Is Cardano Foundation’s Delegation Methodology working well?

As per the CF statement:
“ Going forward re-delegation shall occur approximately every three epochs. Should an epoch end on a weekend, re-delegation shall be completed the following week.”

Yet we see the foundation not living up to their promise, based on their publicly announced statement.

Currently re-delegation is two epochs overdue, which is causing others on Twitter to start questioning CF’s internal procedures.

As much as I would like to believe that CF is doing all they can to ensure procedures are being honored and respected, I can’t ignore the community’s request for answers.

For this reason we would like to invite @Nathan_Kaiser to provide a clear answer to what’s causing this delay.

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Here’s the link to Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/tobiasfancee/status/1327843252414930950?s=21

cc
@Andy_Hendrikx
@Katsumoto
@TobiasFancee
@Marin

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I think the k=500 increase may have something to do with it?

The first delegation lasted for 4 epochs too. So they’ve been off track since the beginning.

Sorry, there will be an announcement soon. It is really mostly about adjusting the delegation strategy because of the upcoming k parameter increase in December.

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Thank you very much Tommy
Always appriciated

I appreciate that everyone is coming up with excuses why the foundation didn’t do what they said they were going to do but the list is 2 weeks late (or any information on why it is 2 weeks late)… I think the parameter announcement change happened less then 2 weeks ago…

IDK… It sucks to just complain but it seems to always be that the foundation is always apologizing for something they didn’t do and then saying they won’t do it again… rinse and repeat

This is a serious question… Is there just to much work for you all at the foundation that you can’t keep up with these things?

Why is it hard to either

  1. post a list every 3 epochs or
  2. post a quick remark about why you can’t post a list?

A quick message like, “some things are changing so we have to wait a few days to post the new list”, would work perfectly and just took me like 10 seconds to do…

I am really starting to resent having to write these messages - can’t you just do what you say you are going to do please…

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It looks to me that this is mainly a communication issue where the foundation failed to manage SPOs’ expectations. We all know about the updated k parameter and aware that things change quite quickly in this space. Having said that, over communication would be a preferred choice especially when things did not go as planned in spite of the schedule given.

More importantly, imho, it would be great if the SPO community can have a single point of contact on such a high-impact initiative like this so we have someone who ensure that the communication will be there. Are you the person in charge for this project, Tommy?

Please understand that for security reasons we can not disclose who is in charge and by what process the funds of the Cardano Foundation are handled. But, it should be clear to everyone in this space that such amounts cannot be controlled by one person alone. So delegating is always a bit more complicated for us than starting Daedalus and selecting different pools.

We learned about the change of k on the same day as everyone else. Our strategy is to find a solution to adapt delegating so that pools are not saturated with our current 64M packages. Therefore we look in all directions, and what would help us a lot is the ability to a one-to-many delegation.

Please bear with us, we will find a way to support as many pools as possible in the medium term. Follow this thread for the official announcements:

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And therefore please consider this proposal as part of that goal, because with wallets supporting multi-pool delegation links it would be easier and less error-prone to distribute delegations between different wallet computers, different users, and different work locations, with far less manual effort:

Though many SPO’s have expressed interest in this, we don’t appear to have enough institutional backing to place this effort firmly on the development schedule. The use case above is only one way in which this proposal would suit the short and long term efforts of the Cardano sponsoring agencies. Perhaps with the support of the Cardano Foundation this proposed feature would be expedited.

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Tommy, many thanks for your prompt reply.

