Drain the Swamp

[infu]

@wpb

These allegations are concerning, but I notice they tend to surface whenever the ICP price hovers around $5. While I can’t explain this pattern, these issues deserve serious investigation, whether by DFINITY or an independent third party. I’m beginning to think the Internet Computer might need a staking mechanism. If we can’t verify true independence between node providers within subnets, we need to implement stronger incentives to ensure honest operation.

How about letting ICP neurons select a list of nodes they can trust? This eliminates the need for another staking mechanism. The system choosing which nodes get selected in subnets will go through all these lists and the result should be something like - (oversimplified) if you own 2% of ICP voting power you pick 2% of the nodes.

When the connection between ICP neurons and node provider selection is severed, the value of ICP will be lower than it should be. Worst case scenario, if someone wanted to attack ICP and gain control over the network, they don’t need to buy ICP and vote. They just need to have some resources and find enough accomplices around the world who will go through a KYC check to get a node.

[Junkfarm]

Drain the swamp? Could you sound more witch hunty? Lol

[borovan]

I kind of imagine Wenzel as Shrek and all these cute little fairytale Dragginz characters come to his Swamp and force him out.

[wpb]

Did I offend you Adam? Can’t we be friends again?

[timk11]

Proposals 135774-88 | Tim - CodeGov

Proposals 135774, 135776, 135777, 135778, 135779, 135780, 135782, 135784, 135785, 135786, 135787 & 135788
Voted to reject.
The links provided in the proposals do not point to specific posts that relate to the node providers mentioned. Overall I think this is becoming a worthwhile process, in terms of looking for node providers that are problematic or inactive. However, the discussion about this is spread across several places in the forum and not easy to keep track of. My general approach to voting on these proposals is to base decisions as much as possible on the information in the proposal itself or by following links that are given within it. With the current volume of proposals it is not feasible to search through the entire forum for information pertaining to each proposal, so I see the onus as being on the proposer to include or link any necessary information in the proposal itself. Beyond this, I generally follow the will of the IC community as expressed through Governance proposals, or failing this, I’d look to established guidelines or documentation. Several of these proposals give reasons such as no activity, no relation to tech, etc, which have not been agreed on by the community as reasons for removing NPs. I did verify that none of the NPs in this group of proposals currently have any nodes registered. I think it would be worthwhile to work out some standards for removing inactive NPs but again this should be agreed upon by an NNS vote. ID requirements have changed over the time that the IC has been running and I think these should also be clarified in the same way. I appreciate that Dfinity voted to adopt several proposals in the previous batch of 35 based on information they had that was not easily available to the rest of us, and I would probably not object if they were to adopt some more of these proposals for similar reasons, so long as they give clear justification.

Proposal 135775
Voted to reject.
The reasons given in the linked post do not seem sufficient to indicate that this NP’s documents are fraudulent. The incorrect hyperlink here might have been a typing error by someone in Dfinity for all we know. There’s nothing in the Node Provider Documentation to indicate that an electricity bill is insufficient as an ID document. This is a better example than some other IDs I’ve seen. If we want to raise the standard then it would be reasonable to submit this as a Governance proposal.

Proposal 135781
Voted to adopt.
This NP has “deprecated” added to their name in the IC dashboard. I understand that Dfinity edits the names manually, so this suggests that this NP has been flagged as permanently inactive. If on the other hand they actually decided to include “deprecated” as part of their NP name, then this was not a very sensible choice.

Proposal 135783
Voted to adopt.
The reason given for removing this NP [“this node provider has become Carbon Twelve”] is supported by the forum posts linked in the proposal and C12’s self-declaration document which can be found by following the links from these posts.

About CodeGov

CodeGov has a team of developers who review and vote independently on the following proposal topics: IC-OS Version Election, Protocol Canister Management, Subnet Management, Node Admin, and Participant Management. The CodeGov NNS known neuron is configured to follow our reviewers on these technical topics. We also have a group of Followees who vote independently on the Governance and the SNS & Neurons’ Fund topics. We strive to be a credible and reliable Followee option that votes on every proposal and every proposal topic in the NNS. We also support decentralisation of SNS projects such as WaterNeuron, KongSwap, and Alice with a known neuron and credible Followees.

