Technical Working Group: Node Providers

:wave: Hi everyone,

Thank you to all who participated in the last working group meeting. You can find the recording, minutes, and slides in this folder.

Our next working group meeting will be on September 16th at 4pm CET. Please use the link below to add this event to your calendar.

Thank you all, and I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting.

:broom: Housekeeping:

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:wave: Hi everyone,

Sharing the agenda for the next NPWG on September 16th at 4pm CET. You can view it here.

I would like to highlight that in this meeting, @bjoernek and @pietrodimarco will be giving us a first look at a PoC dApp that reports on node performance. As some of you may recall, this marks phase 1 towards performance-based penalties for underperforming nodes.

We will also be continuing the discussion on node audits.

Thanks and see you next week!

:broom: Housekeeping:

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Hi all,

today we presented a draft approach and tooling for performance based node rewards in the node provider working group. More details on this can be found here.

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Hi everyone!

Thanks for joining the NP WG meeting yesterday. And special thanks to @bjoernek and @pietrodimarco for the presentation and demo.

You can find all the materials (meeting minutes, chat transcript and meeting recording) in this folder.

Next meeting is on October 21st. Click here to add it to your agenda.

Before then, it would be great if those intending to participate could use the provided criteria to audit their own data centers and input findings into a shared Google Sheet.

Thanks everyone!

:broom: Housekeeping:

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I would like to propose a topic for discussion.

The NNS is currently a very simple pure liquid democracy based only on token balances. This design leaves A LOT to be desired.

One of its main weaknesses IMO is the lack of checks and balances. The system easily allows one entity to gain and wield complete write access to the protocol, as DFINITY currently does.

This should not be allowed by the protocol, no matter if people want to follow a neuron to that extent. It is dangerous and antithetical to decentralized governance.

So, as one of my proposed checks and balances, I would like to explore a role for node operators to play as a check on centralized control.

Having different entities with different roles in ICP and the NNS may provide robust checks and balances that could lead to a more resilient network.

I don’t know exactly what this looks like, I just want to open the discussion.

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I am a node provider. I am not technical. I would not know how to perform this role. Most other NPs are in my position I think.

Why would you want NPs to perform a highly technical role?

This is an interesting idea to say the least, as far as I know even as I write this there is still work being done in tooling as an effort to improve decentralization of the network, but this is only on a hardware per location level, so back to what you are proposing is a way for node operators to have a role in order to approve or reject different changes to the core protocol if I understand it correctly ?

I want node providers to perform a vital role, whatever that entails.

Also the idea that being a node provider shouldn’t be a technical role doesn’t sound correct to me, something seems wrong about that.

Also providing node operators with a new role doesn’t have to introduce technical complexity.

Imagine node operators are provided with veto power for example, perhaps requiring a 2/3 consensus across all subnets are something like that.

I think a key question is: what protection do we have in the NNS against a single entity with majority voting power?

To be a NP does require technical chops, but most NPs outsource this service to someone that is qualified to handle data centers. So you have a couple of layers - 1) an entity that takes a risk and invests in servers, and 2) service provider handling the complexities of being a NP.

You could imagine giving NPs more power, but then ultimately it may end up in the hands of the service providers.

Hi all,

The next NP WG meeting will be on the 28th of October instead!

Node Provider Working Group
Monday, October 28 · 10:00 – 11:00pm
Time zone: Asia/Bangkok
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/xcj-quvk-pes
Or dial: ‪(TH) +66 2 844 9331‬ PIN: ‪514 908 306 8757‬#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/xcj-quvk-pes?pin=5149083068757

Just as a reminder or what was discussed in the last meeting - it would be great if those intending to participate could use the provided criteria to audit their own data centers and input findings into a shared Google Sheet .

Thanks all!

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