Proposal for a Crypto is Good Named Neuron

Governance
1

I want to set the bar low so everyone feels they can create a named neuron.

Goal

As a community, we need more named neurons to increase decentralization. So I want to create a neuron that inspires regular people to make an NNS proposal and have their neuron named.

Why you should approve this proposal:

It’s pretty simple, do you like decentralization? I would just be another named neuron on the list, and hopefully, I would inspire other people to create named neurons. Everyone should be allowed to be a named neuron. It should be decentralized. Honestly, it’s ridiculous I have to beg for votes.

How I will vote?

I will keep voting just like I always have, in a sluggish manner. I don’t have time to be a full-time named neuron, and this neuron will not work this way. Instead, I will follow ICDevs.org for 99% of all proposals and will only manually vote for those I deem essential. I reserve the right to change who I follow and when I do, I will post on Twitter. I often talk about how I vote and why I vote on Twitter.

What do I deem necessary?

I want to make sure ICP grows. Everything I do, every vote I cast will be towards what I think will help people want to join ICP.

Neuron Details

Name: Crypto is Good Neuron
ID: 428687636340283207
Description: My priority is for the growth of the protocol. I am not a company; I am not DAO, and I don’t plan to incorporate anything of the sort. Follow me at your own risk.

Who am I?

https://twitter.com/crypto_is_good

https://www.tiktok.com/@crypto_is_good

17 Likes
2

Why do you have to beg for votes? Just tell people what you plan to do and then do it. What has taken you so long? :man_shrugging:t2:

Nice write up by the way. Your intentions are clear. You may want to post your neuron ID as well. Also, you don’t have to put the word Neuron in your name, unless you want it for some reason.

1 Like
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100% support this. It should be this easy to become named neurons.

4

This is excellent. I can get behind this.

In addition to enabling anyone to create a named neuron, I will soon wish there were a way to explore named neurons to decide who to follow. I’m thinking an “Explore named neurons” page somewhere that looks at (1) voting history on important proposals, (2) named neuron supplied vision statements, (3) the purpose for the neuron, (4) who leads the neuron and how will they vote, etc. Then new people can browse named neurons to decide who they want to follow, and can easily follow them for specific proposal types or across the board.

Anyone building something like this? I have a feeling that as soon as we get 10+ named neurons we’re all going to want some way to learn about them (in a standard, easy way) to determine which one we want to follow.

6 Likes
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I think it will be organically built as we grow.

7

I’m torn on the named neuron in general. It just seems like a weird bureaucratic process to add a group. What are the requirements? Who do I vote yes/no for?
I’d imagine in the future it would be more of ‘sharing’ someone your neuron to have people following it vs someone looking it up.
What if there are multiple groups with the same or similar names? Seems like there would be an issue.
I can see in the future of hundreds would want to be named and if there is no clear process or long term design it seems like it will have a bunch of complications

1 Like
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ICNS should be integrated

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I guess I havent really thought about named neurons too much.
Are they are simple as just associating a label/description to a neuron? or is there something more complicated going on?

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Nope it’s an nns proposal attaching a name and description to a neuron.

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I have a developers grant to build something like this. It is in progress.

5 Likes
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It really should just be like myspace with an nns integration that shows voting history. Maybe we can leverage one of the many social media that already exist.

1 Like
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ICNS should NOT be integrated into the NNS. If someone wants to build an ICNS to neuron lookup dapp, I’m all on board for that. Integrating ICNS (a Psychedelic product) into the NNS sets up ICNS as the de-facto naming standard, and couples it’s success and security with the NNS.

This might be controversial, but I believe the solution is to remove named neurons from the NNS.

In my opinion the approach for removing named neurons from the NNS would be a two step process:

  1. Implement a one time re-confirmation of default followees over a period of 6 months (not all at once, similar to periodic confirmation). This would protect the continuity of staked voting power, so that there isn’t a single gap in time where the NNS is vulnerable.
  2. Remove the concept and ability to select named neurons as followees, so that default followees can only be chosen by inputting their specific neuron ids.

This will even the playing field for all neurons including DFINITY, forcing users to lookup neuron ids of any “named neuron” by using 3rd party lookup dapps (like ICNS), and then to hard-set the neuron id (and not the name) when setting up default following.

This keeps this naming feature de-coupled from the NNS and is agnostic of any naming service provider. Plus it has the added benefit of not requiring an NNS vote every time a new named neuron is proposed.

2 Likes
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I agree with removal.
The problem is (most of the time) proving a real world entity to the nns/neuron. This is currently overcome by a full on democratic vote. So the vote is essentially proof of entity which feels like a placeholder solution. Not scalable, not guaranteed accurate, so why build it into the NNS
The Domain NFT is interesting because people are more likely to be familiar with the url, but it still isnt great.

That being said, if it were removed, the onboarding of users to voting would be harder. Though i think right now many people dont select anyone/just use defaults/pick someone random. I did until i got familiar with groups then i went back and changed them.

