Dear Cosmos community
NOTE: This post is about some topics arisen from my observation in recent discussion in the Cosmos community. This post is not about Proposal 23. While some contents are obviously relating to Proposal 23 but they are some inspirations I have gained which I want to share with all of you Cosmos supporters.
Background
Before we decided to vote “no” to proposal 23 on Cosmos Hub, we have also gone through a struggling process: why do we need to do so? why not we just join the majority (including those influencers and and VCs of Cosmos which both Forbole and Desmos may need to seek help from) to vote “yes” and keep ourselves from energy-consuming discussions?
It is very difficult to oppose to 97% yes votes without the potential risk of harming our relationship with each other. Will we lose their support in the future?
Still, we took action because we thought this was what a validator was supposed to do: participate in governance. We thought this duty was reflected in our delegation (and hence the income).
So I have written this high-level reasons of our “no” vote:
I further explained our special position as a validator on Cosmos Hub which further convinced us that we need to take the action:
We then finally saw another “no” by Stake Capital DAO which led me to write more on Twitter:
After observing the voting process, the responses from more parties, and the call of a small group just finished before this writing, I think I need to write something more.
DISCLAIMER: you may think very differently from me due to different philosophy and worldview. That’ also the reason why I always prefer to make posts in more public channels (on Medium and Twitter) than in small chat group: I just want to express my opinion and let people think more but not to convince other people that I am correct.
The two tiers of Proposal 23
We need to have answers to these two tiers before we can vote on Proposal 23.
(i) Are these works needed to be done?
(ii) If yes, at what costs?
In all my previous posts, I tried to narrow down the scope of discussion and hence I have raised my uncertainty more on the costs and sustainability issue, which are more about (ii).
Let’s rephrase this: because I saw 97% of yes vote, so I decided to at least agree on something (i.e. I thought the works proposed are important) such that I could raise more concern of the sustainability issue. If I say no to everything, I may look like a hater and people will just ignore all my concerns.
Risk of creating a noble class
There is a potential that the governance working group will become a noble class which serves as a de facto centralized authority with a significant influence on the governance process.
You may say I am exaggerating the situation. But my concern has become more valid after I observed how the proposal has processed so far. The proposer Figment Networks and a leading validator Certus One have already shown us an unsatisfactory practice: they have deposited 300 atoms and 125 atoms respectively which account for over 83% of the required deposit.
Don’t get me wrong. They CAN do this technically. They have taken the risk of losing their deposit. My question is SHOULD they do this. In particular, SHOULD they do thing in this way for a proposal which is relating to the future “best practice” of governance? I repeatedly used a phrase “looks suspicious.” and this perfectly describes the situation in Cosmos.
“It looks suspicious” does not mean “evil things have actually happened”. If we as validators are not alert to suspicious actions, who should be?
Still think I am over thinking too much? I really don’t want to raise this issue again: some validators have enjoyed privileged early mover advantage early on in the first few days after launch:
Still think I am over thinking too much? Please take a look at this address. In early days it had something like 6M or 7M atoms, all delegated to the two validators as far as I remember.
The seed of accumulated advantage, which were planted since its fundraiser, are still influencing Cosmos strongly as of today. This cannot be undone as we have not yet invented time machine. But can we take more proactive actions from now on to prevent the potential of creating a new centralized power?
The status of having large capital or having advantage should not be blamed. I just expect community leaders to do more.
Laziness of validators will lead to centralization
The purpose of the governance working group itself defeats the original purpose of decentralization, not to mention the proposal is about compensating a leader to organize this potential noble class which is a kind of centralization of a centralization.
First thing first. Why don’t validators assess each proposal by themselves but relying on a working group to organize the process for them?
If the validators don’t pay attention to the proposals. Who will? Who should?
