🍉 WaterNeuron decentralization

[infu]

Greetings, governance participants.

Three weeks ago, we proposed that WTN DAO upgrades its voting system so that every WTN member’s vote gets cast in the NNS. With the current design, if a small group of people holds 51%, only their vote gets cast using all of the ICP in neurons collected from minting nICP, the launch, and the second sale.

[Proposal to upgrade WaterNeuron voting system]

The developers agreed that there needs to be a change, but proposed that the NNS has to change instead of their voting system, a change that could take years.

The known neurons came to mixed conclusions. One pointed out that there is no problem with the current system, while others supported the change.

Two or three WTN community members made sure they were heard as well in thousands of posts across all threads, and their belief is that WTN is perfectly decentralized and there can’t be a 51% attack. They asked for more data to support our claims that there can be one.

What you see is WTN neuron data from 2 days ago.

The first image is based on neuron stake grouped by account.

• Neuron Fund (NF) is in a group, even though each neuron votes for itself.

• Whale1 has two accounts, one from the launch, another from the second sale. We’ve used a ledger transactions graph to find out it’s the same entity with almost complete certainty.

• There are 7 developer accounts in the yaml section “developer_neurons”, which the WTN intro post has them tagged as “Early contributors” and haven’t been doxed, except for the actual developers, but we don’t know which of these are held by the 3 developers. The app they released shows they have ~5% voting power on their WTN devs neuron.

The stake Whale1 (~24%) and Developer neurons (~40%) result in ~64% of WTN staked in the DAO. Neurons have locked 91.59% of the total supply.

This visualization is based on neuron voting power grouped by account.

There are a lot of concerned NNS neuron owners, SNSes, and ICP holders who feel threatened by the outcomes of having a liquid staking protocol where all the voting power WTN casts on the NNS represents a small group of anonymous participants, where most of them got their WTN without contributing any ICP to the DAO.

Every nICP minted gives voting power to that group if colluding, and no other DAO member’s votes matter.

It also allows them to buy voting power by minting nICP and selling it at a discount, then mint and sell again and again. This way, the liquidity of 1 ICP could result in voting power of ~5 ICP in a 6mo neuron.

The possible nefarious scenarios are endless, some of which end up with taking over the NNS with no skin in the game if voters believe WTN is decentralized well enough and they are well represented. The last two months, we witnessed a lot of the nefarious scenarios proving to be true. There is evidence that indicates that all of them are connected.

We would like to offer these big anonymous neurons to dox themselves and perhaps explain what their plan is, before this thread turns into another basement Fightclub meeting, where we are mostly interacting with WTN’s loyal and oblivious fanbase, and none of the actual leaders of WTN show up.

One of the possible fair solutions would be for WTN to develop a proportional representation system in combination with airdropping large amounts to the misrepresented group. Turning the 64% group into 35%. Depending on the 3rd and 4th sale, if they happen at all, will very likely not end in any improvement in decentralization, but more of participants’ ICP being misrepresented.

Even if that doesn’t happen, we hope this has helped raise awareness, so participants of all DAOs on the IC can make informed decisions.

Other WTN explorer apps: https://wtn.ic.app/

[Mico]

Why don’t you let the thread stay focused on what infu posted.

[borovan]

The synapse crew are heavily involved with Water Neuron and I’m showing you that the same governance attack is taking place there.

[Mico]

This is about the 7 anon accounts that you and infu are afraid of.

The thread isn’t about you personal hatred for wenzel

[Mico]

@infu

Whale1 has two accounts, one from the launch, another from the second sale. We’ve used a ledger transactions graph to find out it’s the same entity with almost complete certainty.

Overall thank you for posting data with this post. Could you include the graph you used to come to this conclusion in this thread as well?

[borovan]

Did they ever verify their nICP canisters module hash against the code?

[WebTreeSoftwareSolut]

What does the n stand for? Asking for a friend.

Could it be not…decentralized?

[wpb]

@borovan

The synapse crew are heavily involved with Water Neuron

The only people from Synapse that I know who are involved in WaterNeuron as active community members are myself and @Lorimer. We routinely engage with many other active community members in the WaterNeuron chat group on Telegram. It’s a real powerhouse of thought leaders in the ICP ecosystem and we routinely have very interesting and intellectually honest conversations.

Two additional people from Synapse who are voting members for the CodeGov WTN known neuron are @Sormarler and @dfisher. Both of them are investors in WaterNeuron who are known to be credible and reliable members of the ICP ecosystem. I asked them to be Followees for the CodeGov WTN neuron on specific topics and they accepted.

I’m not aware of anyone else from Synapse having an interest in WaterNeuron. So I don’t think it is accurate to claim that Synapse is heavily involved in WaterNeuron. In fact, there is no formal relationship even if a few of us are involved in both.

Here is a link to the CodeGov WTN neuron website if you want to do more research about who are the Followees for each topic. I manage the neuron and look for credible and reliable people who routinely vote independently of the WaterNeuron dev team. CodeGov is one of many known neurons hoping to advance decentralization of the WaterNeuron vote. The neuron ID is 203312480b4aeef877f393f376533f4fdcaa477412ca1ae83abd8e897c0e726f for anyone who wants to give us a follow.

codegov.org - WaterNeuron

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Hey @infu. You did a nice job of documenting your research and presenting it in a diplomatic way. I will respond later when I have time. It’s a shame that Adam and a few others are already sh!tposting and ultimately distracting from your main post. You have some very interesting observations, conclusions, and proposals that are worth talking about in an intellectually honest way. I hope we are able to do that without distractions.

