Increase Proposal Rejection Cost

In the past year the average price for submitting a proposal has been around 40-80$, so while I agree 1 ICP was too low for the current price in my opinion 10ICP is too high, it should have been set to a fixed value in cycles not higher than 100$

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How is the average stakeholder harmed if the proposal reject cost is increased further?

I’m not saying yet that I think this should happen, but the idea coupled with @ysyms current crowdfunding success does stimulate thought…

Why not increase the proposal reject fee to 30 ICP or higher? Who does it harm given that it is expected to be a temporary solution as we wait a few months for implementation of a more permanent solution?

I think it only harms the profits of the few whales who are willing to fund it. So why not make it more expensive for these few whales? Why not create a crowdfunding rug pull opportunity for @ysyms? If he did walk away, it wouldn’t be with ICP from the average investor because they are not the ones funding it. In fact, the average investor can’t afford to fund it because the cost already outweighs the gain for the average investor.

If @ysyms executes the plan they created, then several things will happen:

  1. everyone who is currently participating in governance proposals gets higher rewards
  2. everyone who is not currently participating in governance proposals can still start increasing their rewards by starting to vote.
  3. the whales who funded the effort will get slightly less return than they did when the proposal reject cost was only 1 ICP and @ysyms was willing to fund it himself.

If @ysyms rugs, then only the whales who funded the crowdfund will loose.

If you increase the proposal reject fee, then you create fewer spam proposals with the funds already collected. It will require additional crowdfund to keep it going. Whales will continue to bear the cost of the crowdfund while everyone benefits from execution of the plan and the risk of rug only goes up. If there is no further crowdfunding effort, then you can decrease the proposal reject fee after the funds run dry.

@ysyms is an enterprising young high school student (self proclaimed) who has already raised $10,000. Why not give him the opportunity to raise $30,000 from the whales? If he succeed, then why not up the ante to $50,000 or $250,000. At some point the cost to the whales is too much and the risk of rug is too great. Only the whales who fund these shenanigans would be hurt, but if @ysyms maintains integrity and executes the plan then everyone wins (except decreasing profits for the funding whales).

Again, this is temporary as we wait for the issue to be addressed by proposal 55641 (or some other alternative). If anyone else has a genuine proposal they want to submit, it should have value at 10 ICP, 30 ICP, or higher just like it does at 1 ICP. The cost is only a cost if the proposal is rejected. The proposer is responsible for presenting something to the NNS that has a high probability of success, so the higher proposal reject fee only serves to ensure that the proposer is doing their due diligence to ensure there is low risk of rejection.

Borrowing from @ysyms crowdfunding idea, what is wrong with genuine community proposals getting funded by the whales? A higher proposal reject fee might actually incentivize more people to make genuine proposals because they get to keep the fee if it is an accepted proposal. Perhaps these same whales would be more than happy to fund a genuine community proposal if they know it is likely to be passed instead of guaranteed rejection. Every person who wants to make a proposal for some topic they believe in could include a proposal funding address during deliberation on the forum. If it is funded, then perhaps it is a valid proposal that should be submitted to the NNS.

This post is really just a stream of consciousness for me right now. I’m not saying the proposal reject fee should be increased at this time, but I don’t think the idea should be rejected before giving it more thought. There could be a lot more benefit than we’ve considered so far.

So the right to speak is only given to those who can afford it? The temporary solutions become permanent really quickly.

First we start out with 1 to 10 ICPs ( still promising “it’s a temporary fix”)…that doesn’t work, so now let’s make it 30 (“it’s a a temporary fix”) with the added promise that if 30 doesn’t work, let’s make it 100 (“it’s still a temporary fix”).

If we believe that non-active participants should be penalized in favor of active participants, isn’t that exactly what is happening?

The real issue that increasing the governance proposal score created an imbalance that the astute are exploiting. We should readily admit that that (increasing the governance proposal score) was a mistake IF we did not want to penalize non-active participants.

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10 ICP is already too high for ICDevs to submit regular proposals for active debate. We are raiding funds already: Proposal to temporarily reduce governance proposal weight to 1

But maybe it is a new fundraising avenue!

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I agree, we should all beware of temporary changes, moving away from the gold standard was supposed to be a temporary thing too, we all know how that turned out.