If as validators you don’t have the time for this, YOU SHOULD QUIT THIS BUSINESS. If you are atoms holders but don’t have the time for governance. These are your choices:
i) Sell all your atoms
ii) Keep your atoms unbonded and got diluted by inflation
iii) Delegate to those validators who have really taken the job seriously
I am radical in terms of decentralization. This is inevitable to create centralization. For example, Cosmos needed money to achieve a bigger goal and hence it needed to rely on big investors. Investors have taken the risks and deserve to enjoy the huge upside. All of these facts are valid and reasonable. What I tried to convey is that we need to take proactive and extraordinary actions to equalize the inevitable centralization.
More on sustainability
The proposed spending led to a discussion of how to justify the value of community work. The proposed hourly rate is 31.25 atoms. Value is quite subjective sometimes. But there are various angles to help us to make a better judgement. Again I am not writing to discuss proposal 23 but rather to use this as an example to illustrate something that I think the community has missed.
Let’s assume the leader of the working group need to spend this amount of time during the three month period. This means the remuneration for this leader is 1,750 atoms/month.
What is the percentage of the leader’s work in the group? 30%? 40%? 50%? Let’s assume 45% (which is unreasonably high already). This implies the effort of this working group worths 3,889 atoms/month (note: 1,750/0.45). I assume this is an on-going effort once we have relied on this (this comes to the laziness I mentioned above).
The pool took 10 months to accumulate 280,000 atoms. So the monthly income to the pool is around 28,000 atoms/month on average.
Putting the two figures together, this means we will use 13.9% of the pool to facilitate the use of the pool. If the working group’s effort costs higher than 3,889 atoms/month, this percentage will be higher than 13.9%. To me, the nature of this 13.9% is an overhead due to the laziness of validators. If you want me to suggest a number, I think a reasonable overhead is 3–5%.
Value and opportunity cost
Does Figment (or Gavin?) worth 31.25 atoms/hour? No. They don’t. They should worth way more than 31.25 atoms/hour given its brilliant track record in the space. Figment, Certus One and Chorus One are vivid role models of what a professional validator should be to serve the thriving proof-of-stake blockchain space. Who can do what they have done? Forbole is not even close in every KPI.
When assessing the justification of the hourly rate, one common argument is we need to take into account the opportunity cost of a person. I don’t need to be wordy to against this. Let’s use an extreme example:
Should we employ Tim Cook to sweep the floor?
Yeah freakily extreme example which I think is powerful enough to sweep our laziness. Using such a high overhead to facilitate something which I suppose should be done by each validator is unreasonable to me.
If we use opportunity cost as a justification in granting the community pool, this will not enough even for the effort spent by the contributors since Gaia-1000.
Cosmos is rich now?
“Don’t mention Gaia-1000. We are rich now. We worth $1B. Our pool has 280,000k atoms. We can afford to spend money!”
Again, this is highly subjective. To me, Cosmos is still a long way to go before it can claim itself affordable to spend money like this. I don’t need to explain further as this is just about a different worldview (which has already been reflected by the overwhelming yes vote).
AiB and ICF
This proposal and our stance to this proposal has raised another side story: should AiB and ICF express their stance on a particular proposal? Why or why not?
Should they just keep silent? Does their silence effectively imply their stance, given they have delegated most of their atoms? Should they proactively override its many validators and vote abstain for some or all proposals?
Or should they proactively vote on proposals according to their interests and visions?
I think this is a good topic that the community need to discuss further given they have a combined 20% of initial supply and inevitable influence.
Conclusion
I and our team have spent quite some time on the matters relating to this proposal 23 which I think has helped ourselves, especially our newer staff, to understand more about not only Cosmos but many other aspects. Our translation effort has also helped the Chinese community to know what are going on.
But I am not interested to become a minority activist in Cosmos. I am not qualified to do so. I hope the community can start to spend more effort on governance as this is what decentralization needs.
If you have bonded your atom, you can disregard the stance of your staked validators and vote directly on the governance proposal on http://cosmos.bigdipper.live using your Ledger easily! Please follow below two-steps guidance:
Finally, Kung Hey Fat Choy!
