CIP: Stake URI scheme for pools & delegation portfolios

We have taken a substantial step forward by refactoring, as originally invited by @SebastienGllmt, this CIP into the recently approved & merged CIP-0013. The resulting draft is here: rphair/CIPs/blob/master/CIP-0013/CIP-0013.md

… and will be discussed in new pull request here (the PR above has been closed, since it was intended for the submission of a brand new CIP):

Please continue to post here in the forum, adding your own motivation and support for the stake pool component of CIP-0013… and post any development considerations & questions about the timeline in Github thread. We will also be including a current summary of all the stake pool URI related efforts on our Cardano Development page:

An update: despite the green lights given to this proposal, there has been a relatively trivial change suggested which now has put Stake Pool Links in bureaucratic limbo. Please click here to find out what has happened:

https://github.com/cardano-foundation/CIPs/pull/61#issuecomment-782141931

We need one of these approaches to be selected ASAP and well before the Tuesday (23 February) meeting, so we can revise this PR accordingly or reconfirm its acceptance before that discussion . The community has been waiting for this for months and the delays are claiming a place in the public eye. If it gets hung up for another two weeks over some other PR representing a relatively trivial change, it’s going to be more generally perceived as a bureaucratic stalling tactic.

… and feel free to post opinions & questions here in this forum thread. This is a community issue, not just a question for developers, and we need more people’s informed opinions about how this part of the Cardano landscape should work going forward.

p.s. one or two of the questions about which URI format the community would prefer might be settled with a vote… so I’ve formulated both questions into a Twitter Poll without bias towards whatever my own favourite choice might be.

Note the vote selections can only be 25 characters, so I had to truncate the web+cardano: protocol, still leaving barely enough space for a three-character pool name):

To try to get a good population size I’ve set the time limit for 7 days, but will need some help with exposure so please also share it on your Twitter feeds.

So far @SebastienGllmt only several votes, heavily favouring the shorter link format without the explicit pool ticker tag… not to say that this will prove merit, but only check my assumptions about popular demand.

Exactly six months after submission, the Stake Pool URI component (for single pools only) has been merged into the existing CIP #13 for payment & address links. :partying_face:

We cannot say in which order these different types links will be implemented, or in which wallets, but we have finally published a standard that will support direct, promotional links to stake pools… as well as delegation portfolios when the multi-pool component can be added. :nerd_face:

2 Likes

Wonderful. I am starting a discussion on making tickers unique. It seems that everywhere, a unique ticker or “ownership” of a ticker is becoming more important. Even in this CIP, it is recognized that a tickers uniqueness is important.

2 Likes

Hi @COSDpool,

this sounds like good news! Great work :clap:! Does this mean that with a link like this: web+cardano://stake?POOL-TICKER delegators could directly stake to the nominated pool? How will the link work? Will it open the delegation menu of a wallet like Daedalus?

Putting delegation links in promotional material (tweets, websites, guides, videos) for individual pools would be a great way for small pools to attract delegation! This way we could avoid relying on ranking systems that always leave us at the bottom!

As a small operator I think this would be a game changer :video_game: Do you know when this will be implemented? Has this been promoted by IOG Marketing (eg @benohanlon or @IOHK_Tim)?

All the best,

A

2 Likes

yes @Adrem that’s the first use that will be supported by the wallets. Where space is not an issue, and as required to remove ambiguities between pools and within multi pool collectives, you can also put the long hexadecimal pool ID instead of the pool ticker. This much is part of the currently posted specification for CIP-13 which we finally got approved 2+ weeks ago:

You surely have got the idea of how the links could be used, as well as the urgency of this use case. You will have ask @benohanlon or @IOHK_Tim why this information wasn’t considered relevant to the SPO marketing channels, where I have never seen this CIP mentioned: either as any of its drafts were posted or even after the CIP was officially merged on 30 March.

This forum is full of links where I advised them & other representatives of the pending CIP and directly asked them to promote it with the developers. Again, these requests weren’t acknowledged, nor was there any support coming from Marketing in either the relevant discussions on Github or the CIP editors meeting where of course IOG is well represented.

