I’m torn on this proposal. I’ll offer some thoughts, but haven’t decided yet how I would vote…
- I think removal of exchange rate proposals may not have that big of an effect on spam. Sure there is more incentive as @bjoernek described, but I’m not sure it will actually result in spam for the purpose of financial gain. The incentive for spam is still much lower than it was when Governance proposal weights were 20x. Two easy disincentives for spam include increases in proposal reject fees as well as people continuing to submit Register Known Neuron proposals (since they are legit Governance proposals). I provided additional feedback in this comment.
- I’m much more concerned about what happens when there are no proposals. The Exchange Rate proposal is the only reason we have been guaranteed voting rewards every day. I don’t currently know if the NNS already takes care of this in some way or if a new policy needs to be implemented if there are no proposals.
- The white box in your chart is a lot smaller today since Governance proposal weight is only 1x and there are very few Governance proposals. Hence, if this proposal does move forward, I would argue that the Governance proposal weight should revert back to 20x at the same time. The size of the white box would then be closer to accurate. I want there to be an increased incentive for active participation in governance like there was with the Governance proposal weight was higher, which will only occur if people are losing voting rewards by not voting. I fully agree that this proposal is a disincentive for spam, which means an increase of Governance proposal weight will not re-incentivize spam.
- I don’t believe we have an inflation problem and I don’t like the idea of burning voting rewards. I would rather they be redistributed to active participants in governance as they are today compared to burning voting rewards. However, I think building an NNS treasury (or whatever it should be called) is a very productive use of those voting rewards. I can envision many use cases, all of which needs a lot more discussion. For example, those rewards could be used to incentivize experts, incentivize named neurons, fund community driven proposals AND community driven implementation, fund R&D on the effectiveness of tokenomics as well as how to decentralize the IC, fund code bounties that are specifically related to governance and progress toward decentralization, fund new organizations so DFINITY is not the only major contributor to the Internet Computer blockchain, etc. I would rather see unclaimed voting rewards (from not voting) dedicated for this purpose instead of being redistributed to active participants in governance. I see this as a better use of these funds for the long term best interest of the IC and in line with the tokenomics purpose of incentivizing governance participation.
- I also agree this proposal is complimentary to periodic confirmation of followees, which I would still like to see implemented in due time.