Thanks for this summary @lara. I’m very much in favour of everything this proposal seeks to achieve, except for what feels to me like a misguided approach to reducing inflation (which weakens the entire proposal in my opinion).
Could you clarify why it would increase total maturity? Surely the difference (compared to today) would be zero-sum. The loss for sleeper neurons would be equivalent to the gain for active neurons.
I’d like to clarify what I mean by misguided to make the reasons for my opinion clearer. Sleeper neurons indicate that some stakers aren’t motivated/aware enough to maintain their neuron. In the context of sleeper neurons, active neurons become more valuable to the network. This is obvious when you consider the extreme case of minimal participation. It would make far more sense to increase the incentives for participation the more that participation dwindles (much like how prices are dictated by supply and demand). This would be a stablising feedback loop (why wouldn’t we want that?).
It’s not accurate to assume that the value provided to the network by those who are active participants in NNS governance (by voting directly and/or by maintaining their following) should be measured in absolute terms. Everything has a context, and the value that an individual NNS participant brings to the table is relative to all those who cannot be bothered. If one day 99% of NNS participants lost interest and stopped engaging, wouldn’t you like to see the incentives for the 1% increased (to make sure that they don’t follow suit, and in fact avoid this situation emerging in the first place)?
Inflation should be reduced by simply reducing rewards proportionally (taking into account the number of sleeper neurons today, and adjusting reward rates accordingly), if a reduction in inflation needs to be achieved alongside this proposal.
At least, this is my stance, and it’s why I would personally plan to reject a proposal that intends to introduce a stick without a carrot 