DFINITY is the single greatest individual profiteer of NNS spam

@wpb your response came off as partly an attack against me mixed with a rebuttal to my initial argument, so I’ve broken this response into two parts.

  1. A bit of background on the spam topic, and my personal contributions thus far on this specific topic, and to the developer forums regarding other areas of the IC
  2. Addressing your concerns with my post

First off, a bit of background

I, and many others such as yourself, @skilesare, @lastmjs, etc. have spent countless hours coming up with proposals to combat spam in the forums, as well as addressing long threads of concerns/feedback. In fact, I started the very first discussion in this forum related to spam prevention the first week spam started in early April. I later created two complementary proposals to combat the spam issue

  1. Proposal to fix governance proposal rewards at 75% on a daily basis
  2. [Proposal] Introduce an incubation period and minimum support threshold for governance proposals)

My work on these proposals was incorporated and referenced in several other notable proposals brought forth by the developer community, which were picked up and evaluated by @bjoernek from DFINITY

  1. Proposal to restrict rewards qualification to a threshold by @skilesare
  2. Proposal to covert from system based reward to voter based reward; to implement an accept quorum mechanism; and to return the reject cost to 1 ICP by @skilesare
  3. Multi-stage Governance Proposals, Starting w/ Stage 0 and Stage 1 by @lastmjs

These proposals have stalled since early-mid May (the Supernova effect?)

As you mentioned, proposal 55651 was passed back in April. It was put on the “roadmap”, but is not at all difficult feature to design and implement from an engineering perspective. In fact, I would conservatively estimate that this would take something like 2 weeks of backend and 1 week of frontend engineering work tops to implement. It’s actually possible the reason this proposal hasn’t been implemented yet is because DFINITY is not in favor of it, or is waiting for another solution that they would prefer.

You know this is not accurate. @skilesare crowdfunded and put forth an easy-to-implement quick-fix Proposal to temporarily reduce governance proposal weight to 1, which was rejected. Had this proposal passed, it would have been much harder (20X harder) for whales to benefit financially from spam proposals through @ysyms.

Increase Proposal Rejection Cost did not achieve it’s goal of reducing spam, as agreed by notable members of the community such as @LightningLad91

Source

The 10 ICP proposal reject cost has not stopped spam, it’s acted as a blunt censor on new proposals that aren’t financially funded (by crowdfunding or whales) being brought forth by the community to the NNS.


To address your concerns

I feel the title is actually very accurate. DFINITY is profiting from the NNS spam rewards more than any other staked entity. Although DFINITY has said they won’t work on the spam issue until after the SNS, the SNS release will most likely go through several stages of release and tuning (not just one and done) and I’d estimate it won’t be fully complete until 2023 at the earliest.

I therefore see no reason why proposals to eliminate spam won’t be kicked down the road(map) as long as possible, especially if the financial incentives to delay implementation are aligned with those that have the most voting power.

I’m glad some of us can see the current situation for what it is, and just have different opinions on whether this is positive or negative for the community.

Why am I “sensationalizing” this?

I’m escalating my tone with respect to this specific issue of spam on the forums, because it now seems that the entire community has accepted spam as the new normal, and that no action or even discussion has taken place in the last month with respect to NNS spam (by the community or DFINITY), while the amount of spam has escalated in the meantime.

I don’t vote actively anymore - not because I don’t care about the IC and NNS, but because my NNS app is slow and my inbox is 95%+ spam. I’d estimate that I’m not the only one who’s voting habits have changed over the past few months.

In the following statement denoted by (->), I’m extrapolating a bit based on my personal experience here (I don’t have data to back this up)…

-> To think all of these changes going back to last year were to incentivize active participation, and now we could potentially be back at a more passive governance state with voters checked out and delegating to their follow neuron all because of a spam issue that either no one wants to or has the time to tackle. A passive NNS, with 4 voting named neurons and everyone default following them.


Prioritization comes from visibility and sometimes shining a light on a glaring issue is the best way to drive action and improve it. Management drives priorities, which can be easily changed - for example, DFINITY is currently prioritizing and investing a significant amount of financial resources into two lawsuits

  1. https://cointelegraph.com/news/dfinity-foundation-files-lawsuit-against-meta-over-infinity-logo (this is PR)
  2. Defamation lawsuit against NYT and Arkham Intel - (100% agree with this lawsuit)

The resources for the logo lawsuit could have easily instead been spent on an engineer or two (at least) to design and implement proposal 55651, or a different a solution for NNS spam.

Outside of NNS spam, I’ve dug into other issues and brought visibility to them such as

in order to get more information and drive action where necessary. We all benefit when the IC receives criticism, and as both a developer and investor, I care deeply about these issues as they will have long-term effects on the IC (even if I am benefiting handsomely from the current rewards structure).