NNS Proposal = Right to Speak
@mparikh
Is it that simple? Is it the purpose of the NNS proposal to give everyone a voice that they cannot express unless they submit a proposal?

Interestingly, @skilesare has already started a new proposal discussion to remove proposal weights and guess how he is trying to fund it? Crowdsourcing. I wonder how difficult it will be for him to fund that proposal. If the proposal rejection fee were 30 ICP, I wonder if he would have a more difficult time raising the funds for him to submit that proposal.

I would argue that the utility of NNS proposals is not simple free speech. I would also argue that higher proposal reject fees do not prevent good proposal from getting submitted to the NNS.

Purely subjective on my part. I think $160 - $250 is a reasonable rejection cost that will cause more proposers to seek community support before submitting to the NNS. I do not think $600+ Would do anything more than prevent people from trying all together.

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We are killing the democracy. Really. And we are making the IC look like suffering of an earthquake

I was strongly against the increasing of rejection fees, because :

  • it would kill the spontaneity of little bags to submit proposals : what about a little genius, without money who would have a brilliant idea, what about Ramanujan ?
  • more importantly, we don’t see that with a so called « short term solution » waiting for a long term solution, we are also creating a long term problem : each time we are making a modification, we are creating instability, notably in investors’ confidence. Each time, we lose some investors’ confidence, because each such modification makes some investors feel : « this blockchain is unstable, they change networks economics a lot, I don’t know what will look like the tokenomics even one week after I invested in ». For instance, to whoever who would say « we don’t care about investors, icp is for dev and enthusiasts etc », I am a fanatic of this blockchain, however, I am starting to be afraid by the happening direction : I am wondering « where will be the ICP in 6 months with such a rhythm of such proposals ? » and whereas I have already been almost all in ICP, I have started to slow down. What about the average investor who does not even read the white paper ?

By ignoring the butterfly effect of these modifications, we are threatening the integrity of the whole blockchain. We brought some modification very - too - soon to ICP, the inefficiency of this modification is being proven, and rather than learn the lesson, we are considering an iteration. Where is the limit ? Why 30 icp rather than 60, 90, 120 ? Rather than saying « maybe we should remove the difference of weight », we think about going to iterate the last inefficient modification to make it finally efficient. But it will never be. Let us think about the poor dev, the genius dev. I am a researcher, and some of the most brilliant spirits I met were poor people. And even a genius won’t take his chance to lose 10 icp, because he can’t afford because even the most brilliant idea is not assured to be accepted, because it is a democracy where everybody vote. Must I remind that a brilliant idea is not necessary recognized as a brilliant idea ? What about the scientists we wanted to burn when they said that the planet earth was round rather than flat ? And about the fact that 10 icp today have the same value that 1 icp in may 2021, Dfinity never said « the rejection fees will be 1 icp as long as 1 icp will be equal to 200 dollars ». We were not supposed to do such maths.

So, I am very inconfortable with what I am feeling like a frenzy of modifications, whereas I am an early fan. I don’t say that ICP must not be changed, but with parsimony. I think we should give some space to the ICP currently. Really. Let us slow down. Because by saying that the increasing of rejection cost would be a short term solution before finding a long term one, we did not see that it could also bring some long term problems. And by not seeing this, we are ready to repeat the mistake.

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I want to know why 27 and 28 can openly violate the resolution in the previous proposal not to vote on the governance proposal? Does the proposed decision not bind the foundation? In addition, if this proposal is approved, I hope to raise 10icp in our community to form a garbage proposal. The purpose is to tell you that this solution is absurd.

Agreed - The more we increase the rejection cost, the more we centralize control over who can submit to the NNS (based off of the existing voting power and influence of the submitter).

Let’s forget spam for a second.

Why is @ysyms able to submit proposals? → because he was crowdfunded by whales.
Why is @wpb able to submit proposals? → because he was an early investor, has enormous influence in the community, and I would assume ICMaxis is sitting on a pile of ICP.

Many others, even @skilesare has highlighted the reject cost is making him think twice about submitting proposals. And he should…why should ICDevs have to choose between spending 10 ICP to fund an independent developer bounty vs. a governance proposal? There’s a good chance his proposal gets rejected, as it took over 3 times just to be recognized as a known neuron, vs. one time for Cycle Dao and Maxis.

