How is he doing this exactly? Are you suggesting that a working group formed outside of these forums is not legitimate? Or am I misunderstanding you?
4 Likes
The Working Groups are a tool for helping develop progress faster, not to be an exclusive channel for having the monopoly of a topic.
Sime proposers will ignore the Ethos, thatās to be expected. The Ethos is just there to give a shared foundation from which arguments could be made for or against proposals, not to be a rule of law. It gatekeeps nothing, just provides general unity.
Iām not trying to gatekeep anything, Iām simply trying to facilitate the process of community collaborating to create a shared collection of guiding principles for adding scope to the NNS.
Itās not about my ideas, itās about giving the community a collective voice regarding what it wants the NNS to be.
If people donāt like my idea for kicking off the Ethos ratification process, they can vote down my proposal. In the meantime, Iām happy to discuss pros and cons here. Do you have an argument for why an Ethos for the NNS would be a bad thing and should never exist?
My understanding is that the working groups are just a supplement to the forum. They working group members are invited to debate here and, like I said before, Iāll be trying to attend their meetings.
I donāt think weāve ever āneededā working groups, they are just tools for helping maintain progress.
Iām still considering thatā¦ Iām internally debating the entire concept of a group voting together which isnāt tied to a specific ecosystem project. Iād like to see the NNS full of Known Neurons that represent either individuals and projects with dapps that are creating value for the network, so Iām not sure if I could properly advocate for that while being part of Synapseā¦
2 Likes
@aiv , one of the reasons I believe this proposal is wrongheaded can be found in the very word Ethos. An ethos is a culture, a set of customs, a code that people live by. It is not a set of written down rules. Any rules that are written down are actually governed by the ethos of the culture. To illustrate with a famous example, the first words of the US declaration of independence are: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Seems like a principle set in stone. Of course, it does or does not include women depending on which way you choose to read it. And these words somehow co-existed for decades with slavery which seems to us to undercut their very roots. We see the contradiction because our Ethos is different although the constitution is the same.
Britain has no constitution but it has developed into a fairly free and equal society on the basis of its ethos, its shared culture. On the other hand, a number of dictatorships have extremely liberal constitutions.
What you can set down in words are rules and constitutions. But an ethos develops over time in directions that cannot be pre-determined by words we write down. An ethos literally cannot be defined, it is a historically developing sense of broadly shared values.
Perhaps people will think this is just quibbling over terms, but terminology is crucial to the way we approach problems. We can speak of guiding principles or mottos, but what use are they, really? Take the fact that the Bible has ten commandments that include one that says āThou shalt not killā, and a prophet / God who instructed his followers to turn the other cheek in the face of grave provocation. Has this made Christian cultures less inclined to go to war than non-Christian ones? Has the fact that the same prophet / God said a rich person has basically no chance of getting into heaven made Christians less likely to seek wealth than non-Christians? The answer is an emphatic no in each case, because believers simply interpret the words according to their ethos to the point where they can be taken to mean the exact opposite of what they say.
Words will always be twisted to fit the prevailing ethos. Any code will be taken when convenient like Captain Barbossa does, as āmore what you would call guidelines than actual rulesā. Proceed with your crusade by all means, but understand that any success you have will lie in nudging changes in the ethos of the IC rather than defining an ethos for the NNS.
7 Likes
So I hesitate to post this because I havenāt fully formed my thoughts around this yet but:
I think an ethos to the nns takes away its flexibility and I think itās a mistake.
I think named neurons should have constitutions and ethos and people should follow these named neurons. I think having an āethosā opens the door for people to weaponize it and demonize anyone with different ideas.
Keep the NNS an agnostic voting tool with no political or moral alignment is my point.
In developer terms we shouldnāt couple together 2 things that donāt need to be coupled or itās going to be hard to refactor later.
Or another metaphor, we need to keep opinions, morals, and ideas decentralized to the named neurons.
I will vote no to anything like this but I will support it if everyone else does and it passes
8 Likes
These two points you make are basically guiding principles youāre proposing for the NNS.
Maybe the word āscopeā is better than āethosā, but literally thereās no rule for anything right now so no one is right when making any argument about what the NNS should or shouldnāt be or do.
Think of it this way:
If the point of the NNS is to become a global power (like a digital government), then it should be managed completely differently then if itās to simply be a steward of the technical aspects of maintaining the IC protocol. These are vastly different visions for the NNS, thereās plenty of room to narrow the scope without sacrificing flexibility.
1 Like
I hope it doesnāt but if it does I donāt think this group of people is equipped to make rules at this stage.
3 Likes
just human rules for human beings
2 Likes
Yeah, maybe āEthosā is the wrong word. What would you suggest as a better word?
Perhaps the comparisons to governments is distracting, because you can see from the examples for guiding principles that included that I donāt think thatās what the NNS should become.
