Increase Proposal Rejection Cost

I’m pretty firmly against any proposals that will erect barriers for newcomers to the IC ecosystem. In this case, we’re talking about a financial barrier that will result in a diluted form of censorship.

While this proposal may fix the issue in the short term, who’s to say that NNS voters would vote to revert the proposal cost back to 1 ICP, and why would they - voters would rather just sit tight and have less proposals to vote on and worry about.

If this proposal passes, like hell am I going to spend ~$200 USD on submitting a proposal. I’d probably try to go crowdfund through a DAO or prominent IC organization like IC Maxis, but then we’re introducing centralization into the NNS proposal submission process.

Also, if the price of ICP goes up over time, this will mean early investors will be able to submit more proposals than newcomers.

2 Likes

I agree, I’m not going to spend 10 ICP to make a proposal either

I really like the way you think here, especially since you are considering how to incentivize good proposals while at the same time suggesting significant penalties for poor proposals.

I suspect @LightningLad91 will say that this idea is not in scope for this proposal topic, but I think it is worth shaping further as another proposal topic. It doesn’t have to be presented as a proposal to mitigate spam either, so you could develop it any time.

The last non-spam proposal to pass was the ICDevs RegisterKnownNeuron proposal, which would have awarded the proposer 352 ICP. The last non-spam proposal to fail was the Temp Check to Rename the Internet Computer, which would have cost the proposer 182 ICP (Dfinity didn’t vote). Those are some really strong incentives to only make proposals that you are confident will pass. At this time, we have up to 46% of total voting power that is voting on governance proposals, which could be a reject cost as high as 460 ICP. That’s a lot of ICP that a proposer would need to have in their proposals neuron.

1 Like

This could produce a different kind of spam where people generally propose things that everyone agrees with but that does not actually do anything.

The NNS where every day is declared “Wenzel Bartlett Day” because who can vote against that? :joy:

…a jest, but where is the line between spam and ineffective.

I think we hold Tokens and the effectiveness of great proposals that increase token price should be enough to incentivize their creation.

On the negative side, it is a hell of a club to bash people with. Maybe it should be on an exponetial scale so only significant losses end with that kind of penalty. We do want good debate and a 40% to 60% vote could still be really valuable to the community(think Temp checks).

3 Likes

I agree, it’s definitely a club. It’s not the perfect solution and I’d like to see other solutions implemented. That being said, this is the only change (that I’m aware of) that we can push without depending on Dfinity for development. The rejection cost has always been described as a spam deterrent. It seems logical to use the tools we have available while trying to build new ones.

2 Likes

Hasn’t there always been a financial barrier in place? The 1 ICP rejection cost has always been described as a spam deterrent. With the lower market price of ICP this deterrent is no longer effective.

I disagree. My experience has shown that the most active community members want to promote active governance participation and would probably be the first people to recommend lowering the cost when the time is right.

Personally, I have stated in several places that I support this as a temporary measure only. If/when better solutions are put in place for spam prevention, or if the ICP market takes off, I will happily submit a proposal to reduce the cost.

I think that would be a good path to take. If you can raise the 10 ICP then you’d probably have solid support to kickoff your proposal.

I don’t see how crowdfunding can be considered centralization. To me, centralization implies a lack of any other option; being forced to go down one path. Nothing in this proposal is mandating that the funds come from any specific organization.

That’s true; but, how is that any less true if we keep the cost at 1 ICP. If the cost of 1 ICP skyrockets it would still be the early participants that can submit more.

3 Likes

Well said @LightningLad91. I agree with every point you made here. Thanks for offering this clarification.

1 Like

I have a very simple idea: Change the current Adopt/Reject voting system into the following:
(1) Adopt with 10 ICP; (2) Adopt; (3) Abstain; (4) Reject; (5) Reject with -10 ICP.
It is still a simple majority rule: the option with the most voting power is the voting result. (If there is a tie, then the option with the largest index among those with the most voting power is the voting result.)
It can be easily changed into systems with more options such as:
(1) Adopt with 20 ICP; (2) Adopt with 10 ICP; (3) Adopt with 1 ICP; (4) Adopt; (5) Abstain; (6) Reject; (7) Reject with -1 ICP; (8) Reject with -10 ICP; (9) Reject with -20 ICP.
It also solves the spam/ineffective issue proposed by @skilesare since a “Wenzel Bartlett Day” proposal may be adopted with 0 ICP.

These are both great points that I 100% agree with. It’s why I would actually prefer if we pegged the cost of creating an NNS proposal to XDR like we do with the cycle exchange rate.

