On-chain Node Beneficiaries 💸 (scalability without sacrificing independence)

Governance NNS Governance
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Thanks @bjoernek, I’d be interested to know more about how it already works when a large investor (who may already be a node provider) wishes to finance node machines for a new or existing node provider. Isn’t there always the risk that the node providers would ‘simply take the nodes and disappear?’

Either the node provider purchases the nodes and onboards them first, and then receives retrospective compensation, or they onboard one or a few nodes at a time and receive renumeration in stages.

The NNS already has a fund raising mechanism that’s applied to SNS launches. Something similar could work in this case, but with the raised ICP held in escrow. Proof of onboarded nodes could be enforced by a canister that unlocks investment funds for the node provider (or something like that).

Investors would invest at their own risk, which is surely already the case.

In a similar way that prospective SNSs are considered by the community, and many get rejected, the community could take into account qualities that a prospective node provider provably has:

  • Have they just turned up out of the blue claiming an interest in the IC?
  • Do they have a recognisable public presence outside of the IC?
  • Do they already have a presence on the IC?
    • What’s their track record in terms of projects or initiatives they’ve been involved in?
    • Are they already a node provider, and are just looking for help financing more nodes?
    • Are they developers on the IC who would like to help grow out the IC’s infrastructure layer?
    • Are they active governance participants who have demonstrated commitment to the IC?
    • Can they point to verifiable ways in which they are staked in the IC?
  • Can they demonstrate knowledge and technical ability that they’ll need for running these node effectively (without DFINITY holding their hand)?

I understand that what I’m suggesting introduces complexity, but I would argue that it just makes the complexity visible. It’s already hidden complexity that isn’t very well accounted for. If the IC is going to make claims about “Independent Parties”, it should be able to support financing between parties in a way that allows them to continue to be considered ‘independent’.

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