Markus, I appreciate all the hard work you and everyone at the Cardano Foundation are doing. To respond to your points and add to some of my earlier points:
I am a little confused by the following statements (see below):
Why is it feasible to combine two poll answers? During the calls with CF and Pools, several of us suggested only having one parameter in options or doing rank choices. CF decided not to do this with this poll. So how can one assume that someone who selected K=500 and min fee of 340 would have a second choice of K=500 and min fee of 170? Or vice versa? While that might be true, it also very likely might not. There can be no way of knowing unless they included meta data with vote. So combining these results are based on assumptions that may be incorrect.
We cannot claim that votes are based on PROOF of stake but seem to want to count votes on things that can NOT be proven by the votes on-chain. For example, how can pools vote with their delegators stake? Delegators have delegated to their current pool in the past based on block delegation, the majority of which delegated before this poll was even announced. So how can we assume inaction to redelegate stake during redelegation equals support for the SPOs vote? The simple answer is we can’t, because we can’t point to anything on-chain that supports how a delegator wants their stake to be counted in the poll. So, if we want votes to be counted by Stake, then the only stake-based votes that are provable on-chain are the stake of a pool or votes by pledge metric.
Does this mean I don’t think delegators should have a say? No, but this poll wasn’t set up for delegator to have an active and measurable on-chain action that showed their support of the parameters they wanted or if they wanted to abstain. So unfortunately, their stake can’t be counted for this poll. In essence, if you can’t tell me how many delegators wanted to abstain from this vote then how can we count their stake? Inaction does not equal support, which is the flaw of the redelegation phase.
The analogy that I would use here is let’s say someone voted in the last election for the block producing party. At the time of their vote, the big issue was how many blocks should be produced. Then the next election comes around and the big issue this election was parameters. This time that individual didn’t vote. Maybe they were too busy, or maybe they didn’t care, or they thought that their party was going to win anyway. BUT… then when the votes were counted that individuals vote was counted for the block production party. Why? Well, this person didn’t take any action so their vote must still support the Block Producing Party, right? If votes were counted this way no one would consider that a valid outcome.
On a related note, I think this is also a good time to also talk about appearances of Conflicts of Interest. There can be an appearance of conflicts of interest with having pools on the committee or pools working for CF or IOG and this is why transparency is so important, especially in governance.
For example, how many members of the parameters committee voted in the poll? How did they vote? What is the make up on the committee based on that vote? What is the make up of the committee as far as MPOs vs Single Pools? Why does this matter? Because what if the committee has a majority that voted for a certain parameter? Or that is a single pool or MPO? Is there a bias there? It would depend on their role in committee to determine outcome of parameter change and if this change affects their bottom line. While people will have bias and can do their jobs without that bias, there can appear to be conflicts of interest.
As an example, you are posting here in this forum with the Cardano Foundation next to your profile name, as a member of the parameters committee and as a pool operator. And you have stated support for K=500 on twitter and your pool voted in the poll for K=500 and 170 min fee. In this forum, you are now also expressing your opinion that votes should be counted by stake and combining two answers which just so happens to get the same results that your pool voted for. So, to an outsider this can give a certain appearance.
A breakdown of how many members voted, how they voted, and a list of their pools should be included in meeting notes. The notes should list next to people’s names the pool they run if they run pools. While a lot of us know the names and pools, not everyone in the community does and disclosure is important.
Transparency is important here. I’m not saying that there is a conflict here yet. What I’m saying is there could be an appearance of one. So disclosures are important. I appreciate all the hard work everyone is doing and I’m not saying people have acted inappropriately. What I’m saying is I hope you can see where things could look to an outsider that there could be an appearance of a conflict of interest with voting on parameter changes.
Parameters is a very important issue to the community so I think we should go above and beyond here and provide as much transparency and disclosures as we can so the appearance of any conflict of interest is eliminated. Since it is possible that a decision by this committee could affect the bottom-line of some of its members, we want to avoid any appearance of any conflict of interest.
Thanks for your hard work and consideration.