Can you elaborate more on what you mean by “If the NNS was confined to software upgrades”? Software upgrades would still facilitate changing essentially anything about the protocol, at least technically speaking.
Are you suggesting that confining NNS proposals to replica binary upgrades would solve many of the problems you’re concerned with? Basically that would just take away the ease of changing many of the things that the NNS can change.
Also of course complexity is not desirable, but the IC is complex and the NNS provides a simple means to upgrade it.
Can you elaborate more on what you mean by “If the NNS was confined to software upgrades”? Software upgrades would still facilitate changing essentially anything about the protocol, at least technically speaking.
As in, the NNS’s only purpose being to negate the need for hard forks when something absolutely needed to be changed at the protocol level.
Are you suggesting that confining NNS proposals to replica binary upgrades would solve many of the problems you’re concerned with? Basically that would just take away the ease of changing many of the things that the NNS can change.
Doing so would mean that the network is at least uncensorable, it would also require deep thought and design by DFINITY such that every system the network is composed of is carefully thought out because it’s not expected that the network can be rapidly changed and iterated upon.
Would I reinvest if that was the case? Probably not, I think the blockchain networks going to win out are the ones who design their entire network around a specific aspect of the stack like data storage, computation, customizable node topologies and virtual machines, etc. I’m not gonna do anything shilling on this forum but I think that’s the narrative that will play out. Which ties into my previous recommendation for DFINITY to make the protocol much more minimalistic, and get rid of the NNS. (This doesn’t mean do a complete 180, just release the “killer feature” as a side feature to the current network and then progressively direct development into making that the main system)
So you sold your ICP, which is ok considering the confidence level you have on the product.
It’s fine because it most likely did not fit or meet your expectations.
But instead of leaving the project peacefully, and give a chance for those interested to work on and maintain what’s in course, you come along and want to get rid of NNS. What did the NNS do to you ??
I stated at the beginning that I still think ICP has the potential to be a top 5 coin. I’m not here to fud, just give my opinion.
You can generally tell you’re in a bad place when open dialogue is discouraged, I’m not going to participate in this forum other than replying to posts in this thread because I have nothing tying me to this project anymore…
I don’t understand why simplicity should be a value over all others. Our goal should be to make systems as simple as possible while retaining their specific features and advantages.
Bacteria are simpler than humans, and will certainly survive on the planet longer than humans. Many more things can go wrong in humans than in bacteria. But we cannot change humans to be as simple as bacteria.
The IC’s complexity brings advantages and those should be taken into account in any plan to simplify it. It is precisely these trade-offs that make a multi-chain world inevitable.
You might be correct in predicting that lean, specialised chains are the way forward rather than omnibus behemoths like the IC. We shall know in a couple of years how that plays out.
Basically the ultimate power that it yields, in the hands of a small few right now. It will always be in control of everything, and I think that leads to great censorship and possibly legal and regulatory risks that might otherwise not be an issue if control were truly relinquished. For example, the NNS controlling ICP could lead to sanctions and money transmission issues, but if ICP were truly autonomous then the NNS may not be liable. I’m not sure on this, just an example. The NNS is in many ways operating as a DAO, and we’re learning about the liability of DAOs.
I see the NNS as one of the great liabilities of the IC. It also has positives that are quite fantastic, like seamless protocol upgrades that have allowed us to move very quickly.
NNS doesn’t really have ultimate power, the social consensus of the nodes operators do (just like any other blockchain). Nodes could collectively just decide to install a client software update that reverses anything the NNS does or just delete the NNS entirely.
I think that’s pretty unrealistic and does not describe the reality of how node operators work on the IC. If they don’t want to install something, they will no longer be participating with the network. The nodes are setup to listen to the NNS with no effort on the part of the node operators, AFAIU.
To my understanding, the NNS was designed to be long lasting, to be of service to this generation, the next and the next next…
That would come with some things you might not understand at the current time. Or agree with?
But your concerns are valid, that is why there are proposals to manage and change the trajectory of NNS functionality as needed. But you have to be patient and follow due process in making the necessary changes.
Again, I haven’t seen or heard anything bad about the NNS that cannot be fixed in a diplomatic way.
It’s not about it being realistic, it’s that it’s possible and would be relatively easy for them to do if they wanted to. The “network” is whatever the majority of nodes says it is. If 99.9% of ICs nodes installed an update to delete the NNS, then that’s what the network is now (an IC with no NNS). The .1% of nodes that refused to install the update have no power because they don’t have the nodes to do anything (provide security, store tons of state, serve requests at scale, etc…).
Yes the nodes are setup to listen to the NNS automatically, but that’s my point, the NNS is just a social consensus convenience mechanism. It automates software upgrades and allows anyone who is willing to buy/stake tokens to participate (potentially making it more decentralized than just nodes making all decisions). Honestly the IC is just ahead of the curve on governance DAOs, some of the other higher performance PoS L1s already have them (Polkadot, Cosmos, Tezos, Cardano is planning one). I think the only reason Eth doesn’t have one is because it isn’t technically capable.
Every blockchain network is ultimately governed by the social consensus of its nodes. What’s the difference between the NNS and Lido DAO+Coinbase+1 other entity having the majority of validators and stake to change anything about Ethereum or Solana validators making all the decisions about their network on Discord? NNS is just a better and more robust way to go about it.
That is not social consensus though, ICP has no social consensus as in the the ability to let anyone hardfork the chain at any point in time and let users decide which chain is the “true” one. That isn’t possible cause:
The data is only available to node providers.
Some parts of the IC source code are licensed so Dfinity could sue any hardfork using them.
I’m saying that this is nearly the opposite of the current situation.
The reality seems to be that the node operators have two choices: follow the automatic updates from the NNS or don’t participate in the IC. This is due IMO to a combination of the complexity of the protocol software itself, the safeguards and automation placed around the node upgrade process, and the DFINITY licensing.
But then why don’t call it with its name: hardforks, social consensus imo comes into play when every user can fully validate the chain and choose which one to trust based on that.