Increasing Decentralization & Reducing ICP Inflation with a Single Proposal

[wpb]

@bjoernek

At ICP genesis, all neurons were configured to follow DFINITY by default. Consequently, the suggestion for periodic confirmation has remained popular within the community as a method to trigger neurons to reaffirm or modify their choices.

@bjoernek

The proposed soft reset approach offers a pragmatic solution to the main issue driving the need for periodic confirmation—a reset of default following—without introducing drawbacks related to implementation complexity or user experience deterioration.

There are a few nuanced details that are important to this conversation that I think are easily lost in the discussion of resetting default following. They really should be part of this conversation.

1. There is no neuron in the NNS that follows DFINITY by default on the Governance proposal topic or the SNS & Neurons Fund proposal topic. The only default following that exists is on technical topics, which are all the topics that fall under the “All Topics Except Governance and SNS & Neurons Fund” catch-all category. Anyone who is following DFINITY on Governance and SNS & Neurons Fund is doing so by active choice whereby they manually chose to follow DFINITY at some point in time after their neuron was created.
2. At this time, CodeGov.org is the only public known neuron (ID 2649066124191664356) besides DFINITY that is intentionally reviewing, making educated decisions, and voting independently on the IC-OS Version Election proposal topic and the System Canister Management proposal topic. Our work is documented throughout the forum and in our CodeGov community on OpenChat.
3. There is no funding mechanism built into NNS governance rewards, or any other mechanism, that incentivizes people or organizations to contribute to the decentralization of the NNS on technical topics. The only reason CodeGov can exist to perform our work is because the funding comes from developer grants, which is not guaranteed and arguably not sustainable.
4. If we want known neurons that provide an option for people to follow to advance decentralization of the NNS on technical topics, then we need those known neurons to be skilled developers and/or people/organizations who specialize in specific proposal topics. They must be committed to reviewing and voting independently on every proposal for that proposal topic. This is real work that nobody will do for free. It does no good for decentralization and is unhealthy for the internet computer if those votes are cast by some default NO or default YES mechanism. Our goal should be to have educated voting on technical topics.
5. If the primary goal behind a default following reset is to advance decentralization of the NNS, then I don’t see how we can achieve that goal unless people and organizations are incentivized to perform the work of reviewing technical proposals and offering a reliable option for people to follow besides DFINITY. DFINITY is a reliable option for following on technical topics, so any kind of reset to default following will likely result in people choosing to follow DFINITY. While that makes it an intentional choice for each neuron owner, I’m not sure we can argue that it achieves decentralization. Implementing a reset today might be premature.
6. If decentralization is not the primary goal for people who support the reset of default following today, then I’d be interested in learning more about why resetting default following is so important at this time. It’s definitely not to resolve the spam issue that once plagued the NNS since that was solved in a different way.
7. The advantage of default following today is that it enables DFINITY to execute proposals immediately if there is a critical update. This happens according to the definition of Immediate Majority Decision (the definition can be found on the dashboard by looking at the fine print of the Voting Results section of any proposal) and is enabled because of default following. DFINITY does not directly control enough voting power to trigger this type of decision by themselves and if voting on Governance proposal topics is any indication, it is not likely that they will achieve this ability if default following is reset. Without default following, proposals will likely take days. For the Governance topic, DFINITY triggers 27.3% of total voting power in the NNS when they vote, but they only directly control (own) 19.65%. Hence, a lot of voting power in the NNS that is cast on Governance proposals is triggered by neurons other than DFINITY and it takes time for those votes to be cast. This could have a negative effect on voting for technical topics if there are not other organizations that are also committed to reviewing and voting expeditiously. However, an advantage to the soft reset being proposed is that DFINITY can choose to hold off on the transition for the proposal topics that are typical candidates for critical updates (e.g. IC-OS Version Election). It will be important for the community that wants a default following reset to be cognizant of the need for DFINITY to implement critical updates, which means it may not be a full reset any time soon.

I believe it is important to advance decentralization of the internet computer because of the power it can have to protect the protocol, but to me this is a transition that should occur over 10-20 years. It seems to me that a higher priority than resetting default following should be to find a way to incentivize people and organizations to contribute to the decentralization of the NNS on technical topics. We need those people and organizations to develop expertise and track record as a reliable known neuron option on technical topics, which I don’t think will happen without incentives and will not happen over night.