Outside of good faith, how the work for the NNS proposals that have passed will eventually be implemented and shipped to the IC is a great question for another forum topic thread (Is it DFINITY’s responsibility? Should the community given a pair of keys to the castle?).

Remember this proposal that passed the NNS? → Motion Request for Neuron Indexing

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FWIW - I’m glad you are escalating this; I agree with many of your points. I wish you luck trying to break through to someone.

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I used a stronger tone because I highly respect you as a contributor to these governance topics and I want to motivate you (and others) to turn your ideas into something that is actionable for the governing body to decide. All ideas are debatable as you have referenced extensively, but none of them will ever bear fruit unless they are presented to the NNS for voting. Please give DFINITY something concrete to put on the roadmap so everyone (DFINITY and the community) can stay focused on ideas the governing body approves and we can move on or iterate ideas when the governing body rejects.

I edited my post to give @skilesare credit for the temporary proposal that he did submit. Thanks for calling me out on that detail.

Of course a proposal reject fee of 10 ICP will not be effective. That’s an insufficient fee by far.

I agree DFINITY is profiting from the spam proposals…just like everyone else who is voting. That was one point out of many that you made in your post and it wasn’t even the main point, yet you chose to lead with that in the title. I would argue that a more accurate title would be something like “Why has deliberation stalled on ideas to resolve the spam proposal issue?” since that is a more accurate reflection of the content of your post.

I very much agree with your point that governance voting has become too routine and I would like to see the spam issue resolved sooner than later by implementing the proposals that have passed.

We are all 100% against spam. This is not the question. But, to me, those spams also are a solution to something I consider a problem, or something not fair let’s say. And it is about Active and Non-Active voters. These spams are taking rewards from non active accounts and reward the active accounts. Talking about those who are here on the forum, read and/or participate. At least active enough to configure their neurons to follow a voting neuron.
Some non active neurons are from people who don’t care obviously, not even care enough to understand and configure their neurons correctly. And even worst, rewards given forever to a dead owner account or a lost accounts. Of course I am in high favor of the proposal 55651 to confirm your neurons following. This is the minimum we can do and should be highly prioritize TMO.
Then, I would not see reasons for anyone to create spams.
Maybe not a popular opinion, but for me, now, those spams are more a temporary solution then a problem until proposal 55651 is implemented.
Edit: This is in line with the logic of many owners that ICP locked in NNS are governance token, and NNS is not a passive staking system.

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image

Front-end neurons looking real good right now…

Funny that this problem still exists after 6 months after its inception

Not sure if this will be useful, but until the already approved fix (proposal 55651) is implemented, I’d suggest to

For example, anyone who would want to submit a governance proposal could prepare an MD file with it and upload it to some agreed location, @ysyms could then submit it instead of the M.DD-test ones (if is fine with that).

Plus, as people might get pretty creative, it might also speed up implementation of the

:wink:

Wait! Do you get paid for making proposals?

There is an extremely simple way to decentralize ICP:

Let every member of DFINITY and ICA be elected periodically by the NNS.

I really wonder why that does not happen. Could anyone explain this to me?

It seems to be the final form of decentralization of any public blockchain with POS.

That’s like HBAR type of governance. I don’t think this is a great idea. The current set is fine. We just need more named neurons, a lot more of them.

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Here we go again, all those who didn’t oppose the spam just to collect the rewards are here for selfish needs.

The only proposal that came out to combat spam was a 6 month timer to re-follow those who are not active and then collect their rewards for themselves.

These are the same old’s who are very protective of the spam for the rewards spam by @ysyms.

While those in our Governance community claim as they are active they deserve the rewards of the followers don’t do anything but the above and contribute nothing to create and this is evident by having only team proposals on the NNS and you may just as well just follow.

While I a follower did put up proposal ideas on Governance none of these opposers were active and gave a stuff.

So far as a newbie I have witnessed the selfish come out in force and got nothing good to contribute so don’t be surprised at the annoyance.

Welcome to the active bystanders.

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Hi all, a suggestion for a tactical fix on spam and reasoning why this is proposed now, it described here.

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What do you think is preventing people from getting together to form more named neurons?

If I am reading this post correctly, I think one of your points is that you often don’t get responses to your posts. I can’t speak for others, but I will share with you the reasons why you often don’t get a response from me.

  1. I find it very difficult to understand what you are saying in many of your posts.
  2. A large fraction of your posts seem to have a condescending tone and you are almost always upset about something.
  3. A lot of your claims when you appear to be criticizing others seem to be based on assumptions that you present as facts.

I would love to have intellectually honest conversations with you about a variety of these topics, but generally speaking I believe it would be unproductive since you have such an aggressive and critical tone and I don’t always understand your points. My sense is that if I try to engage with you it will not be a civilized conversation.