Think of it this way:
We need a way to set accurate general expectations for what the NNS will do with itās power, so that token holders and projects can make long term decisions. Why would you build on a network where something could censor your canister, and you have literally nothing to go off of which could give you a clear indication of what might bring that situation about? How can you trust a token when more could be minting at any time, and thereās not even a general idea of how and why that might happen?
The Ethos can change too, and if it changes to misalign with the needs of specific stakeholders, then those stakeholders need to know so that they can leave to join other web3 networks which do fit their needs. For example, if the community did want an NNS that could act as a central bank, then many projects would leave. Right now some are leaving simply due to the lack of certainty, which is a pity because I donāt think the NNS Treasury thing will ever actually be implemented. If there was an Ethos opposing things like the NNS becoming a central bank, perhaps these projects would have less uncertainty in the future of the NNS and be willing to stay.
If the Ethos is largely ignored and problems arise, that can be called to attention to drive the promotion of either changes made to it (to generalize it further) or have more adherence to it. Itāll just be a tool for helping drive general alignment, which wonāt be perfect but it can at least be an improvement on the current situation.
1 Like
The weak point of any protocol, lol.
2 Likes
Itās not about making rules, itās about clarifying the current consensus. Thatās all.
If the NNS had an ethos which directed it to being a steward of the protocol, then it could still someday transform into something like a digital government. Iām not saying we even could put rules in place to prevented that from happening.
The difference is that this can happen deceptively and slowly, and without an ethos that shift would happen fairly unnoticed. If thereās an ethos in place, then itāll need to be updating during the process of changing the NNS into something else, and thatāll give community members like myself a clear indication that Iām starting to contribute to something I never wanted to be a part of.
As is a stands with the NNS right now, do any of us have any clear idea of exactly what the NNS is? What are we contributing to? I think itās worth taking some time to define that.
1 Like
Making proposals, so we can chat about proposals, so we can identify the need for more proposals, that we can later reverse with a new proposal.
Iām a governoooorr
5 Likes
So letās say that we have the ethos, the sets of guiding principles.
Whatās stopping people that supports nns treasury to add the set of rules into the ethos? I mean ethos can be changed right to fit the community.
Feels like is just another voting procedure to get to the proposal.
1 Like
Similar to @cryptoisgood above, Iām still formulating exactly what I think on this topic, but wanted to chime in with a few notes:
Just awful stuff here. Honestly embarrassed to even have it proposed. All decisions take sides. This is a decision against human rights. Iām a hard no if this remains in the final proposal. Hiding behind technology or a DAO to shield from responsibility for the actions of the larger system is unconscionable in this context.
This is a mealy mouthed argument the opposite way - itās FINE for the NNS to violate human rights, except for when itās not? Honestly makes the NNS sound like one of the centralized corporation driven only for profit we want to move away from.
On twitter, another argument was made for the need for this:
https://twitter.com/IsaacValadez55/status/1584564868673605632
I think the example of the US Constitution is telling - in the US system, the constitution provides a final check where the US Supreme Court rules exclusively on constitutional issues. No such check exists here - so how would this be enforceable or actionable?
Thisā¦ this is what the constitution sets up. Exactly this.
This proposal seems to be the exact thing it rails against - using the NSS proposal system to push forward a belief that canāt be enforced via code.
Iām def not arguing that change is needed - obviously it is. But this proposal strikes me as reactionary to another conversation happening regarding the NNS and treasury, and and rather than solving those questions (which I also donāt know the right answers to!) grandstands a larger point without solving our problems. There are good ideas in here, but I think theyād be better served as the guiding pricipales for a Issac founded voting neuron DAO than the whole NNS.
6 Likes
In three word: too much bureaucracy.
If it is decentralized than most of the points are redundant.
If they dont like it or not following it, then they get kicked out from ic. 
If no one likes it back to square one
NNS is not facebook. It is controlled purely by the stakers. We have already one, if there are more voting power outside dfinity and well distributed.
It should follow the same rule set as the internet does
I fully agree with the need to decentralize further and I feel like that is the core driver of every idea I advocate. In my mind, that needs to happen mechanically based on NNS code and tokenomic incentives.
Believe it or not, Iām extremely uncomfortable about the fact that the Synapse vote triggers 10% voting power due to liquid democracy. Itās the reason I have always wanted to be transparent about who we are and how we vote (synapse.vote) and I want to make it easy for the community to easily know the individual votes cast by each voting member (CrowdGov.org). However, I canāt do anything about our liquid democracy other than try to drive further change. I have lead the proposal for Manual Voting Throughout the Voting Period as well as Periodic Confirmation of Neuron Followees, both of which have the potential to significantly change the mechanics of how much liquid democracy the Synapse neuron casts. They are also both ātokenomics changesā that would be counter to your proposed ethos. Regardless, neither have been implemented because they have not made it to the roadmap for DFINITY. Perhaps they think there are security issues. More likely they are just too busy with higher priorities. Iām left with feeling like the right answer is for the community to step up and drive some of these changes (funding required). It doesnāt have to be on the DFINITY roadmap if it can be on the roadmap of some other organizations with the skills and credibility to collaborate with DFINITY. That ultimately leads us to the decentralization we all want.