Then again if people don’t know what they are choosing, they probably shouldn’t in my opinion. Having someone choose a random/default option might be worse then nothing at all. One doesn’t have to immediately select a neuron to follow. They can stake, learn the community, then update later.

I do like the idea of somewhere to look up history/info/reputation (?) of a neuron outside of the NNS, but that its own issues. Probably will just have to be DAO controlled vs the NNS

I feel that if something is not solid, verifiable or objective then it probably shouldn’t be in the NNS itself

1 Like
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This would just make it harder to onboard people into the nns. Anything that makes it harder for people to participate in governance will just make adoption and growth be slower.

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While I agree that without named neurons, the onboarding for this specific part of the staking process would not be as straightforward as “select DFINITY and set”, removing easy-click named neurons means those who wish to stake think just a little bit longer about what neuron they want to follow before they set and forget for 8 years (or however long they intend to stake).

One might argue that the selection of followees should be the longest part of the setup process. It’s the equivalent of doing your research before voting an a political candidate or ballot measure.

Putting DFINITY at the top of the selectable named neuron followee list just makes it easier for voters to avoid this extra, but necessary step of actually thinking about what their followee selection means and how the followee might vote.

It really comes down to original purpose of this named neuron UX, which was to secure the network by leading new voters to default follow the DFINITY neuron, while giving DFINITY enough voting power so that they could easily and quickly push up any patch fixes or code changes.

However, this pattern in UX is called “The principle of least effort” - which essentially means that users will always put in the least amount of effort or take the shortest path in order to do something. This is great for certain applications and workflows like user log-in, but is discouraged for more sensitive use-cases such in financial applications, where it can be referred to as The Trap of the Path of Least Resistance.

The equivalent with the NNS is that the original (well intentioned) UX of the named neuron has allowed staked voters to easily side-step the process behind actually thinking about the default followee they choose, which has resulted in further centralization of NNS voting power and a less engaged voter community.

I think we’re getting to a point >1 year post-genesis where the network is much more secure and therefore, the UX can be different. Instead of providing a UX that encourages voters to select and forget, removing named neurons provides a “pause” in the staking process, with this pause/gap/halt now suggesting that the perform their own research and reach out to multiple online sources (i.e. dev forums, twitter/reddit, blogs like medium/nuance/papyrs) before proceeding.

Add on the fact that NNS voters receive maturity (rewards) for their vote, and there’s an inherent incentive for choosing an active neuron id as a followee (that votes regularly does not miss votes) already built into the system.

1 Like
17

This is great!

Just as a reminder, for any group of three or more that that would like to have their proposal funded, please reach out. ICDevs can find a few of these.

This write up is a pretty good model and the kind of thing we’d want to see.

2 Likes
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I don’t have time to be a full-time named neuron, and this neuron will not work this way. Instead, I will follow ICDevs.org for 99% of all proposals

I encourage more people to advertise their neuron id and vote independently to improve decentralization. However, I don’t think adding named neurons that simply follow another named neuron helps decentralization, so I will reject.

6 Likes
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I would argue 99% of proposals are a chore and don’t need a human to thoughtfully vote. If we want individuals to name their neurons and increase decentralization on proposals that matter this will help. However if we want to set a standard for only companies/dao to name their neurons I understand but I will be extremely disappointed.

1 Like
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I am very interested in the idea of removing named neurons from the NNS, and instead relying on a community-built neuron discovery system. @wpb you’re building this? Seems like a great project to be built and maintained by a community-created DAO, and probably a good project to build in TypeScript with Azle.

5 Likes
21

I understand this sentiment, but I think this is perhaps the wrong way to think about it if the system worked a bit differently. Right now if you follow a bunch of neurons you have to have a majority of them to vote one way or the other or you don’t vote. This doesn’t seem like a great way to do liquid democracy.

For example, for ICDevs, I’d love to follow DFINITY and ICA on a number of proposals and only pipe up when we feel like there is a direct or indirect effect on developers. I’d love for people to follow ICDevs for developer-related things, but not miss their vote if we don’t vote on a proposal about tokenomics.

Either:

  1. The rules should be changed to any number of votes to accept > votes to reject results in accept, otherwise reject(because reject is almost always a non-action).

or

  1. We need to break Governance into more subcategories so that people can be more specific about who they follow.

If named neurons can’t follow other named neurons, how will we specialize and create groups that are experts in particular fields?

When it comes to the cryptography proposals I’d love to follow a named neuron of the specific engineers at DFINITY(or former dfinity, or other experts) that I know are experts such that the overarching politics of the foundation don’t interfere as much and they are free to vote their minds. ICDevs doesn’t need to vote on which scheme to use unless there are specific developer quality of life deficits in the decision.

In this case, Daniel knows a hell of a lot about marketing crypto…when it comes to marketing proposals I’d actually argue that ICDevs should be following him as one of our “marketing category” follows.

Circular follows should be prolific in a well-specialized liquid democracy.

4 Likes