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Do you think an NNS proposal would be capable of a whiteboard coding test? Do you think anyone would voluntarily work somewhere where they get fired in a year if they fail a popularity contest?

dfinity just needs to vote on spam proposals every other day to bring average returns back to normal

If dfinity (or anyone else) wants this, please do

Alternative: Use only about 50% of voting power to vote on spam proposals

Angry never, just don’t like responding but I can see that a few here want to control in their favor and therefore I don’t feel this is decentralised forum but more a mob driven by a few. Clearly all messages have a tone.

My assumptions have turn into knowing history from being involved with the Governance forums and seeing the facts as I hold to the claim that the 6 months timer for followers was nothing more than selfishness and should be revoked as everyone who is invested into ICP should have equal rewards and not centralised rewards.

Calling people followers in a derogatory term when there is nothing to vote on but teams updates is not acceptable.

But in the future I will be less passionate and more clear and I appreciate your fee back.

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Thanks for your response. I helps a lot.

I’m pretty sure I understand your point here. I think you are saying that you believe that all stakers should be treated equally. I agree with your point that the rules should apply equally to everyone. I would argue that they do apply equally and programmatically to everyone.

However, I suspect you are coming from the point of view that the rules should never change. This is where I would disagree. In my opinion, the governance system does not exist to pay people an investment return. It exists to incentivize people to participate in governance in a way that we each individually believe is in our own long term best interest, which in aggregate will be in the long term best interest of the IC. The decisions that need to be made for governance of the IC are subjective decisions, which inherently means we will not all agree. The tokenomics are intended to encourage people to participate so that a maximum body of opinion can be heard via their vote. It is not a perfect system yet, but it is moving in the right direction and it can only get better through change.

The changes that have occurred in the past and that have been approved for future implementation (such as the 6 month re-confirmation of followees) have advanced decentralization and should continue moving us in that direction. I think it’s a mischaracterization to claim that folks who support these changes are selfish. I think we simply have a difference of opinion. It’s ok if we agree to disagree.

This is an example of a point you made that I do not understand. I can’t respond to this because no matter how I try to read it I cannot understand the message. It’s not intended to be a criticism at all, just an example.

I think you really missed the point.
If you are elected by NNS, then only NNS can fire you.
That actually empowers everyone in DFINITY and ICA.

Some months back I read an article that there were concerns about dead people and the rewards they will keep receiving because they selected to follow these groups:

DFINITY Foundation, ICP Maximalist Network, Internet Computer Association, cycledao.xyz and ICDevs.org

It was suggested by a few that this was unfair and that followers who did not actively vote should not receive rewards because they could be dead.

My concern is that by changing the underlying API from under investors and their rights to be rewarded for following their rights may bring a class action to regain their benefits as would be their right.

But from a forum that is disconnected from the NNS and therefore not updating investors of the changes they would like to make to the NNS that in my opinion seems self rewarding and damming to NNS claim to be decentralized.

Are we behaving just like the Top Tech companies changing API’s from under there customers for self gain.

We need to remove the change made to the NNS to unfollow that which was followed by investors and inform the investor via the NNS so that all investors have been informed and not just change the underlying API without notice which is contemptible.

No one put forwards any decentralize options that I am aware of like to the NNS:

A notice that all following on the NNS will be terminated after a period if the investor wasn’t active in logging in or being able to add a NFT or another form of contact in case of an inactive period.

It seemed to me that it was justifiable that if an investor was not active in Governance then it gave further credibility that they should change the underlying API when the NNS does not inform investors that I am aware of on the NNS of the forum.

That the active voters on the disconnected forum should receive more rewards for being active.

Active on what:
Dog boys spam each day on the NNS to give rewards to active voters that were informed on the forums and not the NNS but vai facebook where you had organized spamming for active members known by everyone in this forum and unknown on the NNS.

I gave an idea about how to stop spam on the NNS just by punishing neurons that spam but not one support or change but as soon as you threaten the forum members from making changes to giving dead people their rights then they come out of the woodwork otherwise they are what I call Active Bystanders and those who will undermine this project and walk away with the rewards for their own interests and leave behind a bad reputation of a known spammers haven.

I can assure you that I never once went to dog boys Facebook page to be notified of when the spam was being added to the NNS for the rewards but was active everyday and voted no, only when I saw his spam.

Can you not see that our behavior to allow active voters in allowing spammers to spam and inform us in the ICP forum and make changes to the NNS by the underlying API to disbenefit our own seems more of a dark website.

As for my tone in response to past comments that were made as passionate and well meaning to opposers that may bring harm to this forum and the NNS.

For this very reason I have become sensitive to the name Follower or uninformed as criticism.