Hello,
as a follow up to the treasury idea mentioned in proposal 80970, I want to get a temp check on an idea that has been a few weeks in the making. It would seem that the community agrees that a treasury of sorts is needed at some point, but we disagree wildly on almost all of the details of how we would fund it, responsibly use the funds, etc. I propose an evolution of this discussion, in which the “abandoned ICP” mentioned in 80970 would be placed inside a neuron controlled exclusively by the NNS, if technically possible a neuron would be created by the NNS and funded with “abandoned” ICP by the NNS. The idea behind this would be no one individual would have access to this neuron, essentially the key would be destroyed. the NNS would then set a date (not set in code potentially just a general election season) to yearly accept applications to be the recipient of all voting power and maturity using a combination of follow neuron and manage neuron features built into the NNS. The elected recipient would be responsible to create and pay bounties to develop features or code based on their organizations stated mission. NNS would be able to undelegate the neuron at any time should there be abuses by the elected organization, but otherwise the agreement would be a one year stewardship with the possibility to be redelegated/elected the following year in competition with all applicants.
I am submitting this idea for the scrutiny of developers in this forum prior to the creation of an NNS temp check. MY goal behind this is to fund the continued rapid development of ICP and ensure that developers have a clear path to receive adequate payment for their efforts while also creating another major contributor to the ecosystem outside the Dfinity umbrella. This is in no way a general purpose treasury!
Perhaps it would be a good idea to bring this up as a discussion point in a treasury working group so we can try to arrive at a unified proposal for a treasury.
I think the first necessary step before defining the NNS Treasury or tokenomics changes is to begin with defining the scope of the NNS.
Basically, we should first define it’s purpose, limitations, and guiding principles before expanding it’s power to include the ability to allocate funds.
Do you feel like this is adding power to the nns? I feel like we really need to get certain aspects built out on the IC quickly to help developers build easier and quicker before any bull market starts. I see this as a temporary measure we can keep as long as we want, and burn the ICP, pay stakers, or fund a Treasury when the task is complete. Almost every project I love is hitting rather large roadblocks that slow down their progress. This is what I want to address. Also I feel like this aids in decentralization of voting power by having another large voting neuron that is accountable to the NNS.
We need value brought into the ecosystem, not shuffled around within it.
Financial power (minting tokens and choosing which wallets get what) for funding devs directly would be a new power for the NNS, one that’s it’s not even currently designed to do. So yes, we should all get aligned on what the NNS is before moving forward with something like this.
I personally believe the NNS has no business playing the role of a central bank, so if that’s what the community wants it to become, I’d rather know now so that I can invest my efforts into another protocol. One that isn’t as corrupt and centralized as web2.
One thing I can think of is that there’s a significant difference between everyone having the same opportunity at rewards based on voter participation, and a central authority (even if it’s a group of individuals) picking and choosing to whom they should release funds.
I’m not an economist though so this is just my layman take on the matter.
NNS mints rewards as per initial tokenomics. The rule is simple. Provide hardware to earn newly minted icp and stake in the NNS to obtain new icp. This is a trustless system. A protocol with predefined values. What we are seeing right now is two organizations DFINITY and synapse (ICPMN) making tons of tokenomics changes which are complicating the already existing problems.
Only fools would use blockchains that changes their tokenomics every two months, that too because two organisations decided to do so.
A central bank is an authority with the monopoly on the ability to create currency. Traditionally, they use interest rates to manipulate markets to fit political agendas.
They specifically counter the natural selection of the markets, by bailing out large companies with poor business models and driving newly minted value places where the market did not allocate it.
After the 2008 financial collapse, Bitcoin was invented and gains popularities specifically because of the unjust bailouts the government pushed using the central bank (the Fed).
Bitcoin’s protocol could still mint new bitcoin, but rather than using a trusted group of people, the mint function was reserved to only be accessible to set logic in the code. In other words, no outside party could change the supply of bitcoin, a fork (or takeover of 51%) of the network would be the only way change the overlying tokenomics.
In the case of the Internet Computer, the NNS has monopoly over minting new ICP. The overlying tokenomics include the current distributions to node providers and such. However, if we let a small group of neurons with a large amount of followers submit proposals to “manage” the tokenomics, then it’s functionally more similar to a central bank than a Web3 decentralized network.
The risk is that the same thing will happen which happens to central banks all over the world and throughout history. The temptation to print more value from nothing is too tempting. The authorities which control that power tend to entrench themselves, keep control, and use it to serve their own interests. Funds are send to sources which the market did not allocate, so inefficient structures remain funded and aren’t allowed to fail.
In a nutshell, minting/printing for arbitrary disbursements for “public goods” always starts out sounding like a nice and easy solution to a big messy problem, but in the end it poisons everything and causes more problems (and unfairness) then it ever solved.
Bitcoin is trustless money. We want to be open Blockhain Internet, not multisig AWS. Real decentralization of NNS will start soon. One way or the other.
Yes, but that process can only start when we can begin to define some of the most basic aspects of what exactly the NNS should be used for and which what scope.
Inflation is not that bad. Incentivizes investing and makes sure whales won’t forever carry their value and gives new generations a fair chance to grow value too. It keeps huge vital organizations from bankrupting and hundreds of thousands from losing their jobs.
Free markets have their disadvantages. A country would want to keep up its vital organizations and industries even if they are losing money. There are instances that show that’s a good choice. The most recent being - Europe abandoning its energy industry to buy cheap gas from Russia. Russia cuts the gas. Europe can’t just flip a switch and turn it on, it will take years. We are about to freeze this winter.
Bitcoin is great, but it’s not the solution to everything.