CF needs to completely retract this ill-conceived strategy particularly as it relates to how the protocol promotes decentralisation. There is literally no reason for CF to delegate to community pools except to promote decentralisation.
Running a pool is a completely separate action from building tools. If CF wants to promote Cardano “tool builders” then they should take some of their money and put it in a separate fund that invests in “tool builders”.
In spite of the eloquent arguments by @HeptaSean in his post above, the fact that the current implementation of the protocol itself does not fully enforce the policy that the K parameter embodies does not mean that we should abandon it’s intention.
The simple fact is that the Cardano design architects have this notion that the network should gravitate towards a certain number of single owner saturated pools. This concept is embodied in the K parameter. The Cardano network has a number of options for how it can achieve this policy objective:
- The protocol design can have economic incentives that reward pools working towards achieving the targeted number of saturated single owner pools.
- The protocol design can have economic dis-incentives that penalise pools seeking less than, or even more than, the targeted number of saturated single owner pools.
- The community can use social consensus through social pressure or even building additional incentives that work on top of the main protocol. An example of this latter method would be to put pressure on wallet providers to use particular ordering algorithms when listing delegation options which preference single owner pools.
Seriously CF: Take a hard look at what you are signalling to the community through your words. Think before you write. Walk back this statement in relation to operators running multiple pools not saturated by their own pledge. If you want to incentivise people to build tools then create a separate fund and pay these people for the work that they do. Your current position, which blurs the incentives for decentralisation with the incentives for building tools for the network, is just messed up.