Grants for voting neurons

Governance NNS Governance
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40

Hi @lara,

Thank you for putting together this proposal as it is a step in the right direction. I would like to take a step back and revisit what we are trying to achieve in order to shine light on another issue.

To clearly state the goal, we would like to decentralize voting power away from Dfinity and empower individual neurons from within the community.

In order to achieve this goal,

  1. Named neurons to be incentivized to do valuable work and gain a following
  2. The IC community needs a reason to vote for named neurons other than Dfinity

Your proposal addresses point 1) above, and is a step in the right direction. If named neurons are paid, then they will be incentivized to work. That said, today, there is absolutely no reason the IC community has an incentive to vote for named neurons, EVEN IF they are doing excellent work.

I cannot overstate how big of a weakness this point is to the current design, and would like to provide an example to illustrate my point. Recently, I was debating whether to change my follow relationships for a couple of the IC topics so I could empower CodeGov. I have long admired all the work they do, especially since I know Wenzel personally, and can vouch that he is extremely reliable and devoted. I also wanted to do my small part to decentralize the IC and follow Code Gov rather than Dfinity.

All that said, I had an upside / downside equation to make. My choice was as follows:

  1. Follow Dfinity

Upside: Reliably get 100% of my rewards
Downside: The IC stays that little bit more centralized

  1. Follow CodeGov

Upside: The IC gets a little bit more decentralized
Downside: CodeGov slacks and misses a vote given its not any of their day jobs, and I miss out on my rewards

Given this upside / downside equation, I had very little incentive to follow CodeGov. As much as I want to see the IC become decentralized, it simply isn’t worth the risk on missing out on rewards.

Again, I cannot overstate how big of a problem this is to the goal of getting people to follow other neurons that are not Dfinity. We need to design a system that incentivizes folks to follow other people, where they are paid for the risk. To be honest, I am a bit surprised that this dynamic hasn’t yet been raised by the community as it seems to be very basic.

@lara I’d be curious to hear your feedback on my thoughts. While it doesn’t directly address point 1) of this topic which is the focus on this thread, I sincerely believe that point 2) is a fundamental weakness and serious time and energy needs to be spend on fixing that issue.

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