As I review CIP1 I find myself confused to the structure of the writing moving a CIP from Proposed to Active, bear with me as I am just seeking some clarification on my observation.
According to the documentation provided in the proposal there are 3 types of CIP’s
-
A Standards Track CIP
-
A Process CIP
-
An Informational CIP
To move to Active status in the flow they must meet certain criteria:
“A proposed CIP may progress to active only when specific criteria reflecting real-world adoption have been met. These will be different for each CIP, depending on the nature of its proposed changes, which will be expanded on below. Evaluation of this status change should be objectively verifiable, and/or be discussed in the Cardano CIPs forum.”
Where I am looking for clarification is concerning #2, the description given for A Process CIP includes an explanation that they “they often require community consensus”:
“A Process CIP describes a process surrounding Cardano, or proposes a change to (or an event in) a process. Process CIPs are like Standards Track CIPs but apply to areas other than the Cardano protocol itself. They may propose an implementation, but not to Cardano’s codebase; they often require community consensus; unlike Informational CIPs, they are more than recommendations, and users are typically not free to ignore them. Examples include procedures, guidelines, changes to the decision-making process, and changes to the tools or environment used in Cardano development. Any meta-CIP is also considered a Process CIP.”
That said, if I expand on how a Process CIP is to be moved to Active I find “A Process CIP may change status from draft to active when it achieves rough consensus in the community”:
“The procedure for a Process CIP to progress from draft to active is slightly different: a Process CIP may change status from draft to active when it achieves rough consensus in the community. Such a proposal is said to have rough consensus if it has been open to discussion on the Cardano CIPs forum for at least one month, and no person maintains any unaddressed, substantiated objections to it. Addressed or obstructive objections may be ignored or overruled by general agreement that they have been sufficiently addressed, but clear reasoning must be given in such circumstances.”
Imho this is very heavily relying on the bitcoin BIP’s although Cardano is meant to improve the decentralized consensus experiment in the blockchain space, and yet the rough consensus of the BIP’s excludes any work done on Voltaire and the strength of liquid democracy that is meant to be designed to protect the ecosystem from unforeseen attacks, further it seems a well-built attack could come from not protecting all CIP’s by requiring Consensus from ADA Holders as a means of moving any CIP to an active state.
Is there a good reason that rough consensus is included as a means of community consensus and that an “objection may be ignored or overruled by general agreement” is included in the very foundation of the CIP process, I am just very confused on why we would not utilize the full benefit of the protocol for all of its development.
Hopefully, this area of this CIP1 can be improved on and unless clarified to the reasons that it appears to have a double standard that can be argued or debated from either point of consensus I do object to it.
Christopher Ray