Learn more about CodeGov and its mission at codegov.org.

[JimmySteve]

Along with Tim’s reasoning, does not posting as a node provider = proof of being a fake account or participating in some sort of collusion? This is listed as the main reason in a few of the summaries. This whole thing feels very fishy to me.

[borovan]

Jimmy, we’ve been friends for your entire time on these forums, seven whole days. Please let’s not lose that friendship over a silly issue such as this.

[JimmySteve]

Look, I’m all for keeping ICP free of people trying to take advantage of the system. Show me proof, and I’ll run through the village with a torch and pitchfork right behind you. I don’t know however, nothing that’s been presented so far can prove to me if the claims are actually true or not. I’m on the fence, and erring on the side of caution.

I mean, let’s be real, “no online presence, initial 11 ICP transaction, santander, sleeper agent”, the first three points do not on their own prove without a doubt that this person is a ‘sleeper agent’. I need more evidence. Habeas corpus.

[ysyms]

in a decentralized world, blockchain requires ingenious design to prove its innocence.

[snoopy]

And all of these have already been explained adequately… i.e. 11 ICP I explained already in another thread why every node provider will show this.

[louisevelayo]

Proposals 135774-135799, 135804-135806, 135822, 135830, 135831 Review | Louise - Aviate Labs

Hi Community,

This is the review for the recent batch of proposals submitted to remove Node Providers (see below) from the network.

While there is no standard criteria for assessing whether a Node Provider should be removed, these proposals can be interpreted as a way to clean up the registry and identifying which Node Providers were onboarded prior to any formal verification process established, and who have no intention of continuing.

Aviate Labs supports maintaining a transparent transparent registry and effective verification process for Node Providers on the IC. Thus, we will adopt the proposals removing the NPs that:

• Have no active nodes AND
• Have no forum activity OR
• Fail to meet the current verification standards set by the community - having a signed self declaration and proof of identity document (and the corresponding hashes) uploaded to the NP’s self declarations page listed on this page on the IC Wiki.

For the Node Providers listed in the proposals we will vote to adopt (supporting their removal from the network), if you still intend to remain a Node Provider, please submit a new proposal with the correct documentation. This will allow your application to go through the established community criteria checks.

For the proposals that Aviate Labs has voted to reject, these Node Providers have:

• Followed the established community processes and standards, even if their forum activity is minimal. It is reasonable for new applicants to create an account solely for submitting forum posts to endorse their proposals, as for many, Node Providing was probably how they were introduced to the ecosystem. As some applications did not progress further due to target topology constraints, it is understandable that their forum engagement then remains limited to those posts. Concretely, I have verified that they have a self declaration and proof of identity document uploaded as well as the corresponding hashes uploaded to the right page in the IC Wiki. This is inline with the checks the current Known Neuron Grant recipients do for this specific proposal type.
• Active nodes assigned to their NP ID

For a full breakdown of how Aviate Labs will vote on the proposals mentioned, please see the end of this post.

---

Proposal	Vote	Reason
135774	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135775	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135776	REJECT	Complies with current verifications standards set by the community and followed by reviewers
135777	REJECT	Complies with current verifications standards set by the community and followed by reviewers
135778	REJECT	Complies with current verifications standards set by the community and followed by reviewers
135779	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135780	REJECT	Complies with current verifications standards set by the community and followed by reviewers
135781	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135782	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135783	ADOPT	Moved to Carbon Twelve. Legal Entity of Marc Johnson
135784	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135785	REJECT	Complies with current verifications standards set by the community and followed by reviewers
135786	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135787	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135788	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135792	REJECT	Complies with current verifications standards set by the community and followed by reviewers
135794	REJECT	Complies with current verifications standards set by the community and followed by reviewers
135795	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135796	REJECT	Has active nodes
135797	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135798	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135799	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135804	REJECT	Has active nodes
135805	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135806	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes. Offboarded
135822	REJECT	Complies with current verifications standards set by the community and followed by reviewers
135830	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.
135831	ADOPT	No Self Declaration. No Nodes.

[wpb]

This seems like a very sensible way to handle these proposals @louisevelayo. Great job!

