Greetings. I wrote a very long thread on X going through most items on every part of the proposed budget one-by-one. Instead of copy->pasting several dozen posts over here, I will simply post the links so that it can be referenced here as well as on that site.
I have it broken up into three parts:
Part 2 (Second half of budget)
Part 3 (Things not in budget and general thoughts)
Feel free to discuss here if you prefer and I will try my best to respond.
Hi @Cerkoryn, I think your analysis is great and highlights some point that are important.
I want to reiterate your final thought on the first thread on Midgard. I also think Midgard sounds great, but I think that the addition as it is currently formulated in the Budget is wrong. The ROI says
Improving scalability and economic sustainability of Cardano. This represents a significant source of fee revenue for the Cardano L1. Midgard does not have independent economic security. Instead it maximally inherits the security of Cardano.
But note that an L2 is there for cheaper transaction fees and occasionally commits the state of the L2 to the L1. And only in the case of malicious behavior, a fraud proof is executed on L1. The statement of “significant source of fee revenue” thus seems like an exaggeration!
This does not mean that there is no value in this work stream, just that the current ROI sounds like a misleading statement to get funding.
Thomas from the Dutch Drep