And it gets even worse than that. Currently dfinity foundation & likely ICA would not participate in add followee proposals (Proposal to include cycle_dao & ICDevs as default follow-target neurons to the NNS - #218 by diegop).
So one can simply exclude 100m votes by only churning out add followee governance proposals; if one is so inclined to do. As a matter of fact, that is EXACTLY, what is contemplated here(https://www.reddit.com/r/ICPTrader/comments/t1wljd/earn_215_apy/).
Despite being on the reddit and developer forums, I missed an important aspect of the tokenomics change. I had neurons configured months ago to follow Dfinity and ICA, like everyone else, and had added Cycle-Dao for governance proposals even before the named-neuron development. So, I thought I was covered, until I realised I had to specifically unfollow Dfinity and ICA on governance, because if two out of three neurons one is following abstain, that means the majority hasnāt voted and your own neuron doesnāt vote either and loses voting rewards. At least that is my current understanding, correct me if I am mistaken.
What I think might be happening is that many stakers have made the same error, believing that simply adding a neuron to follow for governance does the trick and failing to unfollow the two original default neurons.
Iām getting a lot of push back on Twitter about my statement that this was a āmassive mistakeā. I will go ahead and apologize for being so dramatic. But I do feel strongly about this topic.
If we, the community, are going to start distinguishing between active and inactive voters can we at least come up with a definition of what being an active voter means?
For example. I recall someone in the past proposing a monthly reset of every neuronās follower settings. Why not adopt something like that? This way itās at least well known what the minimum expectation is going forward.
This is a very good question @LightningLad91. Iām interested in what others think as well.
I would define an active participant as someone who is voting. There is a spectrum of how active we are as a participant. The option exists to engage on the forum and social media to whatever extent we choose and to manually vote on everything. The option also exists to allow others to vote for us, but we are still personally responsible for making sure we vote if our goal is to maximize voting rewards.
Another way to ask this question might be to focus on entitlement. As I interpret the tokenomics white papers, staking ICP does not entitle anyone to voting rewards. Only voting entitles people to voting rewards. Each of us are entitled to the ICP we currently own, but we are not entitled to future rewards unless we perform the work that is required to earn voting rewards, which is to vote.
Iām personally not a fan of having automated followers/followees. Why donāt we get rid of it all together and only reward those who vote manually as there is no other way. People have to work for their rewards. It literally doesnāt take a few minutes to vote. To make the whole system decentralized we need to remove this automation in votes itās absurd. So many get rewarded and have no idea what they voted on so their vote weighs no real value. When there is an incentive to vote manually people will do it then the rewards will be more valuable and have a meaning.
This is exactly what I was concerned about.
By generating one Governance proposal everyday, we can get roughly 30% APY ( 8 year staked)
https://www.reddit.com/r/ICPTrader/comments/t1wljd/earn_215_apy/
Uh oh, this clearly seems like a bug.
What is the bug? Isnāt it working as expected? No votes, no rewards. If people cannot be bothered to keep up with the changes in a democracy, then should they partake in itās benefits? If they play by the rules and score a touchdown, well, they scored a touchdown. Yeah, the rules were changed. But it is your responsibility to keep in touch with the changing rules.
The above is one view. The second view is that tweaking these tokenomics rules as a part of governance is FUNDAMENTALLY different than the technical aspects of IC. When the coins were bought, there was a tacit understanding of how the tokenomics would work (& that the tokenomics wouldnāt change ). Once one begins to tweak the tokenomics, there are unintended consequences.
I myself fall in the second camp. If one game plays out if we follow the first view, the technical amongst us will benefit the most IN THE SHORT TERM. However this will cause significant LONG TERM issues.
This is a very convenient definition that doesnāt really help anyone understand what is expected of them. All it does it tell people that they better watch out because someone can come along at anytime and upend their plans.
The people that are losing rewards right now did not fail to vote. They were voting, the same way ICPMN followers vote today, through liquid democracy.
I think @Motokoder described the responsibility of the casual stakeholder pretty well in this tweet:
https://twitter.com/motokoder/status/1498601970440945669?s=21
Everyone talks about stakeholders obligations to be āactive votersā and how the system is not designed to be a passive income generator. But the truth is thatās exactly how the system is designed.