[borovan]

Aksinia Stavskaya - 28, no nodes in any subnets
100 Count Holdings - 25, no nodes in any subnets

Serenity Lotus - literally the dodgiest list of shell companies I’ve seen lol

So this 70-42 node reduction proposed and pushed through by Aviate Labs will add these 53 and god knows however many nodes owned by shell companies.

Kristof (Aviate) - 14 nodes
Enzo (CodeGov-controlled WaterNeuron) - 42 nodes
Leo (CodeGov-controlled WaterNeuron) - 42 nodes
Quint (Aviate) - 17 nodes
Roald (Aviate) - 27 nodes
Allusion / aviate - 42 nodes

You’re just annoyed that I’ve busted up your little cartel.

My next votes will be to remove Aviate and Waterneuron from the IC.

[timk11]

Proposal Reviews | Tim - CodeGov

Voted to reject proposals 135792, 135794, 135795, 135796, 135797, 135798, 135799, 135804, 135805, 135806, 135822 & 135830. I’ve followed the same reasoning as before. The reasons given for node provider are not reasons that have been agreed upon by the community. @louisevelayo has made a very helpful suggestion for deciding on these sorts of proposals - I’ll come back to this - but for the sake of fairness I’ve opted to stay consistent with the way I’ve voted so far. The comments by @Thyassa in this thread, referenced in a couple of proposals, are indeed helpful and worthy of further clarification from Dfinity but did not convince me of wrongdoing on anyone’s part.

Voted to adopt proposal 135831. The post referenced by this proposal and the ones following it confirm that this node provider is already flagged for removal by Dfinity based on additional information that they have.

About CodeGov

CodeGov has a team of developers who review and vote independently on the following proposal topics: IC-OS Version Election, Protocol Canister Management, Subnet Management, Node Admin, and Participant Management. The CodeGov NNS known neuron is configured to follow our reviewers on these technical topics. We also have a group of Followees who vote independently on the Governance and the SNS & Neurons’ Fund topics. We strive to be a credible and reliable Followee option that votes on every proposal and every proposal topic in the NNS. We also support decentralisation of SNS projects such as WaterNeuron, KongSwap, and Alice with a known neuron and credible Followees.

Learn more about CodeGov and its mission at codegov.org.

[timk11]

@louisevelayo This is a really good suggestion for how to approach these sorts of proposals. It certainly warrants some further discussion and perhaps even moving towards a Governance proposal to establish a community position on this. I don’t know when the requirement for node providers to share the self-declaration and ID documents started, but if there’s broad agreement to establish this respectively then I think this could be a good time for it. As you say, if someone has no documentation and no nodes but still wanted to participate they could always submit a new proposal to re-establish themselves as a node provider with the documentation. I wouldn’t necessarily want to make forum activity a requirement unless there was something specific you had in mind. There would be a few points to clarify further, such as what to do with someone who had either the self-declaration or the ID document but not both, which I think was the case in 2 proposals from the last batch.

[wpb]

@borovan

Enzo (CodeGov-controlled WaterNeuron) - 42 nodes
Leo (CodeGov-controlled WaterNeuron) - 42 nodes

It is an intentionally misleading and false statement to claim that WaterNeuron is CodeGov-controlled. CodeGov is involved as a participant in the WaterNeuron SNS as a publicly announced neuron that has advocated for and helped advance decentralization of the WaterNeuron protocol through our participation in governance as permissioned by the SNS framework. The CodeGov WTN neuron contains only 3300 WTN staked, which is a dust level of stake. That means that all voting power that we trigger is owned by other people who have chosen to follow us and they are free to follow someone else at any time for any reason. In fact, CodeGov is very vocal about encouraging that everyone votes independently as much as possible and promoting all other publicly announced neurons to the WaterNeuron community. These announcements have been made on OpenChat here and on the DFINITY forum here. Hence, if you subscribe to the accusations made by Adam (@borovan) in this thread, then feel free to change your following. Doing so will help improve decentralization, so there is no downside to making a change.

