IOHK Video Project Catalyst: Implementing Cardano's Governance Model

Charles Hoskinson is a libertarian. A high proportion of the community is either libertarian or at least strongly in favour of free market solutions to social (and all) problems. Cardano as currently envisaged promotes equality only regarding access to financial infrastructure, which is consistent with libertarian principles – equality of opportunity, not outcome. Good luck with turning that around.

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I honestly don’t see the gap you mention @RobJF, and I would appreciate if you explained.
I think ‘isms’ tend to sidetrack what we are saying, as I am sure CH has his own quirks and interpretation even if he sees himself as a libertarian, nobody is “textbook”.

Where do you see egalitarianism in my suggestions? Or trying to intervene with the result?

Take Google for example -
“Page and Brin each own 25.9% and 25.1% of Alphabet’s voting power … because of Alphabet’s super-voting structure, which gives 10 votes per share of its Class B stock” (BI).

I don’t see how such mechanisms are outside the free market system (of course this is not something that translated 1:1 to Cardano). It’s about variety for me, giving our community diverse tools to shape it’s future - enhanced equality of opportunity imo, not the opposite.

You can view it as meritocratic and technocratic enhancements to the system, that the community can choose to use. Losing no options, only gaining, and decreeing almost nothing in advance.

Well I don’t know which gap you mean, I didn’t use that word.

Maybe I misunderstood your intentions. I thought you wanted to give some people more power and/or compensation than their stakeholding would justify, other than by the existing proposals for vote delegation. To me any such attempt would be opening a can of worms. Or maybe it’s just one holder one vote you want, but in that case how do you prevent people getting many votes by spreading their ada across many addresses? KYC? A person who once spent their coffee money on a handful of coins having an equal say with someone who put in their life savings and whose retirement is totally dependent on Cardano’s future? More cans of worms. I say keep it simple. Staking rewards and voting power both according to stake (with delegation). Community approved projects centrally funded. What else is really needed?

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A proper mechanism to prevent hostile takeovers by $$$.

I know it’s more complex, and hence can cause a “can of worms effect” as you say. And I’m definitely not the guy to deign the implementation here.

Right now we are talking about a loop made entirely of money. Once Cardano becomes mainstream, nothing stands in the way of $$$ other than price appreciation to “steal the project”, or even just **** it up maliciously.

Ownership should be a crucial ingredient of control (I think we agree on that), but it should not be the only one. That’s all I’m saying here.

Otherwise what would prevent all the old power structures from taking over Cardano once the market becomes attractive enough?

(You could say something like “we would never stand for it! The community will leave, CH will start a new chain! etc.”, but I think that would only be underestimating big $$$'s intelligence…)

That’s the beauty of the current scenario: the same principles apply to governance/voting as for protocol/staking, regarding defence against Sybil attacks. Many people know a lot more about this than me, though, so I won’t pursue the issue. It might be worth starting a new thread on this specific question.

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Hi there!

Let me present, in brief, a voting algorithm (I call it ManifoldVotingAlgorithm, or BalancedVotingPower). In order to avoid dilemmas, which in my view always act destructively, the algorithm makes a synthesis. It is based on three pillars and accordingly in three descrete, autonomous and dynamic partitions of the voting power of each community member.
More specifically, the triple quantity/quality vote comprises of:

  1. the aknowledgment of the democratic right of the individual, which leads to the rule “each ADA holder owns an equal V1 voting power”. Under this rule we are all equal. This V1 power is available to the member at any time for any issue he is interested to participate and vote.
  2. the aknowledgment that, the more ADA a member holds, the gratest the risks he takes, as well as the responsibility he feels and communicates, which leads to the rule “each ADA holder i, owns in addition a V2i voting power, V2i being proportional (not equal) to the amound of ADA he holds”. So, V2i could weight magnitutes of order higher than V1 (as much as x1000, x10000 or more, depending on the ADA distribution). This V2i power is also available to the member at any time for any issue he is interested to participate and vote.
  3. the aknowledgment that, the majority of community members will lack: a) expertise, b) knowlege of technical, financial or political issues, c) active involvement or incentives, which leads to the rule “each ADA holder can delegate an equal V3 voting power to one or more ambassadors”. These ambassadors may be entepreneures, technicians, stake pool operators or any other active member who attracts the attention, the approval and the appreciation of the community. This is the capital of the wisdom of the community, which we should allow to play a key role in the developement of the ecosystem. This V3 power is not available to the original owner at the time of voting, because it is delegated to the ambassadors for a predetermined period of time. As a consequence, there may exist ambassadors with significant voting power (order of magnitutes higher than V1).
    The system can be fully dynamic and with the introduction of key optimization parameters it can exibit adaptability to the evolution of the ecosystem, in order to efficiently and rightfully balance the plethora of different aims and aspirations. This ManifoldVoting System has the potential to give hope and value and sustainability to our ecosystem.

P.S. Cardano needs the humble many, which we may be not rich not well informed not active but that doesn’t mean we are dummies. And the opposite of hope is frustration. CF bravely introduced this concept of democracy in the community, in fact, attracting a lot of us for this specific quality. Do not ruin it!