If anything, this successful crowdfunding effort shows that we have reached step one in the unintended consequences of this proposal passing that I mentioned here.

This only highlights the importance of the community supporting proposals that have allowed for adequate time to receive and address critical feedback, think about edge cases scenarios, and iterate upon those flaws → not proposals that in a rush or have a deadline (to push out a fix).

There were many great ideas being discussed and finalized as a result of the leadership that @wpb and @Kyle_Langham showed in organizing the community, but now many of these ideas will not be submitted to the NNS due to the increased proposal reject cost.

I think everyone was 100% well intentioned in moving as quick to ideate and vote as they did, and I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I hope this is a learning point going forward.

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I think these are all bad assumptions. I don’t believe @wpb is in any better position than myself or anyone else who started investing at Genesis when ICP was $600

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Totally fair, and I apologize if these assumptions are off base.

@Kyle_Langham Do you have any data on how much voting power each of the big independently named organizations/neurons hold? (Maxis, Cycle Dao, ICDevs).

If those organizations want to volunteer that information in the spirit of transparency, that would be great as well.

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  • To clarify, I am not an early investor. I learned about ICP the week before the genesis launch. I think I’m much closer to being a shrimp in the ecosystem than I am to being a whale, but I suppose that is relative.
  • Also to be clear, my proposals are my proposals and are funded by me. They are not ICP Maximalist Network proposals and are not funded by that organization.
  • Yes, but he is also taking the crowdfunding approach…which I think is reasonable. If you have a good proposal, I don’t see anything wrong with getting a group together to fund it. Also, it is only a cost if it is rejected. So submit something that has a low probability of being rejected and share the risk with others. I’m sure there are whales that would be happy to fund a proposal that has a chance of passing. Perhaps not the one that @skileshare is submitting since this one is to remove proposal weights, but there are many proposals that will be able to move forward even with high proposal reject cost because whales would be happy to fund them.

@skileshare ran into a whale (or a group of whales) in the community that believed he did not deserve to be a named neuron because of past relationships and activities. I have no idea if there was validity to those arguments, but a very small percentage of the voting power was participating in governance proposals at the time. Hence a small group of whales were able to successfully block the ICDevs nomination two times. It wasn’t until proposal weights were implemented before ICDevs was approved. It happened because proposal weights incentivized a lot more people to participate in governance. There was finally enough voting power that no one group or person was able to control the vote outcome. Dfinity was also in a position where they could vote with their own convictions without casting absolute majority. They voted in favor of the ICDevs proposal, but they didn’t need to in order for it to pass. It was already going to pass. The irony is that proposal weights has brought so much improvement to the decentralization of IC governance, yet removing proposal weights is identified as a solution to the problem with spam. Yes it created a spam problem, but there are so many better ways to solve this problem than giving up on proposal weights. Proposal weights has moved us much closer to decentralization.

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I believe this information has been volunteered in various locations previously. It can be observed by watching the vote results of any given proposal using the information available for each proposal on the dashboard.

ICPMN + cycledao + ICDevs = 11.3% when ICDevs and cycledao were following ICPMN
They are no longer following ICPMN.

ICPMN = 2% when we vote before ICDevs and cycledao
ICDevs = 1.85% when they vote before ICPMN and cycledao
cycledao = 4-5% when they vote before ICPMN and ICDevs. This data was from mid Feb and may have changed. There haven’t been any recent examples of cycledao voting first.

There are a lot of neurons who follow multiples of these three public neurons. Hence, those neurons don’t cast votes until their Followees reach Absolute Majority as defined by NNS governance.

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Thank you for your transparency - I stand corrected on this point, and appreciate your individual contributions.

We could fill in the blanks (somewhat) if we do the following. It probably wouldn’t happen though due to the coordination required.

Create 3 proposals, where two out of the 3 organizations vote simultaneously.

  • Proposal 1: cycledao + ICPMN vote immediately
  • Proposal 2: cycledao + ICDevs vote immediately
  • Proposal 3: ICPMN + ICDevs vote immediately

Since DFINITY volunteered to share their neuronIDs that they use for voting, would love to see something similar from ICPMN, cycledao, and ICDevs

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AFAIK, Dfinity shared the neurons that are supplying the voting power that they apply when they vote. This is not the same as sharing who at Dfinity is voting. I don’t know who is voting.

