Economic Stewardship Proposal

[jwiegley]

@Nihilor.ic

My purpose behind this proposal is to address the euphoria over token minting/tokenomics changes that seems to be taking hold in our community. I realize it can be painful when the price seems to keep going down and that a few tweaks to tokenomics might seem to be a magic bullet that will solve all your problems. It is rarely that simple, but I believe simply having these conversations and subsequent proposals will cause investors and developers to think twice about using our platform.

I completely agree with this statement. It surprised me a bit, then, to read you were proposing more changes to how governance works.

History has conclusively demonstrated that none of the previous manipulations to NNS have improved price. Price is determined by the market, and the market is driven by its own factors. The ranking of ICP on CoinMarketCap has moved very little over the past year.

Therefore, I would rather request a moratorium on further NNS changes. Just let the system work for a while! This is not where the needle will be moved, and as an active participant in Governance (the audience these changes aim to incentive, by the way) I will tell you that these changes are dispiriting to see, rather than encouraging.

[Nihilor.ic]

We agree that some type of safeguard is necessary, at least in the short term. I appreciate your point of view, and although this proposal will fail, a temperature check for caping inflation will be submitted soon on dev forums.

[skilesare]

ICDevs.org is rejecting proposal 87493(economic stewardship) due to issues with implementing the proposal. We’d be happy to consider a proposal that included realistic ways to determine a supermajority and/or a separate moratorium proposal on limiting inflation.

[wpb]

@Nihilor.ic

“Printing” money should never feel free or easy, we need to be frugal and responsible stewards of the tokens we control.

Would you please help me understand what makes you think there has been discussion of “printing” money and why you think people are not acting as frugal and responsible stewards of ICP tokens? I know there has recently been misguided rhetoric spread on crypto twitter, but I don’t know where there has been any actual proposals or serious consideration of ideas that should lead to this impression.

[Nihilor.ic]

I am specifically addressing Twitter banter and talks of an inflation funded Treasury.

[tsetse]

@jwiegley

The ranking of ICP on CoinMarketCap has moved very little over the past year.

ICP was ranked 24 one year ago:

Historical Snapshot - 21 October 2021 | CoinMarketCap

It is ranked 40 today. ‘Very little’ is a subjective phrase, but I think moving down from 24 to 40 is quite significant.

@Nihilor.ic

I am specifically addressing Twitter banter and talks of an inflation funded Treasury.

It would be good if you could quote specific tweets. As far as I know, the plan is not to fund a treasury by increasing aggregate inflation. Few would support such a move. The idea being discussed is to build a treasury from unclaimed rewards from stakers who do not vote. There are three views on this: stakers deserve rewards whether they are active or not; inactive stakers lose rewards and the coins they would have received are burned; inactive stakers lose rewards and those lost rewards are transferred to an NNS controlled treasury.
One of the things such a treasury could do is fund experts who can write replica code. This might be through the setting up of proposed committee neurons. This is work which only people with high technical expertise can do and they will not and should not do it for free. Unless community members gradually begin to offer more than motion proposals, Dfinity will have a stranglehold on the network and the NNS will never be decentralised, but instead remain a pseudo-DAO.

[Nihilor.ic]

@tsetse

There are three views on this: stakers deserve rewards whether they are active or not; inactive stakers lose rewards and the coins they would have received are burned; inactive stakers lose rewards and those lost rewards are transferred to an NNS controlled treasury.

Call it what you want, it still remains true the best proposal put forward is to fund a Treasury with stolen, inflationary ICP. My proposal is to fund icdevs with a month of nns maturity and we will have another major contributor to the ecosystem. It must have a cost to the stakeholders, or we are no better than the system we are fighting. We cannot shift the cost to seed investors or inactive neurons.

[tsetse]

@Nihilor.ic

Call it what you want, it still remains true the best proposal put forward is to fund a Treasury with stolen, inflationary ICP.

It seems to me it is you who are calling it what you want. I don’t see any stealing or any increase to the aggregate inflation that was on the roadmap at the outset.

@Nihilor.ic

I realize it can be painful when the price seems to keep going down and that a few tweaks to tokenomics might seem to be a magic bullet that will solve all your problems. It is rarely that simple, but I believe simply having these conversations and subsequent proposals will cause investors and developers to think twice about using our platform. We must be ethical, responsible, and equitable in our use of the NNS. I believe that unrestrained DAO’s are a recipe for chaos and destruction. I want to see ICP succeed, and to this end I propose we make a few tweaks to how we operate, perhaps the equivalent of of a constitution or laws that we agree to be bound by.

Again, I don’t see a community that believes in magic bullets. It is you who are suggesting ‘tweaks that might seem like a magic bullet’. You want inflation to be capped, but it is already capped in the initial design. Plus, as far as I know, it has been lower than the cap since Genesis.

[wpb]

I haven’t heard talks of inflation funded treasury. I would oppose that idea. Granted I have been trying to stay off twitter because it has become toxic (even within the IC community), so perhaps I’ve missed people making this type of suggestion. I am doubtful the idea would gain any traction though.

[wpb]

@Nihilor.ic

with stolen, inflationary ICP

Would you mind explaining what you mean by stolen ICP? I’m not aware that staked ICP or earned maturity has ever been removed or
confiscated from any neuron. That would be a major issue.

I think you may be insinuating that neuron owners who stake are entitled to voting rewards, but this is not true. Voting rewards are only given for voting. ICP is a governance token. Maturity can only be given for performing the work of governing. Otherwise ICP would be a security and subject to strict regulations.

[jwiegley]

@tsetse

It is ranked 40 today. ‘Very little’ is a subjective phrase, but I think moving down from 24 to 40 is quite significant.

Thank you for the fact check! It had been in the 30s for so long whenever I looked at it, that I didn’t realize that being in the 20s was just a year ago.