Idea for Proposing a Cardano Improvement Proposal

That governance is about operation of the Cardano ecosystem itself – protocol parameters, protocol changes, distribution of the treasury funds, operation of Catalyst, …

The ADA used by IOG and CF for their delegation programs are a totally different beast. They were given to them in the very beginning and are now owned by them. Their boards can freely decide what to do with them and that is not subject to community governance.

What you are proposing ought to be a proposal to the boards of IOG and CF, not to the Cardano community as a whole.

4 Likes

Hi @HeptaSean, please give sources so these rules may be included in the discussion.

For what exactly?

2 Likes

Hi,

I need to amend the idea to also include the employees of EMURGO (https://emurgo.vc/)

In addition to the numerous reasons already given why this imposition of bureaucracy would be undesirable, and why it could not be implemented as a CIP in any case, there’d be the additional threat of increased regulatory exposure (specifically. individuals’ decisions influencing company investment plans) which schemes like this would make even worse :worried:

1 Like

Hi @HeptaSean,

Thank you very much for taking the time and making the effort to gather resources describing current IOG, CF and Emurgo delegation funding models. The information is very helpful. I will review the links carefully.

Submitting the CIP would give the people responsible for the documents that you have cited an opportunity to respond to the idea.

CIPs are supposed to be about “the Cardano network, its processes, or environment”... Seems nobody has written explicitly that this does not include deciding about the wallets of specific entities.

I would propose that the idea is about the Cardano network, processes and environment pertaining to governance.

The CIP process seems to be written broadly enough to invite rather than exclude ideas.

Partly, as one possible outcome, I wonder whether the CIP process may change as a result of the conversation that I have started. The CIP process changing in response to my idea would be a very, very sad day for Cardano, I believe. For example, in terms of morale, if the CIP process changes to stop such an idea from being proposed, then members of the community may conclude that IOG, the Cardano Foundation and Emurgo have little confidence in the community’s processes for developing consensus. Rough consensus in the community is required for a CIP to become active. Also, employees may conclude that their employer has little confidence in their abilities to work responsibly. I believe in the capability of IOG, Cardano Foundation and Emurgo employees to act responsibly and make decisions in the best interests of Cardano. After all, without IOG, Cardano Foundation, Emurgo and their respective employees, there would be no Cardano for the us in the community to appreciate.

The CIP process draws heavily on Bitcoin’s BIP process (bips/bip-0002.mediawiki at master · bitcoin/bips · GitHub) so I believe that history is on my side.

I appreciate your critical feedback. I believe that enough of a question exists related to what may be a very important topic of conversation to at least seek clarification from CIP Editors, which would require submitting the CIP.

Hi @COSDpool

individuals’ decisions influencing company investment plans

You seem angry and afraid. Take a breath. I can understand your fear if I consider a worst-case scenario in an implementation of the idea where employees are given discretion over too much ADA. I agree that any such initiative would need to be carefully balanced. As I already said previously today, I believe in the potential of IOG, Cardano Foundation, Emurgo and their respective employees.

I will review the link that you posted about Ethereum after the merge. Taken at face value however, I am concerned about engaging in long open-ended discussions at the current phase of the idea, considering that the article seems not to focus directly on Cardano.

I am open to questions about the idea.

I would also encourage talking with each other about the idea.

I dont think there is anything particularly wrong with the curent process. My only 2 cents would be that the whole point to this is to decentralise the network and support small SPOs.

I believe this is better done by delegating the minimum ADA needed to mint blocks to as many SPOs as possible. The aim should be to get as many SPOs into a profitable existance as possible. The current CF delegation could be carved up substantially to support more SPOs.

Getting more SPOs profitable would mean these SPOs can cover their overheads and it creates a more sustainable setup long term. The more SPOs, the better our decenralisation.

Thoughts?

The reason the @cf-team gave me for not doing this is that they currently, as arranged by the protocol itself, effectively pay almost the entire 340 ada fixed fee for each of the pools they delegate to. I then realised this is because the CF delegation for each pool is generally far greater than the pledge + the rest of the delegated stake: especially so for the small pools.

More simply put: if the CF doubled the number of delegated pools it would double their fees… perhaps more, since a larger delegation would ideally support even smaller pools whose proportion of CF delegation would be even larger.

You could say this was “worth it” if you could prove that each of the extended set of delegation winners was providing a service to the Cardano Foundation worth 340 ada every 5 days or accomplishing goals to serve the Cardano community that were of equivalent value so much that the CF felt obligated to pay this fee out of their own funds. :face_with_monocle:

The trouble is that I do not really understand how existing processes work within the IOG and CF and what controls they have in place for operational risk management. I am not sure how transparent this is but my understanding is that it could be a lot more transparent. Taking this to the next level where employees are involved in the delegation would possibly make the process more complicated while not necessarily solving existing areas of concern. Respect will always be gained by the community the more IOG and the CF are transparent about their delegations. Right now there are abundant examples of delegation that do not appear to make sense - multiple pools getting multiple delegations, very large pools getting delegation, pools getting repeated delegation and pools with little track history or evidence as to why the delegation is given. IOG and the CF may have a well thought out compliance program in place but what worries me is that this is often overlooked in the crypto industry. So I guess in a long winded kind of way I doubt that both organisations would have the resources, motivation or time allocation to look into something like this.