Most stakeholders do not understand, nor should they really need to understand, the intricacy of every proposal. Trying to force every stakeholder to be active will never scale. The backbone of the internet is not going to be micromanaged by a billion people around the world. The system accounts for this with liquid democracy. Liquid democracy allows everyone to participate in governance by making a contribution to the network and delegating their voting power to someone or some group they believe in. Their support adds weight to the target neuronās vote and that is their contribution.
What we are saying now, is thatās not enough. Now in order to be considered an āactive voterā you must read every proposal and stay up to date with every change or you might get run over. This defeats the entire point of liquid democracy and it will not scale.
I think these daily governance proposals need to end (unless thereās one that actually proposes meaningful change) and I think we need to watch for any abuse of the system. If this new weighting continues to be abused we should put something in place to combat that abuse or revert this weighting change.
I donāt think active voter means you have to stay up to date on every proposal.
Your suggestion to end the daily proposal campaign is actionable, so I submitted it today. I will be voting to approve ending the daily proposals. My hope is that this proposal will stimulate discussion. @paulyoung expressed concerns early on and you both have valid points that should be discussed.
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This is a good point. Iāve never considered that lack of translation to other languages for NNS proposals could lead to less voter participation. That should be a greater topic of discussion.
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The Neuron Management topic allows neurons that you explicitly follow for this topic to manage your neuron via proposals under that topic. Thus, a neuron that you follow under the Neuron Management topic could stop your neuron from dissolving via a proposal, for example.
I hope you understand the problem Iām having. What is the expectation? If weāre going to use the āactive voterā justification then we should be able to define what that expectation is going forward. Should users log in every 2 weeks? 4 weeks? Every quarter?
If the answer is āthey should just know to pay attentionā then this brings us back to having every stakeholder stay up to date on every proposal.
I think this discussion is worth having a separate topic. I started another thread if you are interested.
I probably donāt understand the issue. I use the term āactiveā because I spend a lot of time trying to explain my interpretation of the tokenomics and governance system and it seem like a useful term in those descriptions. Maybe I am somehow causing unintentional confusion.
Let me try to explain another way without using that termā¦
Staking entitles people to vote. Voting entitles people to voting rewards. Followee assignments enable people to assign their voting power to other people. The tokenomics and governance structure has a lot of mutable features by way of decentralized decision making through the NNS. Hence, each person who stakes is responsible for making sure they are voting at any point in time.
I also donāt feel like Iām trying to justify anything. Iām just trying to explain what I think I understand. I am also trying to do my part to communicate changes widely so people are aware and can respond accordingly.
When I raised the question of why we should be okay with such a dramatic shift in voting reward distribution in such a short period of time the consensus seems to be that an āactive voterā would have noticed this change and that this should be viewed as a bonus for āactive participationā.
I acknowledge this truth. AFAIK the entire IC is mutable. The ledger itself is subject to the will of the NNS. We as stakeholders have a responsibility to not exploit this mutability for our own gain. I think what has happened sets a dangerous precedent and we should consider the long term implications of that.
Yes. Exactly. It used to be in the interface and was not really labeled well. It was removed. It would be nice to have it back for neuron management purposes. Right now you have to hack the UI by putting a breakpoint in and changing the follow topic.
It would be nice if it was a separate section like Hotkeys that had some description about what you are doing and then allow you to set the neuron management followers.
For exampleā¦here are the now outdated instructions from the v1 nns:
Follow Neuron 14231996777861930328 for the Manage Neuron Topic(instructions). This is a bit more complicated as it still requires using the web console. Using chrome:
@jwiegley expanding on the point made by @skilesare, I would really to see all features of ManageNeuron to be built into the NNS dApp. Specifically, I want to be able to assign control of the ICPMN neuron to a group so any change to the neuron management is up to those Followees to decide by way of private proposals that can only be seen and voted by those voting members. This includes adding/removing Followees to topics as well as manually voting on proposals that are a topic where Followees are not directly configured. There is no need to disperse, but there is a need to manage the neuron by a group through the NNS dApp. DFX command line configuration for these features is too complicated.
If I made this type of comment, then I think you may have interpreted it out of context or I may have been trying to answer a different question. I apologize for creating any confusion.
I agree about the community having a responsibility not to exploit weighted proposals. I donāt agree that a dangerous precedent has been set.
I agree there is a chance that the weighted proposals can be misused and we should be ready to respond accordingly.