[WebTreeSoftwareSolut]

@wpb

CodeGov is one of many known neurons hoping to advance decentralization of the WaterNeuron vote. The neuron ID is 203312480b4aeef877f393f376533f4fdcaa477412ca1ae83abd8e897c0e726f for anyone who wants to give us a follow.

I find the irony in this statement quite refreshing. Thank you for sharing your candid thoughts wenzel.

“We’re all about decentralization, so don’t vote for yourself! Follow us!”

[Mico]

If you don’t agree with allowing for voters to delegate their votes then it seems your issues start at the nns level.

[WebTreeSoftwareSolut]

It wasnt about my personal disagreement. I have no problem with following. If people want to follow codeGov or any other neuron that is their right. I merely pointed out the irony of the statement… but we are distracting from the topic at this point.

Do you think waterneuron is decentralized? Who really is pulling the strings here? What do you think out there silent readers?

Will any of these account holders step forward and discuss their interests as @infu requested? Or will they remain in their shadowy abode planning their next move?

If these holders do not become transparent with their intentions. I strongly urge community members to dump nICP like the hot garbage it is (in my opinion). This is the only free market action that can be taken to prevent the unfettered growth of power of these unknown participants.

[Mico]

I think they should add the data of where they came to the conclusion this whale has two accounts.

[Lorimer]

@borovan

Anybody else from Synapse want to tell us

I suspect everybody knows where I stand →

The Destabiliser - Blockchain Detectives Needed!

I think this is the case. I think the distinction between nICP and WTN is understood by those discussing this. What they’re getting at is that if you assume one person, or a united clique, own >50% of WTN SNS VP, then the VP of everyone else in that DAO will never ever make a difference on the NNS (even though that’s what they bought their WTN for if they are taking their role seriously, which they should be). As far as the vote on the NNS is concerned, your WTN VP will never make a single bit …

Feature Request: Granular NNS Voting

Having thought about this further I think it’s useful to decouple the problems we’re trying to address. Follower-based VP Follower-based VP is a separate concern, and there are all sorts of solutions to this which sit outside of WaterNeuron itself. More and better quality governance participants for followers to follow is the solution with regard to any potential for centralisation in this respect. Better visibility of how much follower-based VP known neurons already have is another way to sign…

[1eo]

To help you better understand, 3eifv is controlled by bity and is independent of the team.

The three main neurons managed by contributors each belong to a different individual. They are not following any other neurons and vote independently.

[borovan]

david you and enzo? like in the sisyphus swiss registry?

[1eo]

Nope David has no token allocation in the team, zero. Sisyphus has nothing to do with WaterNeuron, it’s an entity we use for an upcoming project onesec.org.

[Mico]

That’s great to hear about David.

Just like Adam loves to tell people it’s a free market and he can buy as much as he wants, so can David and any other Vc.

No team allocation but his own money supporting builders and a product he believes in.

[wpb]

I think you might have better luck getting input on your improvement ideas and feedback on beneficial owners of WTN neurons if you join the WaterNeuron chat group on Telegram. You can start with this post here, which is where the discussion about your forum post started today. There was some relevant feedback that you will want to see, but for the most part it turned into additional discussion about how to implement proportional voting. You really should join those discussions so your voice will be heard. I doubt many people are going to join here since Adam and his monkeys are already futzing up this forum thread like always.

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@infu

The stake Whale1 (~24%) and Developer neurons (~40%) result in ~64% of WTN staked in the DAO.

While I don’t know the individual dev neurons, I believe that they are all different beneficial owners. There are 7 dev neurons.

@infu

There are a lot of concerned NNS neuron owners, SNSes, and ICP holders who feel threatened by the outcomes of having a liquid staking protocol where all the voting power WTN casts on the NNS represents a small group of anonymous participants, where most of them got their WTN without contributing any ICP to the DAO.

While this may be true that the dev neurons didn’t contribute any ICP to the decentralization sale, I suspect only 3 of the 7 dev neurons are the actual devs who got an allocation for the work or building the protocol. It seems likely that the other 4 dev neurons may have made ICP contributions prior to the swap, although I don’t know in what capacity. Also, the 7 dev neurons ended up with 35% total voting power, which is typical for SNS dev allocation. The actual dev allocation is less since 4 of those neurons are not devs.

@infu

We would like to offer these big anonymous neurons to dox themselves and perhaps explain what their plan is

It would be nice to be able to verify that these larger neurons are indeed different individual beneficial owners, but I don’t think it needs to go as far as everyone doxxing themselves. If someone wants to remain private, then that should be respected.

@infu

One of the possible fair solutions would be for WTN to develop a proportional representation system

Most people in the WaterNeuron community are still talking about the proportional representation idea because they agree with this idea. I seem to be the only person who disagrees. As explained last week in a different thread, I think proportional representation will lead to more liquid staking and no competition among WTN neurons to win NNS proposals. Both of these effects are bad for the NNS.

@infu

in combination with airdropping large amounts to the misrepresented group.

We do already have an airdrop planned, but it will be a while before it is distributed. Otherwise, I’m all for an airdrop for the “misrepresented” group. I vote for anyone with more than 1% TVP already should get none of this new airdrop and only 10% of the airdrop goes to people with 0.1 - 1% TVP. The rest gets divided equally among all neuron owners with less than 0.1%. Sounds like a good recipe to me. Someone should take a neuron snapshot today.