Hi GNP1,

By necessity, the CIP would create a mandate for IOG, CF and Emurgo to conduct the necessary research transparently enough for the community eventually to be able to vote in support of implementing the CIP idea.

Respect will always be gained by the community the more IOG, CF and Emurgo are transparent about their delegations.

I agree completely. A goal of the CIP would be the compel IOG, CF and Emurgo to be as transparent as possible with the community regarding how delegation decisions may be made, within established legal limitations related to freedom of information and privacy.

The goal of the CIP would be to propose a DAO consistent with the solutions for DAO governance as proposed by Sasha Ivanov in Waves founder: DAOs will never work without fixing governance for example.

The CIP that I intend to propose may be critical for the Cardano roadmap, specifically related to the pending Voltaire era Voltaire - Cardano Roadmap

Also, please see Announcing the stake pools chosen for October 2022 - #38 by ParadoxicalSphere

CHG

1 Like

Here are a couple of paragraphs excerpted from the draft related to the potential CIP so far. I post the snippets in the hopes that you may be reassured that the CIP may be successful in producing change:

The current draft CIP offers a proposal emerging from the Cardano community in the form of a process change empowering IOG, Cardano Foundation and EMURGO employees with discretionary (t)ADA to delegate to stake pools in the production environment as well as any and all testnet environments. In other words, the process change would make (t)ADA available to each IOG, Cardano Foundation and EMURGO employee for delegation to one or more stake pools based on the judgement of the individual employee. The process change aims to increase decentralization, transparency and agility of delegations to stake pools and related decisions that IOG, the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO may make.

To find a balance that may help vitalize employees as well as the SPO and wider Cardano communities without introducing risks to the security of Cardano networks or any other potential forms of instability, analysis, planning, elicitation, management and communication are needed from IOG, the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO to gain knowledge in support of such an initiative for implementation internally within the respective organizations in order to complete a proposal capable of garnering sufficient community understanding and consensus so that the status of the current CIP may change toward Active.

CHG

Hi,

I am pleased to be able to report further positive progress in relation to developing the idea:

This is not the first time in this thread I’ve wished there were a “thumbs-down” button on Discourse. :face_with_spiral_eyes:

3 Likes

image

If you want my honest opinion it sounds like you are an IOG or CF insider who wants the IOG or CF organization to gift you with ADA. Unfortunately, the Cardano Improvement Proposal process does not have spending authority for the IOG or CF wallets. CIP has no ADA for you! You need to go to your boss at IOG/CF, ask your boss to send your wallet the ADA you desire, and then you do what you desire. Sensational FTX-fear tactics are not going to get your bosses at CF/IOG to gift you ADA.

2 Likes

No, probably not. They really only want to give the decision power about delegations to employees:

Whyever …

That was already tried to be explained multiple times in this thread in excruciating detail. But it seems to not have been understood.

Maybe, the irony that the OP splained the Dunning-Kruger effect to the IOG Discord just recently amuses some of the readers as much as me.

Sorry, all just personal opinion, but I can also take only so much before becoming snarky.

3 Likes

I dont support this idea.

I think SPOs (including myself with two IOG delegations) need to figure out how maintain their operations without assistance or subsidies at all. Cardano needs healthy self-sustaining valdators worldwide. This probably means diversified business operations - like my new project https://testnetcoins.io - time to get creative and fly solo! Stake your ADA to Santo and to TEST if you want help Cardano testnets. Just my 2 cents for whatever its worth

1 Like

Hi @santonode

Thanks for taking the time to review my idea and share your thoughts.

Congratulations on your past IOG delegations.

Clearly you have invested a great deal of time, energy and creativity in TestnetCoins. I hope that the project brings you continued success within the Cardano ecosystem, and that “looking out for number one” brings you happiness.

Reading the Web site:

TestnetCoins introduces new mainnet tokens that will provide rewards for community Testers and SPOs. These new reward tokens will be given for “Proof of Participation” to create an enhanced incentive.

In greater detail, I am wondering how TestnetCoins plans to make decisions related to distributing the new reward tokens, as well as who may be empowered to make such decisions.

With decentralization arguably being the future of governance (for example, see DAOs will never work without fixing governance and Voltaire era), my proposal aims to increase decentralization, transparency and agility of delegations to stake pools and related decisions that IO, the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO may make.

FYI for participants (I’m posting this same comment in 3 somewhat related threads): In part due to the huge discussion around the draft CIP-1694 we’ve created a couple of channels to discuss Governance issues. Both channels linked here will also be suited to general considerations of Governance which may be off-topic to the GitHub discussion and/or the CIP process itself:

2 Likes