Zooming out, it feels like regardless of how expensive the proposal cost ends up being that we’re setting an arbitrary price on the cost of creating a proposal in order to stop proposals from coming in. This is by definition a barrier/disincentive. We could to raise the cost to 100 ICP, or we could choose to lower it the cost to 0.1 ICP - both would have very different intended and unintended side effects.

However, what is the true cost of each proposal to the NNS? - probably less than or close to 1 ICP after all the votes are tallied and rewards disbursed. So raising the proposal creation cost past what is strictly necessary to run it on the NNS results in an unnecessary burn of ICP. It is an artificial financial barrier the community can choose to (or not to) play with for whatever agenda they wish to accomplish.

If independent creators are forced to go through DAOs or other IC orgs to just to get their proposals funded and onto the IC, this means creators have to get support from those who already have money or influence, and opens up the door for big money to earmark proposals in return for funding.

It’s a similar model to getting a business off the ground and needing to request VC funding in return for X equity/board seat/add in this ad revenue feature to your app, or proposing a bill as a congressman/woman and having each politician say they’ll vote for it if you include the X thing I want.

Here’s my dream proposal:

  • Makes creating proposals as cheap as possible (to incentivize independent fresh ideas and discussion),
  • Puts sustainable mechanisms and filters in place that tackle proposal spam
  • Does not introduce a mechanism or feature that censors or prohibits creators from submitting NNS proposals
  • Protects NNS voters from proposal overload, capping the amount of time and engagement required ( I don’t want to spend more than 30min-1hr a week thinking about the NNS, and I don’t want NNS spam proposal jury duty)

Some of the other proposals introducing thresholds are able to achieve these goals without increasing the NNS proposal creation cost. I’m not saying this current proposal wouldn’t work to reduce spam proposals, I’m just not in favor of the other side effects it would have on NNS proposal creation. I’d equate it to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Maybe the following voting rule is worthy of notice:
Let everyone choose a whole number between -100 and 100, and then calculate the weighted average:


where V is the total voting power, and V(n) is the total voting power acquired by the number n.
If you choose 100, it means you most strongly vote Yes; if you choose -100, it means you most strongly vote No; if you choose 0, it means you abstain.
The upper bound of adoption reward is 100 ICP, and the upper bound of rejection cost is also 100 ICP. That is, the rejection cost is completely up to the community depending on specific proposals.
In my opinion, the current Yes/No system is too brutal, and the suggested new voting rule allows people to reveal their full preferences more continuously.

I think its a cool idea, its basically a form of quadratic funding, but we need some form of proof of personhood before implementating such a system.

It increased the proposal preparation fee to 100icp

Proof of personhood is really good here, but it is not a necessary condition for implementing this system.

Yes, but you may get 100 ICP if your proposal is really good. Rewarding people for submitting good proposals is very important for NNS, and I think it is possible to be a huge game for DAO: it incentives people to really participate in governance, and it could be a totally new game of crypto world after the NFT game.

Good, but I feel like 100 ICPs are too risky for many people

100 ICP is only my first recommendation. This number can be determined by voting itself.

So now if I accidentally submit a proposal that isn’t ready or there’s a bug in the formatting that results in it having an empty body text I can be on the hook for 100 ICP…cool

To be honest, I don’t see a serious problem here: 1) 100 ICP is only an upper bound, and it will generally be less than 100 ICP; 2) if you have made a mistake, the cost of your mistake will be determined by the community; 3) if you think it is not your fault, then maybe you can submit another proposal for getting your ICP back. That is the real beauty of NNS.

So then for making a mistake, we’re relying on the time of thousands of NNS voters to now look at a new proposal that refunds a creator with ICP that has already been burned and decide whether it is worth passing or not. Keep in mind that this “correction” proposal for getting your ICP back is a new proposal that voters have to view and vote on (yes/no) in order to receive governance rewards.


Some additional questions:

If the voters all choose 100 or we end up with a positive number, what happens with this adoption reward?

What happens if the user does not have a balance of 100 ICP and the proposal they submit gets a score of -100?

I still don’t see a serious problem here.
The NNS is a global system, and every action should be taken seriously.
If the voters all choose 100, then this adoption reward should obviously be 100. You should understand the nature of collective voting in a totally different way: it is not personal choice, it is collective choice.
But maybe the Dfinity neuron can submit the “correction” proposal for you, if you can persuade the Dfinity neuron that it is indeed a system bug, not your fault.