You have a brilliant mind for governance. Respectfully, I encourage you to consider the mechanics of how decentralization can be achieved through code. I donāt believe it can be achieved without tokenomic incentives. An ethos is nice to have, but itās not the solution. I donāt think we want an ethos that stifles progress toward decentralization, so itās important to give deep consideration of what that means.
That was a typo, I fixed it. Iām specifically arguing that the NNS should never violate any human rights, I would have thought that obvious from the context.
Again, this content is not the content of the proposal, just rough examples of what guiding principles might look like
No, Iām arguing that the NNS should try to avoid becoming a judge or rule of law in any matter beyond itās scope, which should simply be to manage the protocol.
I updated the topic a bit earlier today to address this. Basically, itās just a consensus tool.
Well thereās an article in the constitution which provides for police powers to exist and it gives those to the state. In this case, Iād argue that the NNS should deny any right to police powers.
This is about adding clarity to the how the NNS is to be used, taking examples out of context isnāt productive.
Decentralization is a value, is it not? Can it be fully enforced by code on the NNS? The NNS involves both technology and people, it needs both social and technical structures.
If people want to expand or reduce the powers of the NNS, there should be a shared consensus for determining how thatās done.
In the end, itās all about signaling. Why should people contribute to the NNS, is thereās nothing it stands for or represents? How to I know what it wants to become?
Yes it is a reaction. I realized the need for an Ethos specifically because all of the arguments surrounding the topic of the NNS Treasury were purely subjective. None of us can define what we are building with the NNS. Thereās no shared understanding or generally defined consensus.
You donāt have to agree with the example principles I suggested, submit your own if you want. The only ask of this proposal is that we stop and take a moment to figure out what the NNS is and what itās role is, before we move forward with making drastic changes to it.
Sure, it wonāt solve every problem, but it would be a tool for navigating the path ahead.
4 Likes
Yes, it itās not decentralized. Decentralization will take the intentional collective effort of the community, and how are we supposed to do that if we cannot even roughly define the most basic aspects of what it is we are trying to decentralize?
Even the internet is designed with a rough ethos in mind: The Ethos of the Internet and a Culture of Innovation | Social Media Today
Exactly, so we should have a collective vision that guides these code and tokenomic changes.
I know, youāll notice Iāve been defining Synapse on Twitter to those calling it greedy. I think everyone is just doing the best we can.
First, as Iāve said before those were just examples, they arenāt part of this proposal. Second, these two changes are actually reinforced and encouraged by Guiding Principle #2 in my examples, which states this in itās description:
āSince collusion and majority control by a small group would break the accessibility and impartiality of the NNS, the NNS may adopt measures that contribute to reducing the risk, impact, and incentives of collusion.ā
The #6 regarding tokenomic changes could probably be clarified, itās specifically opposing changes to the to flow of tokens in the sense of using inflation rates to manage the economy of the network via manual proposals, the way a central bank is managed through constant manipulation.
The community has no framework to come to even a rough consensus for how that funding should be supplied. The Ethos is about starting that process so that these kinds of things can start gaining momentum.
Personally, I think projects building on the IC need to take a more active role on the NNS, and the Ethos would be a helpful tool for driving that.
If we canāt define even the most basic aspects of what we want to build using the NNS, how can we start writing any code? Again, the Ethos is just a first step.
This is a call to get started building an Ethos, nothing has even been defined yet, so itās too soon to call this effort a failure.
For example, since you think tokenomic incentives are necessary, then what scope of tokenomic action is appropriate for the NNS to use towards achieving that? The community is clearly against giving the NNS complete āfree reignā to do anything with tokenomics whenever it wants, but if you can think of a good guiding principle the community can rally behind which still allows room for your token incentives, then submit it as a proposal when we begin ratifying the Ethos.
In that way, the Ethos could be the solution you need for getting some tokenomic incentive you want to see, without driving apart the ecosystem. Those opposing a treasury would at least have a clear idea of the scope with which things would be done.
Sure, an Ethos alone is not a complete solution, but without one I think coming to peaceful consensus on any solutions will be significantly more difficult than it needs to be.
Yes, exactly. They would be able to do that.
This is about making major shifts in how the NNS is used more obvious and harder to hide.
When selling the idea of an NNS Treasury, they only need to sell voters on all of the āgoodā the money could do. Since right now everything is subjective, this is a strong argument. Whatās the NNS supposed to do anyways? Who knows?
Personally, I suspect that selling voters on a vision of the NNS that has central bank powers would be a lot harder than selling them on the idea of free money. In other words, proposals for an NNS Treasury only seem more attractive in the absence of guiding principles.
Without any guiding principles, how is any argument for or against an NNS Treasury anything other than purely subjective?