Look, I get it. The parameter committee are simply pawns.
It is amazing how much bureaucracy has been grown in order to manage this one parameter change (minPoolCost). A parameter that is not even part of the Ouroboros design and whose value was plucked from thin air.
The mandatory minPoolCost parameter effectively creates an anti-competitive regulation which small stake pool operators have been winging about for over 2 years (at least those that understand the effects properly).
- @Michael.Liesenfelt’s CIP-0050 was developed to address this minPoolCost problem and other things.
- IOG’s quant @Colin_Edwards initiated this blog post suggesting minPoolCost be changed to 30.
Both these things occurred 1.5 years ago, and there have been numerous discussions on this forum, and now over 3months ago an on-chain vote got majority support to halve minPoolCost.
This is just a festering sore now. It is getting ridiculous.
Perhaps it is getting more interesting to think about: Why? Who benefits? What relationships?
The really sad thing is that there are now products like optim.finance ISPO bonds where stake pool operators are borrowing 250K Ada at 6.5% interest in a desperate attempt to grow their pools, but this is not enough. Even 1 million Ada pledge is not enough to overcome the 340 Ada minPoolCost disincentive for delegators.
I have pledged over 3 million Ada for my stake pool, but I still have this message to potential delegators on my website:
I do not recommend you stake with Terminada pool yet because the protocol does not allow setting the fixed fee any lower than 340 Ada.
With a fixed fee of 340 Ada you will lose too much of your rewards to fees until the pool size is over 10 million Ada.