Who is ultimately making/enforcing this rule? It’s not the NNS, it’s Dfinity.
I’m pretty sure it’s enforced by the Internet Computer Protocol… using a bunch of cryptography, I presume. If you’re a registered node provider and want to receive node provider rewards, you need to upgrade as the NNS dictates. The NNS (through the Protocol) has code to enforce this, I believe.
I feel like it’s worth pointing out that the NNS is not some normal organization… it’s a DAO (obviously, but might not be as obvious).
The IC is a hybrid permissioned blockchain, where subnets (i.e. individual blockchains) are configured and controlled by a DAO. I say “hybrid” because a DAO is not a single person or company, and while power is indeed centralized in a single “thing” it’s a thing that is currently structured as a direct democracy so that power is distributed across token holders. The power of the U.S., for example, is also centralized in a single government, but that government’s power is distributed across voters…
As OP points out, other blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are indeed fully permissionless, where any node can join or leave at will.
So why did the IC choose a hybrid permissioned model? Because it enables massive efficiency and unlimited scale, as well as features like HTTPS outcalls and Threshold Cryptography, which would simply be impossible if you have thousands of nodes participating in consensus.
You’re right, the correct word was hardforks. My point was the node operators really control the network, not the NNS.
And what if all the node operators delete the old IC client and install a new one with a modified IC protocol without the NNS?
Then they wouldn’t be able to discover and communicate with each other, and they also wouldn’t get paid with ICP.
If they all installed the same mod why wouldn’t they be able to communicate with each other and get paid with ICP?
BTW this has happened before, soon after Genesis the NNS broke and couldn’t update the network anymore. Dfinity had to give all the node operators an IC client update to manually install to fix the NNS.
Do you think the NNS, and by extension the token holders, ought to be the ones orchestrating subnets? I think the closer you get to a system where the structure of the network is determined by node/user interaction under a “code is law” paradigm, and not a central party the better. A closer system like this would be Avalanche where any user can create a subnet with it’s own native currency that gets payed to nodes to incentivise them to validate that subnet. (No I don’t own AVAX)
I think members of this community should press DFINITY and ask themselves these two questions
Yes, for any high performance subnet, which would be almost every subnet on the IC. The NNS is a necessary internal control and approval filter to maintain that high performance. If you have any ideas about how to run an entire IT stack at web speed with enterprise-scale applications and blockchain encryption on grandma’s 10-year old cell phone or laptop with spotty WiFi while she is watching cat videos, then feel free to walk us through how that decentralized, permissionless subnet might work.
The IC is not just keeping track of cumulative balances on a 4-5 column spreadsheet table like almost every other blockchain. The entire IT stack is running on the IC blockchain. This requires extremely high (and consistent) hardware / network standards in order to run at web speed and to be able to audit for suspicious consensus deviations from the norm.
That said, there will undoubtedly be a greater variety of IC subnet types in the future (such as the “badlands” proposal), which might even allow grandma (and her 5-10 year old cellphone) to get in on the action for those who love the primitive, 100% unstoppable concept of millions of permissionless nodes validating their transaction. As a bonus, you could probably cook your dinner and do your laundry while you wait for your one transaction to finalize during one of those cat videos.
exactly, that the NNS right now has the most centralized voting power does not mean that it is not a completely decentralized protocol since the protocol itself has the consensus mechanism through liquid democracy to distribute the voting power as the participants wish thus having a fully decentralized governance. It is true that Dfinity as the biggest contributor and founder of IC has the biggest voting power. but as time goes by it will decrease
Absolutely. It’s also not just token holders but all stakeholders can have a say, to include users, investors, app developers, and infrastructure providers through the NNS.
-99% is really an excellent moment to sell all your bag. Amazing.
So, what other magic coin did you find to replace this ICP centralized coin ?
You criticize, you criticize, you criticize… But, I’m still looking for when the topic bounces back to contribute something constructive?
I did wonder about that. I would understand not wanting to put more money into a project one views as deeply flawed, but selling at this stage seems strange since OP begin his post by saying ICP could become a top 5 coin.
Sunk cost fallacy, if you invest for a particular reason, and that reason turns out to be unsound and you start losing money, you should just cut your loses IMO. Yes I think ICP can become a top 5 coin, BNB is a top 5 coin yet I consider it unsound…
Would you agree that democracy is decentralization compared to monarchy and aristocracy? Or tyranny and oligarchy?
So would you care to explain your rationale when you did start to invest? I presume you knew about the NNS and it’s power at the time of investment.
Did something about the NNS change that you didn’t like? Or it was just that you didn’t think deeply enough about the NNS and it’s implications.
I have read through the entire topic many times. I do find some well articulated reasoning…post-facto. But i am more interested in your rationale when you did invest.
I think the beauty of decentralized systems is they’re designed such that they can function without any authoritative party involved other than the rules the participants accept to abide by, by using the system. I have deep scepticisms about democracy as a process in general, it’s downsides aren’t as obvious as tyrannies, monarchies etc but are nonetheless deadly.
I just liked the branding (Why did they change the dope internetcomputer.org homepage ?!?!) and the tech seemed more sophisticated than I realized, again probably because of the branding. Being financially exposed is what prompted me to think deeper about the actual systems involved in ICP.
To each their own of course but how is sticking with it a sunk cost fallacy if you believe ICP might 100x from this point, which is the minimum it would take to be a top 5 coin because an upmove would definitely be part of a secular bull run in which most top coins would see major gains? Say I have 1000 ICP. Would it make sense to sell it for around 4000 USD, which is too trivial an amount to be much use to any investor, when there is some chance I could a couple of years down the line make 4,00,000 USD with it?
I’ve made some pretty bad investing decisions alongside some decent ones, but when I’ve sold at a huge loss it has always been because I felt a project had no future, that the max gain I could hope for from the ATL was 4x or 5x and more likely it would continue to trend downwards.
I said it has the potential to be, not that I believe it’s a top 5 coin waiting for price discovery. The best meter I have for how something’s going to perform is how much I like it, I don’t think I can dislike something and consider it a worthy investment because ultimately my personal feelings are closer to other people’s feelings than my logical reasoning about how other people may or may not act.
So, you didn’t give us names of better crypto than ICP ?
So Alin,I understand what you’re saying is that it’s technically possible to build it on the IC and that it will if the NNS decides to implement it.