Feb 22, 2024 | Voltaire era: Parameter committee intermediate state

Governance Parameters Committee Updates
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The Parameter Committee (interim state) meets on a tri-weekly basis. It discusses all parameters relating to the Cardano protocol including network, technical, economic and governance parameters, providing technical advice and recommendations on updatable parameter settings.

Updated list of the Members (interim state):

Chairs:
Chair: Kevin Hammond
Vice- chair: Alex Moser
Vice- chair: Vijay Bhuvangiri

Advisory Group Heads:
Network group: Neil Davies
Technical group: Markus Gufler
Economic group: Samuel Leathers
Governance group: Adam Rusch

Advisory Group Members:
Network group: Karl Knutson, Matthias Sieber, Marcin Szamotulski
Technical group: Ruslan Dudin, Michael Peyton Jones, Ashish Prajapati
Economic group: Sergio Sanchez, Philip Lazos, Giovanni Gargiulo, Sheng-Nan Li
Governance group: Oscar West, Riley Kilgore, Nicolas Cerny

Other:
Communications: Tommy Kammerer, Matthew Capps
Domain experts: Martin Lang, Andrew Westberg
Observers: Pi Lanningham
Secretary: Joaquín López

Remit

The purpose of the Parameter Committee is to provide technical advice and recommendations relating to the updatable protocol parameters, taking into account economic, security, network and other technical considerations, as appropriate to protect the long term sustainability of the Cardano blockchain.

Agenda and Updates:

Agenda

  • Update on PCP requests
  • Report on initial parameter settings
  • PCP002 - final recommendation
  • Update on Parameter Guardrails
  • Any Other Business

Updates

  • The meeting began with an introduction and the decision to select PCP_max_tx_ex_mem_PiLanningham as PCP-003 and work on it once the Committee finishes the work on PCP-002. Pi Lanningham presented on the topic of this Parameter Change Proposal, addressing the user experience on the Cardano blockchain related to the proposal and solutions to improve it. He advocated for increasing memory units and execution limits, citing potential benefits for dApps and minimal impact on stake pool operators’ machine requirements. The committee engaged in a detailed discussion about the correlation between memory units and CPU cost, emphasizing the need to consider both CPU and memory limits.

  • The meeting also discussed the scope of this PCP request and the allocation of effort of the working groups. There was a consensus to involve the technical and network groups in PCP-003, given the implications of the proposed changes. The potential impact on governance was also considered.

  • The meeting also touched on the other PCP requests. With the upcoming PCP-003 selected, it was decided to defer the other extant PCP applications as per the PCP process. The deferral of extant PCPs after a given triage and selection period provides a period for the authors to continue to refine their message, to accentuate the importance of the PCP for the next period, and to assess its ongoing relevance given developments (including the results of active PCPs) in the interim. Committee members emphasized the importance of addressing PCP requests with clarity and precision, highlighting the efforts to articulate good communications with the community.

  • The meeting continued with discussions with the Governance Group on recommendations for governance parameters, with a link to the document with their recommendation and inviting the other committee members to contribute with some comments.

  • The Committee members and the working groups will continue working on PCP-002 and will follow up in the next meeting.

  • The Parameter Guardrails have been reviewed by the Parameters Committee members and their inputs have been incorporated.

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Thanks for having me, it was great presenting my proposal and fielding questions.

My only ask is that the engagement with the technical and network groups be done publicly, or at least the methodology they used to evaluate things shared and communicated clearly.

It’s important that we the broader developer community develop the skills, resources, and methodology to evaluate these things independently of IOG. If there is some secret sauce (a bench marking framework, guidelines around specific metrics and thresholds, etc.) that only IOG has or knows, then that represents a mild risk to Cardano.

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When can the guardrails docoment be released?

What is the recommendation from the group on PCP-002?

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To clarify Jeremy, regarding PCP-002 results

  1. the agenda represents intentions going into the meeting
  2. the updates show what happened at the meeting

So that note in the updates that work on PCP-002 will continue shows that members tasked with the analysis for PCP-002 needed more time than expected.

@Joaquin let me know if I’m mischaracterizing that at all.

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Yes, sorry, I had misread it as PCP-002 having a recommendation at the last meeting but it was only on the agenda for a final recommendation.

It would be good to be able to see more detail in the notes about the deliberations, rather than just generic comments. It is very hard to gauge progress from the comments.

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