I was called out earlier today in a way that I take to heart.
This is a well-meaning post, and I responded to it here →
The Neurons’ Fund is certainly open to abuse, and there’s nothing that can be done to protect it during the community syndication voting phase of SNS launches (the ones described above).
Instead it’s what happens next, when the decentralisation sale is taking place. This is where the Neuron’s Fund is open to abuse. You can never be sure beforehand that the proposer of a new SNS won’t commit large sums of their own ICP in order to receive a disproportionately high allocation from the Neurons’ Fund. Most SNS creation proposals pass with dev neurons having very close to 50% of the VP already, and even if this VP allocation were arbitrarily low, if there’s low turnout from genuine investors, the Neurons’ Fund allocation is up for grabs by the dev team (they just need to commit enough funds to meet their minimum allocation, and however much else they can afford to maximise their Neurons’ Fund bounty).
I’ve seen others make brilliant cases for how the Neurons’ Fund should actually work. I won’t steal their ideas. Instead I’ll reference them below.
Until the Neurons’ Fund mechanism is decoupled from the SNS creation phase, I plan to reject any attempts to make use of it. I would personally recommend other diligent voters do the same .
Hey @Lorimer the Neuron’s Fund doesn’t belong to the community. It isn’t for us to decide if the owners of the Neuron’s Fund participate. The Neuron’s Fund belongs to whoever allows their maturity to participate and they can easily turn it off. It was originally called the Community Fund, but was later renamed specifically because the community thought that they owned and controlled it. The most likely contributors to the Neuron’s Fund are DFINITY and the largest whales in the ICP ecosystem. They know why it was created and how it works, so they know how to disable their own contributions.
If disabling their contributions is too hard for some reason (e.g. private keys deep in cold storage), then perhaps they should consider offering bounties to people in the community to perform due diligence on each SNS and then follow their neurons on this topic so there is a higher probability of the bad SNS projects not making it to the swap stage. After all, they are whales and should be protecting their best interests.
Quite honestly, I’m really surprised that nobody has tried to apply for a grant for the purpose of supplying credible, diplomatic, reliable, and objective due diligence for SNS proposal reviews. I’ve felt like we need that for a long time. All we really have are a bunch of degens attacking certain SNS projects and a few well intentioned and credible people who take the time to occasionally review an SNS on the surface and offer an opinion. Nobody gets paid to do the work that is required, so nobody does it like it needs to be done. What is takes to be successful is full due diligence on every SNS proposal that starts as soon as the team announces the SNS and a report that is posted publicly within hours of the proposal start time. It needs to be done in an obviously objective and diplomatic way in order to gain credibility.
Just my $0.02. I’m not really interested in arguing about this topic though. These discussions keep coming back over and over throughout the years and I’ve said plenty in the past. I’m only responding to you now because you have enough credibility to do this well if you were properly incentivized. I’d like to see you have a reason to build a reliable reputation around it.
@wpb
I have only started posting on this forum recently, though I have been lurking without an account for a long time. There seems to be a pattern of people putting forth a practical solution to an OBVIOUS problem and this guy showing up to write an essay to muddy the waters.
There are 2 sides of the neurons fund, the investors and the recipients. The investors choose if they want to participate. Nothing i suggested prevents this.
The recipients are selected by the community through organic support of their project. Projects who receive significant support from the community (legitimately) are supposed to be the benefactors of the fund. However recent events have shown that not everyone is acting in good faith.
Freezing disbursements (not contributions) until there is a reasonable audit procedure (which should occur after contributions are completed) is a perfectly reasonable course of action.
Sorry Wenzel, but I think you’re missing the point.
This is something that needs evaluating after the decentralisation funds have been committed. There’s no need for the Neurons’ Fund to be awarded upfront. This makes it extremely vulnerable to abuse. It doesn’t need to be…
This is what all of the funding/governance decentralisation discussion has been about (it’s not specific to any topic, because the need exists for practically every topic).
I don’t see a right time to award the full amount from the neuron fund. That’s why I proposed implementing rage quitting long ago—so holders can withdraw their funds before a transfer is approved.
Spend more money on fixing the problem? It the mechanism itself that is at fault. It’s like leaving your backdoor open for thieves and proposing we hire someone to vet each person that comes through, while a simple solution is to lock the door.
I would propose that any SNS project has to set aside an amount in both ICP and the SNS tokens that is greater than the value of the community fund they receive, this will be returned to the community if specific milestones are not reached.
I wouldnt go that far. Its ok for projects to fail. (Most do)
Theres a difference between failed projects and people who commit fraud. I think ensuring the direct contributions actually came from real people in the community is a good place to draw the line.
Neuron’s Fund is a gamble, those who want, put money into. If funds are not used properly, than its on gamblers. Most of those funds are from Dfinity anyways. My vote is: let it be like it is. If people dont like it, stop adding funds into it.
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