In addition to the above efforts to offer decentralization options to the community, CodeGov also recognizes that WaterNeuron is responsible for triggering a considerable and growing amount of voting power in the NNS. This voting power is triggered by the decisions made by the WTN SNS on NNS proposals that are replicated into the Vote for NNS Proposals proposal type. This means that every NNS proposal also becomes an WTN SNS proposal and everyone who has neurons on both protocols has to vote for the same proposals twice. Instead of casting these votes twice, CodeGov built an open source vote relay app (see GitHub repo here) and announced it on the forum here for the community to use. There are multiple ways to take advantage of this vote relay app including following a WTN known neuron such as CodeGov or DFINITY, setting up your own NNS/WTN neuron pairs using the CodeGov owned canister, or forking the CodeGov repo and setting up your own vote relay canister. Instructions are provided in the ReadMe on GitHub linked above. The possibilities are endless on how you can use this app to make sure that your WTN vote is cast according to your own best interest on NNS proposals.

The CodeGov NNS neuron and the CodeGov WTN neuron are both configured to follow a number of known and well respected people in the ICP ecosystem on a variety of topics in which they specialize. You can always see how these neurons are configured by visiting our website at codegov.org. We are intentional about voting on every proposal in a credible and reliable way by putting people who care about the network and who are motivated to participate consistently in the position to cast the CodeGov neuron vote.

Hence, if you think that CodeGov has too much influence on the WaterNeuron vote on NNS proposals, then do something about it by voting manually, changing who you follow, setting up your own NNS/WTN pairs, or becoming your own WaterNeuron known neuron. CodeGov advocates for advancing decentralization of the NNS and of the WaterNeuron protocol in all of these ways.

[Henry_Suso]

Is this chat gpt or grok or something

[wpb]

Nope. All my posts are written out by hand. Always have been and always will be. I’m old school that way.

[BIKETACO]

Like in cursive? With a quill and ink well? If so, respect.

[alexu]

The DFINITY Foundation appreciates the community efforts highlighting the need to clean up outdated node provider records. Therefore, the DFINITY Foundation will vote ADOPT on the following proposals:

• [135774] Remove NP Richard Suarez
• [135781] Remove NP ZTLC PTE LTD (deprecated)
• [135782] Remove NP Jeffrey Schnettler
• [135783] Remove NP Marc Johnson
• [135784] Remove NP Paul Legato
• [135786] Remove NP Jimmy Quach
• [135787] Remove NP Joseph Stella
• [135795] Remove NP Internet Computer Explorer
• [135797] Remove NP DRMxTech Enterprises
• [135798] Remove NP CRM52 Systems
• [135799] Remove NP A Dog’s Boutique
• [135806] Remove NP Staking Facilities
• [135831] Remove NP Mary Ren

However, the DFINITY Foundation feels that removing (prospective) node providers that faithfully followed the onboarding process cannot proceed without appropriate due process. As a community, we currently do not have consistent standards for evaluating and potentially removing such node providers. The discussions over the last few months have demonstrated that the standards require improvement.

The DFINITY Foundation believes transparent and consistent criteria before removing any node provider must be established, particularly those with active nodes or active node operator records. Only after these standards are developed and clearly communicated can one appropriately assess whether any existing node providers fail to meet these criteria. Therefore, the DFINITY Foundation will vote REJECT on the following proposals:

• [135775] Remove NP Katerina Karapuz
• [135776] Remove NP Buldakova Rehina
• [135777] Remove NP Nataliia Nykyforak
• [135778] Remove NP Natalia Kulesha
• [135779] Remove NP WMA Investments Limited
• [135780] Remove NP ML Solutions
• [135785] Remove NP Paul “Creaser” Creasey
• [135788] Remove NP The Fenex Company LLC
• [135792] Remove NP Serenity Lotus Limited
• [135794] Remove NP Coplus Limited
• [135796] Remove NP Aksinia Stavskaya
• [135804] Remove NP 100 Count Holdings LLC
• [135805] Remove NP Zenith Code LLC
• [135822] Remove NP Ferndale International
• [135830] Remove NP Aspire Properties

The DFINITY Foundation invites active community participation in defining these critical standards. Together, we can ensure a fair, transparent, and effective approach to strengthen the Internet Computer infrastructure.

EDIT: Added response to proposal 135806 to the list, missed in the original post.