Nonetheless, I think you are asking for this information about the ICPMN neuron…
https://www.ic.community/icpmn-neuron-followees-aka-voting-members/

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We are all holding significant losses. :joy:

We don’t actually know. We can guess from how much things move when we vote, but that is complicated by changing folle patterns. You can’t call a function and get that info.

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Two new pieces of information can be observed right now.

Cycledao is the only public neuron that just voted Yes on proposal 56592. They cast 6.1 % of total voting power at the 04/24/2022 16:18 mark. It is a spam governance motion proposal made to look like a subnet update proposal. It was submitted by neuron 13897053307110729737, which has submitted many garbage proposals in recent past like 54693, 56295, and 56591. This is not @ysyms. The person controlling neuron 1389… has not identified themselves AFAIK.

Cycledao and ICDevs just voted No at the same time on proposal 56593. They cast 8.6 % of total voting power at the 04/24/2022 16:14 mark. It is also a spam governance proposal, but it was submitted by @ysyms and did not try to pretend to be another type of proposal.

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Wenzel thanks for providing the blog post link above, and for this recent voting data. Really neat to piece apart.

I agree that it’s near impossible to dissect followee voting power completely, but we can at least gauge a lower bound on followees. After the ICA/DFINITY default followee change earlier this year, one can guess that a significant portion of voting power defaults to the 3 named neurons - cycledao, ICDevs, and ICPMN.

We can deduce that for 6.1% of the voting power, that cycledao was the deciding vote and at the very least follow cycle dao (and potentially 1 or more other neurons who had already voted Yes). Cycle Dao could have much more than 6.1% that list it as followers, but this puts a lower bound on the the voting power that has them as a default followee.

We can deduce that for roughly 1.8% of the voting power, ICDevs was the deciding vote for neurons
that follow either just ICDevs, or ICDevs + cycleDao + any other default followees, but that the votes of those two neurons pushed them over the 50% threshold. Not bad considering they were added much later to the list of named neurons.

Much beyond this are purely assumptions, which will only become harder to show as more named neurons get added to the list.

Since the periodic confirmation of neurons proposal did pass but hasn’t been executed yet, I would love to see what happens to the voting power of the ICDevs neuron compared with ICPMN and cycledao after the reset. That should also give some perspective regarding if NNS voters are specifically certain neurons to guide their votes, or if they are just looking for an averaged backup to represent their vote if they wish to be passive/miss a vote.

Anywho, I got us off topic with a few selfish information requests, which @wpb graciously obliged. I’ll bow out for now.

I would like to propose a simple and definitive solution to the spams issue.
There are so many threads proposing a solution (maybe have one similar, I don’t know) that I would like to get the feel here first and if positive, have a thread by itself to maximize the proposal.
The base criteria of this proposal:
Keep it simple as far as understanding and operating the process
To be an efficient and final solution to spams
If need human participation, all neurons could participate and not only random neurons to keep decentralization at his best
I am against using the word SPAM anywhere in the NNS

Proposal:
1- The community would establish some “Valid proposal” criteria first for the governance proposals only (could be extended to other topics later if needed but I doubt)
2- The would be a 2 stages voting where the first stage would vote as if the proposal meet these criteria of a “Valid Proposal”. The 1 stage voting would last 24 hours, would not produce any rewards and the goal is to qualify the proposal only.
3- Soon as majority pass , the proposal is or either release for formal voting or rejected and ignore by the NNS

Example of those criteria could be:
The proposal has a meaningful use to the network
The proposal is in the right category of topics (So the Subnet upgrade in the Governance would be reject)
Although you may not be in favor of this proposal, you agree that the proposal is a legitimate proposal
The primary goal of the proposal is not to receive more rewards

Then the first stage voting would be: Do the proposal meet all the criteria? (or not)
If one criteria is NO, then you would vote NO to reject the proposal at stage 1.
I would recommend we have between 4 and 6 criteria maximum, to keep simplicity. This could be upgraded later on if needed.
Important to say that we would NOT vote on if the proposal is a spam or not, but vote if the proposal meet the requirements of a legitimate proposal.
It would require some programming and some time but we cannot avoid this. It would be done forever.

If this make sense to some people here, we could start a new thread. If not, fine, we will keep trying solution to remove spams. I really think it is important to remove spams for the reputation of this great blockchain network.

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