city council approving an unnecessary bridge just to funnel money to a company?" I would think the same thing.

If I were you, I would also investigate further.

Our differences of opinions really hinge on a few things:

  1. I think the spam cannot be solved as trivially as you think
  2. I think spam proposal for changing incentives is not that complex and it reduces ICP created
  3. I think one can implement spam proposal and not be forced into anything else

Does that make sense, what do you think?

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Yes, agreed the treasury isn’t solutioned in the spam proposal but Austin does mention his preferred handling of the newly created “abandoned ICP” is to use it to fund a treasury so I do think it’s linked.

Sorry for the confusion…I was referring to the 10 ICP reject fee…not raising the proposal cost.

  1. I agree it’s not trivial or easily solved…and my point is while the spam is no longer financially incentivized it doesn’t actually put anything in place to actually stop it. Furthermore, people may still find it worth the 10 ICP rejection fee to use for marketing purposes.

  2. agree, it’s not overly complex but we need to also appreciate that this reduces rewards to voters under the guise of spam prevention (that again I don’t see being a significant problem or actually solved)

  3. agree nothing is forced except that it forces a reduction in voters rewards which now gives the pro-treasury crowd the funding mechanism without exceeding planned inflation

Also, I want to say I really appreciate your time in responding and your always civil discussions!

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To be honest, what would help is people not openly advocating for removing stakers/voters rewards.

I find it incredibly convenient that the spam proposal achieves point #2…while also as mentioned previously doesn’t actually stop spam…just financially disincentivizes it.

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This is a bad option. I’m already against the idea of an NNS treasury, but to take people’s awards away to fund it would be infuriating.

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I think we are now at the crux of the matter.

  1. The proposal does not design that ICP should be used for a treasury. If it had, Dfinity would have voted against it.

  2. You are quoting other people’s forum threads and asking me what I think, but this thread is about the motions and dfinity. I get that some people in the forum, proposed using ICP for an NNS treasury just like I’ve seen people in forum say a million things. Do you want me to defend what others think? The best I can do is clarify dfinity’s POV and occasionally clarify someone’s stand.

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It also gives the “burn ICP” camp less tokens in circulation. They also benefit.

It also gives the “reduce inflation rate, inflation is too high” camp what they want. They also benefit.

It is fair if people have differing opinions on the next steps of the consequences of the spam proposal, but I think you are painting a picture where only one camp gets what they want as a consequence of the spam proposal. There are many.

You can say disagree with one or all potential actions. I think that is reasonable in a design discussion.

Dfinity supported the spam proposal because of the reduction of spam and no other agenda beyond that. We encouraged the original proposers to take feedback and submit it as a motion because we liked the way it reduced the Tokenomics incentive.

Honest question: Would it have been better if Dfinity submitted the motion instead? We like to give credit to people who have ideas so we encourage them submitting, but we can always iterate.

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  1. I’m only saying that the spam proposal referenced using the abandoned ICP to fund a treasury which to me shows intent…maybe not Dfinity’s but certainly the proposers

  2. No, of course not but this particular forum post was linked in the treasury temp check that Dfinity voted on…so that’s relevant, right? To ask Dfinity to comment on a specific forum posted that they supported via a motion proposal?

Also, the quotes of forum post was because you questioned me on why I thought there was intent. Spam proposal mentions treasury…treasury temp check mentions using reduced rewards from stakers…these aren’t hard dots to connect.

And before anyone comments it’s just a motion proposal…I know…and I want to raise it as a significant concern of mine before preceding any further.

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Well I think if Dfinity proposed it then it probably/hopefully wouldn’t have referenced a treasury.

Finally, my last comment on this…wrt your comment on the tokenomic change…we’ve seen multiple tokenomics tweaks and changes which impact stakers and voters. I seriously think this hurts NNS staking because it shows lack of stability in the terms with which you are staking.

Dom talked so much about platform risk and how the IC could solve this…which was one of the reasons I originally got invested in the IC.

