Not minting blocks -

Staking & Delegation Operate a Stake Pool
21

I could think of another alternative: Currently it is so that per epoch approx. 0.058 to 0.06% of the Stake with 100% Luck are distributed as Rewards. The fixed fee is deducted from this, which is why it is very much at the expense of the rewards for the delegators when the stake is small.
What if the fixed fee would be distributed degressively up to a stake of 1 million ADA additionally? This would ensure a minimum income for the small pool operators and at the same time put them on an equal footing with the larger pool operators in terms of competitiveness.

22

I think you mean “costs and efforts per pool are larger for a single pool operator”?

And it’s not only marketing, but also operation. Administrating ten servers is not so much more effort than administrating two.

23

Thank you - I changed the text already.

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24

One other benefit is that the bock producers in a pool group typically share relays (not necessary all relays connected to all BPs for really big groups).

25

That is another true aspect! At the end of the day, a pool operator who already operates one or more “well-filled” pools can very easily cross-subsidize one or more new pools in the introductory phase, since he has sufficient revenues from the established pools.
So, in summary, there are already some systematic advantages that multi-pool operators have and it would be quite appropriate to think about ways to break their dominance.

26

You just discovered capitalism.

It’s a problem built into the very foundation of every cryptocurrency. The problem to be solved was that we somehow have to make sure that no bad actors can get control of the blockchains – without central authorities. The solution is to require resources to be put in and hope that nobody gets control of a majority of these resources. In proof-of-work it’s energy and also there those who already have a lot of resources can afford much more hashing power and get higher profits. In proof-of-stake it’s – well – stake and those who already have a lot of stake can get higher profits.

There is, I believe, no technical solution to it and the unfounded belief in technical solutions is one of the other big problems of cryptocurrency space as a whole. Even if a blockchain could decide on the protocol level that someone is “too big” and should therefore get decreasing profits, it is – without central authorities – always possible that they just pretend to be lots of smaller actors.

Cryptocurrencies are obviously not meant to be anti-capitalist. On the contrary, much of the things going on are very much hyper-capitalist. The best we can achieve is some form of neutrality.

There are things we can do off-chain. Not buy the fight against central authorities per se, join the local leftist group and get the authorities to tax the rich and in the most extreme cases disown them, for example.

27

Well, this is once again an answer that - instead of acknowledging that there is a need for optimization with regard to the incentives or the parametrization of the network - comes with a slight undertone of overconfidence and says that this is the way the world or capitalism is and that nothing can be done about it.
I really feel very uncomfortable with this. Hasn’t Charles Hoskinson tirelessly pointed out again and again that capitalism is not bad in itself, but that there are excesses that are unacceptable? Hasn’t he pointed out time and again that existing capitalism is wrongly parameterized and needs to be reincentivized accordingly?
I really miss this spirit in the responses so far and it is simply not true that nothing can be done technically. Example:
There are 44! Binance Staking Pools, each full to saturation point with ADA. Do you know what the pledge is? It’s 2 each in words: two ADA, not two hundred.
That’s a leverage of 33872480.2
Why the hell do you have to stand by and do nothing? Surely it must be possible to introduce at least a maximum permissible leverage, of - let’s say 100 - above which the incentives become worse. This would hit single pool operators less hard and the big fish more.
Is it really unworldly to think about this? I don’t think so.

28

I’m just not with Charles on that one (like on many other points). I think capitalism is very much bad in itself. Is that forbidden in this space?

That is, as far as I understand it, exactly the content of @Michael.Liesenfelt’s proposal: Pledge determines saturation. If you do not pledge enough, you will have lower saturation and, hence, lower rewards.

I have stated time and again that I would support that. But it is a risk to small pool operators that do not have enough own funds for a large pledge. And it won’t stop Binance from just pledging more. I’m quite sure they can optimise their cash flow so that they can afford much larger pledges.

29

I would think that for small pool operators it would be better to limit the pledge leverage as to set a minimum threshold. As smaller pools become bigger, they can afford higher pledge too.

Taken your answer I just misunderstood your message in this aspect related to capitalism. Of course I’m happy with every kind of critical and constructive discussion.
I was only concerned with the aspect of counteracting developments that are going in the wrong direction, and Dr. Liesenfeldt’s proposal also seems to be going in the right direction with regard to the Minimum Pledge. It is worth a try and it is about time!

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30

So after skimming the CIP50, it seems that the approach is right on the pledge lever, so the adjustment, if approved, should already be going in the right direction. Let’s hope for the best that Binance & Co at least “suffer” a little!

31

Really bad example, because it’s a good thing that their pledge is so low. If not, they would receive much more rewards than they do now and the reserve will deplete faster.

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32

This proposal will be really bad for small pool operators.

This statement doesn’t make much sense…

33

You keep claiming that, but I haven’t understood the main reason up to now. Yes, they’d need something like 1% of the stake as pledge and cannot grow further without it. Is that problem so huge? Do we have numbers on it? In the analysis in the proposal the single pool alliance has an average leverage far below 100.

As far as I understand it, it comes much closer to the thought behind pledge, which up to now is only a boost for really large private pools that can pledge 50% to 100% of the stake.

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34

I’m not saying that problem is huge, but it does mean choosing for only pools that can afford a high pledge. If you start a pool, you’ll probably want to make a decent profit from it. With his proposal and the right parameters to prevent most higher pledged pools from splitting, a lot of pools will never be able to grow to the needed level to get that decent profit. Actually for my own pool, this proposal will be good. But if implemented, there will be as many people complaining as or now (or even more).

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35

I just guess, that if a pool operator manages to get 2 million or more ADA of Delegation, he gets rewards every 5 days and he is then able to put a part of it as a reserve, respectively increase his pledge step by step.