Sorry, in my context, “in charge” here I meant the person who can be the single point of contact a.k.a. merely a messenger/communicator/representative for this vital initiative like a spokesperson. (The person might have nothing to do with the operation side of the delegations.) I do understand the security aspects of the delegations and I don’t think any of us need to know the details of the delegation logistics. From my perspective, there are some communications that could have significantly reduced the anxiety level of the people involved. For example, had we had someone who was in charge of the communication, the first thing that the person would have done (as soon as the change of k announcement) would be to post an update to the thread about how the previous announcement is impacted/nullified i.e. say, the delegation strategy will be revised and/or the timeline will be affected. So, people would now adjust their expectations and no longer anticipate that the next CF delegation will happen on the previously communicated schedule. Moreover, at this point, that person would have communicated with the community if there is any deadline on when the one-to-many delegation function would be available or perhaps given us the next target duration/date, i.e., please wait for a few days or a couple of weeks or, before the k changes.

In my view, all the stakeholders deserve the right to know/understand what is going on or when to anticipate the action that might impact them, rather than to just chill, wait and see on a forum post that no one knows when the next communication will arrive.

Much appreciated your time and consideration.

your kidding me right? The official announcements thread you are referring us to spells out the process… that’s not the problem. the problem is following through with the process OR letting us know you can’t follow through with the process BEFORE we have to start writing messages like this because you are not doing what you originally said you were going to do…

Just like I wrote before, rinse and repeat… We tried to ask questions on that thread before this one was started… You didn’t answer over there so this thread was started…

@lukenum I don’t know how much you have been following the foundation but this is pattern with them. Has been for a while. essentially there are two things they are horrible at:

  1. Transparency
  2. communication

I can understand your patience because you probably have a small pool and are hoping for their help… My advice, forget about it and if it ever happens just figure you won the lottery or something. They are not dependable and don’t care about what happens to us The only reason they are doing any of this is because of social pressure, it is not out of any kind of duty to do good.

The foundation has a pretty bad reputation with community that has been around for a while. When d parameter gets to 0 and the chain is fully decentralized the community will have more power. I know a lot of people who are going to start writing up proposals to change the foundation, these will be governance proposals. We will see then how much the foundation cares about the community or if they just try to stifle the votes… will take a year or so but eventually they will have to be more transparent. As Cardano grows the foundation will be under a brighter light… until then, there is not much we can do except bring to light there mis-management… This is what happens when you have an organization that is suppose to be independent but is instead has members on their council from both IOG and Emergo.

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Please see the official statement here:

That’s just factually wrong. There was a real problem two years ago, I was a member of the community group that campaigned to get it fixed, and it was. Since then there have been various gripes of course, but there has been never been a sustained consensus in the community that there was anything seriously wrong with the Foundation.

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i get that going from “terrible” to “not good” is an improvement but we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if there wasn’t still a problem… I absolutely hate and resent that I even feel that I have to write these posts. It makes me feel like an a-hole but I can’t just sit here and read some of these things that are just wrong and not say anything… We can disagree on the level of “mismanagement” that is going on but we should agree to do everything possible to make sure it doesn’t go back to where it was a few years ago.

There are a lot of us that spend a lot of time trying to build our businesses and all we ask is for them to do what they say they are going to do OR tell us when they can’t… I am fully aware that I am just talking to a wall. My concerns will never be addressed… all they can say is, “Your right, we should have done better”. I didn’t make up any false allegations… I am sure they are getting sick of saying the same things over and over also. There are only so many times you can say, “sorry, we will do better next time”.

whatever, I am just writing this for my own therapy… nothing is going to change until it does… moral of the story, only depend on yourself.

Edit: Thank you for updating the delegation information.

That’s impossible, it’s not going to happen. If it does (it won’t) I’ll give you all my ada. :smirk:

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@anthony_stachowitz I am relatively new to the community as I only started to get involved a few months ago. I am hopeful about the future and I believe you still are too. That’s why we both spend our time which is the most precious resources here. At least, it seems to me that the foundation is trying to fill both gaps you mentioned based on the fact that they responded to this thread and gave the community the recent update. Only time will tell whether or not they can really restore the trust they have lost.

I hope so. I don’t like being negative but it gets frustrating… I do like the community and the project. there is a lot to look forward to. welcome to the community, you here at a good time.

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