I also sent each relevant agent at IOG private messages at key intervals along the way as this proposal was developed. The response every time was generally something like “Sure, we’ll pass it on” without anything happening as a result. So as far as I can tell, IOG Marketing has chosen, or been told, not to engage about this proposal… though I expect that could be changed by popular demand.

2 Likes

Hi @COSDpool,

thank you for the prompt reply. In relation to the above quote: can you please explain what you mean by that, and perhaps offer an example of “space issues”?

I have read the information you linked and are even more convinced that this would be an excellent arrow :bow_and_arrow: to the quivers of small SPOs.

I know quite a few people (for example @kaverne) that have started with great enthusiasm, are running good setups and working hard to attract new delegation. Others, like @Alexd1985 have been super active and helpful to other SPOs and delegators. Many of the small pools are driven by incredible passion :muscle: and causes :heart:, but are struggling to gain the attention they need because the ranking systems in leading software wallets “clump” them all together at the bottom rank :-1:.

Although I am in no position to comment as to why this CIP has gone under radar :satellite: for marketing (I suspect there are many talking points that can be used in its stead), I agree entirely that if enough SPOs (especially small and new ones) consider this of interest, it will become of interest.

Cheers,

A

3 Likes

Contexts in which the link occupies space in the readable text… i.e. the link to the unambiguous pool:

web+cardano://stake?c94e6fe1123bf111b77b57994bcd836af8ba2b3aa72cfcefbec2d3d4

… takes up quite a bit more space than the link to the ticker:

web+cardano://stake?COSD

It’s worth a note for the record that Twitter won’t accept links to a non-standard protocol like web+cardano: (or bitcoin:, or magnet:). If you have control over a web server you could get around that by putting a redirect from an HTTP URL to your stake pool URI in your .htaccess file or equivalent.

1 Like

This is probably a good thing in this case: I can imagine how people would just spam “delegate to me” links on Twitter all day :rofl:

indeed, I posted in these months that I haven’t posted in my whole life :))

1 Like

@Alexd1985 this proposal is going to help the small pools greatly. You have a good following: push the CIP :pray:

2 Likes

When trying to engage other SPOs as well as the Cardano establishment about this standard on behalf of the needs of small pools, don’t forget that it must eventually support multiple pools as described here (this is a proposed extension, not included in CIP-13 yet):

… a further advantage for small pools, because community-organised (or crowdsourced) delegation portfolio links will be able to attract delegation to groups of small pools without forcing users or advocates to choose one small pool over another.

We might also use this complementary JSON multi-pool standard to build a delegation portfolio for all small pools (with some performance criteria) because the size of the group (and the precision of assigned delegation) might exceed the capabilities of the URI portfolio links which are intended for brevity & simplicity:

1 Like

For multipools, I think it would be their burden to make sure the pool link is correct to the pool they actually want to funnel people into and the pool hash would be the method they want to use.

Now that the multi-pool link scheme has had a promising submission as an extension to this CIP, the fundamental (single pool) links have now been officially submitted in Daedalus:

As noted in the initial comments on the Github issue, it’s now 3 years since stake pool links have been called for. So let me please remind everyone (SPOs and discriminating delegators) that we can document these standards, and prove that these features will be workable and desirable, but they will never be implemented by developers unless people propagate these messages and call for them publicly, e.g.:

1 Like

I would just like to add my support for this idea. I think the issue being addressed here is very important to the project. I think anything and everything should be considered in vigilantly working to decentralize the project.

3 Likes

Welcome to the forum @4GOOD, if you are running a twitter account for your pool, please promote this #CIP to your community :point_up:

Cheers,

A

1 Like

We can now finally conclude this thread because the CIP itself has been merged, with the full multi-pool capability described above in the original posting nearly a year ago:

Now all that remains is to include this now-standardised feature in the most stake-centralising wallet in our ecosystem: Daedalus. SPOs and concerned delegators, please post here in hope that the Daedalus developers will soon support this CIP: