Today, a new application form for the next Cardano Foundation delegation round, January 2023, opens. You should already be able to access the form here Delegation Application Form. We have simplified the form considerably and only request essential information. The form will stay open until the first week of January 2023. Please visit Cardano Foundation's New Delegation Methodology: Supporting the Architects of the Future for further details on the strategy itself.
Just a suggestion, if you ask the poolâs id only in hex or bech32, itâs possible to deduct the other one and the poolâs name and the poolâs ticker. No need to ask for all four imhoâŠ
A valid point, thank you, and of course, we know some information is redundant. At the moment, different people have to do different things with the results and querying this seemingly redundant information directly helps this process but is clearly not optimal from a user experience side.
(At least this way we could already find some errors where the Bech ID does not match the Hex ID or a ticker was not unique, so there are also advantages)
Ok - I know that this may have been suggested before but I really think the CF has to consider this. Rather than giving 45 pools 14.6M in stake why donât you try just the once and give 45*14.6 = 657 pools 1M in delegation. I say this for the following reasons and PLEASE READ EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM:
There are many pools that have been here since day 1 and worked hard but yet are never likely to receive any support despite providing essential infrastructure to the ecosystem while incurring not insignificant costs to themselves in time and money. Surely these pools deserve some kind of recognition over new pools entering the system with no track record.
Yes - most will not be successful as 1M ADA will not guarantee blocks but it will at least provide some blocks each month which gives them some resemblance of a chance to be able to work and build upon their pool
It will allow those pools that have been dedicated to the Cardano project hope of attracting delegators while right now thousands of pools are running the infrastructure with no hope of returns
The current systems lacks transparency and there have been questionable delegations in the past
Some pools that have been given the delegation make very little effort in continuing to run a quality pool once the delegation is withdrawn
Finally it would allow for a more transparent and fairer system with those pools that have the good infrastructure and knowledge to run and maintain a healthy pool the chance to build and develop a sustainable pool through their own hard work rather than a few being given a free ride.
I think this does warrant discussion as there are far too many pools out there that have been doing this for a long time and appear to be totally ignored with regards to their efforts. Yes this should count as no project can be successful without recognising the community as a whole and not a select minority. We need to welcome challenge and discussion and get rid of the mentality that everything in with Cardano Stakepool operation is great and examine the problems with how the system is turning out. Finally getting delegation should not be dependant upon âtowing the lineâ and being afraid to question the progress and ideals set by the various technical and marketing teams.
The essential reason they cannot even close to this number is given here (TL;DR they are completely bound by the currently set 340 ada minimum pool fixed fee):
Thanks - yes that is probably one of the reasons and I doubt that they would ever really consider my suggestion based on the delegation history. The above suggestion is very much about the frustration that thousands of small pools put up with when they finally wake up to the reality that small pools are really not that important to the eco system based on the current design.
Totally agree and something that is obviously avoided during any technical or community discussions. Why canât IOG and or the CF just admit that thousands of pools does not work in with their plan or the current model and stop making enthusiastic people waste their time and money on a theoretical decentralised system that still requires a degree of centralisation by those that have most influence - there I said it - it wonât make me popular but the way crypto is going in recent months there needs to be a lot more transparency and difficult discussions and not just endless open praise for a project that does have challenges going forward.
I donât disagree: but for the record, the quote you attributed to me above was to was actually from @GrahamsNumberPlus1.
To try to focus to the original topic & the earlier response I made within it: that âelephantâ has been in the room long enough that people are putting rugs and furniture on top of it. All the Reward Sharing Scheme revision proposals I have followed and that the community has advocated for in the last couple of years are still pending an engagement process from IOG which has never been offered outside of some still-undocumented conclave.
Certainly it affects community delegation efforts, especially from the Cardano Foundation, but there is little they can do while IOG keeps the Proof-of-Stake system arranged according to its original design parameters which were determined to be flawed very early in this two-year discussion. And when those parameters finally are rearranged, the altered variables of minimum fixed fees, minium variable fees, and K will likely change the CF delegation methods as a matter of course (cc: @adatainment).
People expressing an interest in setting up a stake pool nearly always do get told in one of the first messages that they will need a lot of stake for it to make sense and be profitable. That you need stake in a proof of stake system is somehow tautologic. And that the target size is k=500 pools and not 3000 is also hardly a secret.
There are proposals to make it a bit better for medium small pools â remove the minimum fixed fee, change the logic of pledge to determine individual saturation limits (which would make it matter for pools of all sizes), ⊠But those proposals will not help the really small pools. You will (hopefully) always need a considerable amount of stake to participate in block production. It is the very idea of proof of stake.
(It is by the way not that much better in proof of work or any other proof of âŠ: If the chain is successful enough the proof of ⊠resource will always be scarce and you need a considerable investment to get enough of it to be relevant/profitable.)
It is not a precondition of decentralisation that everybody can start a pool with no pledge and no stake and hope to run profitable. Maybe even the contrary: If that would work, it would open the system for sybil attacks. The system is still decentralised even if all those pools that will never have a chance of producing a block cease operation.
The CF and IOG delegations should always be a non-essential part of the ecosystem, giving some recognition to pools with outstanding contributions. Distributing them randomly without vetting the pools would again open the system for sybil attacks, since you cannot automatically distinguish small pools from instances created by a large multi-pool operation.
What maybe would work if the minimum fixed fee should be gone one day, is that they define their guideline for outstanding, vet all the candidates, and distribute the delegation among all that qualify without the final random draw to reduce to a predetermined number of pools.
yes, and according to whatâs already been posted, that would more than quadruple the cost in fees that the Cardano Foundation is paying out currently.
Put differently (as I already posted in the other thread), you would have to argue that those 200 pools were all doing something to justify the CF paying them out of pocket for something of corresponding value (at 340 ada per epoch per pool) that supported their own mission of promoting Cardano and/or provided some service to the Cardano Foundation directly.
I agree with the fact that it should be made more clear that starting a stake pool wonât be an easy ride and that youâll little chance of success if you arenât sure of at least a couple of hundred thousands of ADA in delegation (from yourself and/or friends). For myself, I only started a stake pool because I own it together with a friend who had enough ADA to be survivable with our own holdings alone. I did some calculations beforehand and it was from the beginning very clear for me that I wouldnât start the pool with my own holdings alone, even when Iâve got all the technical knowledge I need to run the pool.
I donât agree that the decentralisation of the system is only theoretical. Decentralisation doesnât mean as many small pools as possible. It, very simplified, means enough pools run by enough different actors, which I think is still the case. That doesnât mean that it canât be better and more decentralised, but it also doesnât mean that every small pool should be sustainable. Or else, delegation wouldnât exist and everyone should run their own poolâŠ
Just a small clarification: Of course, CF is not paying in the sense that they have less ADA than before, that they make a net negative. They are âonlyâ paying in reduced rewards.
and yet effectively it is âpaying outâ because a less responsible or accountable authority could simply put those delegation funds into a collection of private pools and keep all those fixed epoch fees for themselves.
