Sep 7, 2023 | Voltaire era: Parameter committee intermediate state

Governance Parameters Committee Updates
1

The Parameter Committee (interim state) meets on a tri-weekly basis. It discusses all parameters relating to the Cardano protocol including network, technical and economic parameters, providing technical advice and recommendations on updatable parameter settings.

Updated list of the Members (interim state):

Chairs:
Chair: Kevin Hammond
Vice- chair: Alex Moser
Vice- chair: Vijay Bhuvangiri

Advisory Group Heads:
Network group: Neil Davies
Technical group: Markus Gufler
Economic group: Samuel Leathers

Advisory Group Members:
Network group: Karl Knutson, Matthias Sieber, Marcin Szamotulski
Technical group: Ruslan Dudin, Michael Peyton Jones
Economic group: Sergio Sanchez, Philip Lazos, Giovanni Gargiulo

Other:
Communications: Tommy Kammerer, Nathaniel Acton, Addie Girouard, Matthew Capps
Domain experts: Martin Lang, Andrew Westberg
Observers: WIP
Secretary: Joaquín López

Remit

The purpose of the Parameter Committee is to provide technical advice and recommendations relating to the updatable protocol parameters, taking into account economic, security, network and other considerations, as appropriate.

Agenda and Updates:

Agenda:

  • Update on Change Request “CR 107 - Min Pool Cost reduction”
  • Discuss parameter settings
  • Blog posts review and publication
  • Defining a process for PCP requests and CR process

Updates:

  • The Parameter Committee was updated on the status of Change Request “CR 107 - Min Pool Cost reduction”. The Change request has been formalized and will be sent to the signing authorities without delay. The signing authorities have at least 3 weeks to approve it since the notification so we are expecting this change to take effect on Mainnet in October.
  • All three advisory groups have started to review all the parameters that have been assigned to them in order to promote a common understanding of the parameters and their settings.
  • The Parameter Committee has reviewed the blog posts that have been drafted concerning this change and processes/procedures and passed these on to the relevant communications teams to progress.
  • The Parameter Committee discussed how to open up the Parameter Change Proposal (PCP) process to the community. We expect to use the Cardano Forum to initiate public discussions, formulate the PCP, and to provide feedback. We will communicate this to the community once the process has been set up.

*Clarification note: on the meeting notes from July 27 we said that “The Parameter Committee recommends to retain targetNumberOfStakePools (“k”) at 500, and to reduce minPoolCost to 170 ADA.” We would like to clarify that the Parameter Committee meant to FIRST reduce minPoolCost to 170. THEN after reconsideration look at k again and maybe recommend to increase it. This is in line with the meeting notes from June 6 “The committee recommended decreasing the minPoolCost parameter to 170 Ada in line with the results of the SPO poll, and monitoring the effects of changing this parameter. Once the effects on the network and stake pools have been analyzed, further changes to either or both parameters can be considered.”

3 Likes
2

Yay! This sounds like concrete progress.

3

I’m not sure I understand what “at least 3 weeks” means here. I mean, 2 years is “at least 3 weeks”. It’s been over three weeks since 7th Sep - is it any clearer if/when this will happen?

1 Like
4

While I appreciate the clarification, this still seems too vague and doesn’t line up with what we were told on the IOG/SPO call on September 14th.

We were told on the IOG/SPO call, that the Parameter Committee did not think there was consensus on changing K and that their recommendation is to keep K at 500 for now. If the community wants a change to K we would need to follow the process of requesting a new PCP from the Parameter Committee and that maybe a new poll would be needed to see if there is consensus.

This doesn’t seem to line up with this vague statement:

Official communication has implied something different than what we were told on SPO call. The official communication seems to suggest that metrics will be watched when minPoolCost goes to 170 and then when a certain metric happens K will also be increased.

When I said on Twitter that, the PC had recommended to keep K at 500 for now, I was told I was mis-representing their recommendation and that “K=1,000 was still on the table” they just wanted to observe the effects of minPoolCost
twitter_k

Yet on IOG/SPO call when I asked which metrics would be watched and what they needed be in order to trigger a K=1,000 recommendation, we were told no metrics would trigger a recommendation. That there was no consensus for changing K, that we would need to submit a new PCP to increase K, and we may need a new poll.

Why is there a difference from official and unofficial communication? Did someone make a mistake? Which is correct? Can someone please officially clarify with the actual details including steps, instead of vague statements.

These vague statements divide the community because people interpret them differently. Specific clarification would help the community.

Thank you!

2 Likes