Hi @waldmops!
There are some aspects of your post which I share and I want to start with those:
- There are more pools than needed and many of those will not survive
- Some of them promote false statement to make there pools look more attractive. Or let’s rather say less disattractive. E.g. “Every pool gives you 5% on the long term, this is not true based on the currently too high fixes cost”. This is not good for the ecosystem because it harms the overall reputation.
That being said I’m one of the operators which is in your opinion just not necessary. I’m running a small pool started in Feb 2021. I put up a marketing campaign where I just give money to my delegators from my own pocket. Also I even had a promotion which was arguing with luck. Actually this was connected with my campaign and meant that you get your rewards in my pool no matter what the lottery says. But if the lottery also one time selects my pool to mint a block the rewards will be above avery which then would be "even luckier.
Let me explain why I’m doing this:
- As you mentioned there are way too much pools
- Mine will not survive if I cannot differentiate from other pools
- And I need to mint a first block to get even interesting for delegation
- So i set up my campaign were I just pay my own money to delegators to overcome the initial hurdle.
- The initial hurdle is that when you start a pool you don’t get delegation because you have no delegation.
I know that your opinion on that is that I waste my money with that. The pool is potentially still not sustainable. We will see that. If you think all the pools will go away anyways. Just be happy that I spend my money to delegators which will sooner or later delegate to your pool with a bigger wallet including my marketing budget.
But in my opinion I do have a chance. Also with a <100k Pledge. Currently a 1 mio pledge just returns a 0,04% better ROA for the delegators. So this is not relevant compared to having enough delegation. So I feel like being able to overcome that hurdle if I’m running my pool professional. This means for me in a transparent way. With a good and fair communication to my delegators. With a proper mission and a solid technical setup.
Of course one can say now why all that hassle? A pool is just a pool and needs to generate rewards. But actually I think that operators are generating a lot of attention for Cardano. This is kind of free marketing.
And we are in a free market here. It is natural that you (as a well saturated multi pool operator) want to keep your delegation and don’t want to loose it to new joiners. This is the case in any industry and not always the big ones win. Anyways it’s hard to “disrupt” this market since all need to play the same rules defined by the network parameters.
To come to the point of stopping Delegation. I think that my limited pledge could be irrelevant if my pool gains enough (min 3-5 mio) delegation. Delegation in my scenario would allow my delegators to select my pool (as a to my believe “professional” pool based on my definition above) also based on the potential rewards that may be earned from it and not only because of my unsustainable marketing activity. This would increase my chance to get sustainable drastically.
In my opinion the Delegation makes sense because it increases the chance of a better distribution of pools. Specifically in terms of geography, but also in purpose. Actually I think the Delegation approach is the only reason why a delegator may consider “What is best for the network”. Instead everyone could just host in the same central cheapest location. Also the delegation is not causing the new pool to be created. I think most of the new joiners a beliefing that it is easy money before starting the pool not even knowing about the delegation.
Regarding your proposal of changing the delegation. I think that this process needs to get more transparent. I should not feel like a lottery. I want to be rewarded if I do things right, not for being lucky. There should be some feedback. Without feedback nobody can improve.
Finally I know that you will be arguing that a pool will require to run with a bigger pledge. Unfortunately entering the game late increased the difficulty. There is cooperations as an approach to that but at the moment it feels not right to me to “run the pool in the name of someone with money”. This is not the kind of incentivation which makes it sustainable as well. It’s no fun if you cannot get something out of it at the end.
Maybe my opinion now was a little to exhaustive to be read to the end. But honestly some of your statements got my attention in a negative way.