Now a bit about me…and why I’m passionate about this…I work for a large multinational cloud service provider which sells outsourced services for AWS/Azure/Google Cloud…currently I see no way that enterprises would migrate to the IC.

They may be centralized cloud providers but they have to respect contract law which makes it very difficult to actually deplatform. I think it would be great if we could strive for more stability and less tokenomic tweaks.

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Same here, I (incorrectly on my part) assumed ICP brings stability security and confidence to platforms and investors

These tokenomics changes have really made clear the quicksand in which were building

I don’t know what Dfinitys and ICPs next moves are but I hope at the very least they’re clued up enough to acknowledge and try address these issues

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Full disclosure: I do NOT work on Tokenomics or on positions of DFINITY within Tokenomics analysis and reccommendations (even in this spam case, I had to read up on this issue… you will see I was absent in the forum discussions), so I do not have anything wise nor special info to offer here.

I will say that the folks who do work in Tokenomics within DFINITY are reading this thread and I will also escalate this further.

If you want to know my opinion, I will just say what I have already written many times before publicly when recent tokenomics changes are proposed:

I support more good faith debates in ICP, even when I disagree. Thank you, Smaug for taking the time to share your ideas in good faith.

To be honest… I am very much a “dont do big things in complex systems” kind of guy. You could argue i am risk averse in tokenomics.

The idea of either locking OR unlocking any large amount of neurons changes the rules so much for my taste, that I would like to see some data or experiment to make sure it does more good than harm. I can come up with lots of stories where its good for the ecosystem and equally i can create stories where its bad, so I rejected this because “too rich for my blood.”

source: Force-Lock Seed Investors’ Neurons for 8 Years - #55 by diegop

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@kvic I have to be honest: I am not sure I follow what your diagram means or how it relates to DFINITY’s votes on the two motion proposals in question.

My diagram is fitting to the discussion that had been held in this very long discussion.

But as far as your question about spam is a circular one, you keep putting up things about the spam but it is in no one’s best interest to do anything other than write the same old thing.

Spam is about getting extra rewards but let’s start at the beginning, there are three types here, inactive or dead people, active or the ones that just stand by and look on and then there are the activists and they are not only spamming or supporting spamming but want dead people rewards.

Funny that after all this time the activists have alerted a new group calling themselves the treasury that stated they could tap into the dead people neurons who saw the potential to direct funds away not only from dead people but the Activist rewards as well which I displayed on my diagram where they would in an underhanded way achieve this.

The whole intention is to funnel away rewards from said dead people for their own personal intentions and not for the best of all.

Put a link on the NNS to this forum and instead of not being transparent in saying on the NNS that your can reap rewards by following, update it with you may get reduce rewards by following and here is the link to all those who want to funnel away your rewards and how they want to do that with code behind the scene.

While there are many percentages about how many dead people there are I wonder by being transparent many of these dead people would come to life.

So I personally believe you @diegop are a supporter of the activist and really not it your interest to fix anything.

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Sorry, I am not really sure I follow.

  1. Who is the activist? And what do they support? I suspect a quick clarification can clarify. Are you referring to the folks who posted NNS treasury?

  2. Are you referring to dfinity’s official stance or my personal opinion? (I note when it’s my personal opinion).

  3. If referring to the NNS treasury forum post, Is there any example where I have supported it?

Fwiw, I did not mean to insult your diagram (I hope I did not come off that way), I was only being honest: I do not understand it so I asked for clarification.

To be intellectually honest, I do not support the idea posted about NNS treasury, but I wholly believe to NOT be the case. I honestly believe it was done to decentralize growth for all. And even then I did not like the mechanisms.

Respectfully, I do not think there is any evidence that can change your mind, because I’m not sure what evidence folks have of bad intent… other than hearsay.

That being said, intent is tricky and I also have very little evidence to my opinion about their intent so it’s reasonable for people like you to defer to “the worst possible intent” as a way to guard their backs. I think this is very much in spirit of security and crypto thinking so I appreciate this POV.