[POLL] Should we have a vote for a potential supply curve change?

[Talleyrand]

• YES - we need a community vote
• NO - let the team make the decision

Hi everyone, as you know with the transition to Nimiq 2.0 and Proof of Stake/Albatross the question of changing the NIM supply curve is now openly on the table with the last blog post.

However the goal of this thread is not to debate about the curves themselves (I encourage you to post about it on the dedicated thread which is well followed by the team) but how the process should be handled.

My opinion is that we NEED to have a vote (and even multiples) on the question if we really want to have a healthy transition. It’s a matter of decentralization and legitimacy no matter the outcome.

I also think it would help having a way more lively and ultimately contributive debate.

I would appreciate a lot if anyone voting posted at least a small message here to substantiate his opinion.

[Rob]

afaik, I was one of the early guys to raise the question and push for lowering the inflation (rather drastically) - so I would say that my support is well available and should be backed by support of general public as well.
A (majority) community vote would be a good & healthy sign and a need for a change to the supply curve with the coming albatross & change to POS.

[rraallvv]

Yes! definitely.

And I would argue that the voting mechanism should be embedded in the blockchain, so that the curve is dynamically adjusted by those staking the coin …but that would be in conflict with the 21B NIM anchor point.

[Sandman]

Great initiative Tally, I think a vote is critical for the integrity of the process considering that the Nimiq team has a large vested interest in the short term health of the price of Nimiq due to the pre mine of the foundation + potential loss of ICO funds in a few years.

Having an agreement where there’s transparency between the team and the community on this would be very much appreciated. If the thoughts of the community align with the team then I’d be much more willing to accept a fundamental altering of the tokenomics of Nimiq vs just having the team force it upon us.

[svub]

Actually, we were internally even discussing such possibilities and came to the conclusion that whenever there is a strong motion by the community to change it - like right now, basically everyone wants to decrease the “inflation” - then we can have a discussion and vote … And just change it on protocol level. We don’t necessarily need an on-chain stake based system for that. So, from that, the conclusion - as I remember it - was to skip this extra complexity. At least for now.

[Rob]

@svub

Actually, we were internally even discussing such possibilities and came to the conclusion that whenever there is a strong motion by the community to change it - like right now, basically everyone wants to decrease the “inflation” - then we can have a discussion and vote … And just change it on protocol level. We don’t necessarily need an on-chain stake based system for that. So, from that, the conclusion - as I remember it - was to skip this extra complexity. At least for now.

I’d support this if majority agrees as well.
No need to wait for 2.0, plus effects will be less correlated (curve change and 2.0 rollout).

[rraallvv]

I’m glad you guys have considered that possibility. I agree, adding the voting mechanism would make switching to PoS unnecessarily complex. Although, how much complexity would be added, I couldn’t tell for sure.

Maybe it’s just me having decision/analysis paralysis when it comes to choosing the “right” curve from those suggested by the team and the community (or to come up with my own), and having a way to dynamically adjust the emission rate would collectively allow us to “find” the right curve by trial and error.

As you said changing the emission rate could be done later at the protocol level in another iteration after 2.0, so it’s good to know that you guys are open to that possibility.

[Miao]

Just saying that majority doesn’t mean right, so we vote what we would like to present, but lets team to make the decision.

[Chugwig]

I’m wholeheartedly against voting on the chain for supply changes. Putting the emission rate / supply directly in the hands of the users is a mistake.

Sure it’s decentralized, but not everything needs or benefits from decentralization.

I definitely support voting off chain on what the change made during the hard fork should be. But I think having emission/supply changes as a part of the protocol is far too complicated / risky to play with at this time.

[Tobias]

I don’t know if the community realized that the community vote of the last community representative candidates was based on capital. But the other possibility would be, one account, one vote…

I wish to propose, after having discussions, community should have a veto on suggested changes. Then another round of discussions would be necessary. Within the discussions we could have a poll. I guess, there will be always different opinions. Perhaps it is also necessary to vote single components, like finite vs. infinite supply. By the way, this is a question about a condition, when the times comes, each of us is dead.

[Talleyrand]

@rraallvv I’m against having a dynamically adjusted inflation, I already explained my position on the other thread, I think it is kinda offtopic here anyway.

Just saying that majority doesn’t mean right, so we vote what we would like to present, but lets team to make the decision.

I don’t think the team has a superior foresight to the entire community.
The community has a bigger cumulative financial stake by the way and that makes it legitimate to have a minimal amount of decision power on very important changes.
Besides what’s the point of having an open source project if all the decision making is centralized at every stage?
This is really the core of my argument here: it’s a question of value, you can’t aspire to be “Open Money” and take every single critical decision like the Politburo, especially when you have the means to do something much more in the spirit of decentralization (the Chugwig app).

I don’t know if the community realized that the community vote of the last community representative candidates was based on capital. But the other possibility would be, one account, one vote…

That would be super easy to abuse/troll and imo people with the biggest financial stake in the protocol are legitimate to have a higher degree of representation. It would be unfair to give the same weight to someone with 1000 NIM compared to someone with 15 millions when the stakes are so asymmetrical in nature.

[Tobias]

Yes, I know. It is just… “the community” are only a few people and possibly 10 of these are enough to reach a majority.

[Talleyrand]

100 people or 10 millions doesn’t really change the point to me. The community could be 20 persons I would still think a vote on the supply change is the best course of action.

As for the representative election I assume a large majority of people could not be bothered to vote for it, the stakes are completely different between voting for 3 individuals discussing community funding proposals for 6 months and altering the supply curve of the coin for the next 100 years.
I expect there would be much more votes for the latter.

[rraallvv]

@Talleyrand, my comments about changing dynamically the emission rate (no matter if it’s embedded in the protocol or it’s a fork) explains why I’m in favor of allowing those that have a natural interest in seeing an adoption rate (and market cap) increase to have a say.

@Chugwig, I think that’s the right thing to do because those holding the coin would make an informed decision. And if they want the price to go through the roof, so be it. Or if they want to keep the price so that a cup of coffee costs 1 NIM, so be it. …hopefully you guys get my point.

@Miao, I’m glad you mentioned that, because I’m of the opinion (and this might be off-topic) that we are entering (or already are in) a new feudalism, the difference is that in some countries there are de facto rulers while in other those are elected democratically, you can see that easily when you aren’t allowed to leave one country and enter another one as easily as you want, and you need rulers to protect you from pirates and anarchist. Unless you are from Texas of course

[Chugwig]

It’s a bit off topic but I think the voting app used for the community representatives is NOT a good application for Nimiq overall, and in general not the best way to pull off voting/elections.

Transactions with the purpose of storing data on the chain is not something that I think we should encourage, and I made it clear to the team when they asked to use the voting app again that I don’t think this is a good use. Transactions with data alongside related to the tx are a different subject and completely fine, but imo txs for the purpose of decentralized data is a slippery slope especially at scale.

[Chugwig]

I like the idea of one address getting one vote instead of basing it on balance, but that has the problem of being easily messed with. Either way, signed messages submitted somewhere make more sense in general than txs with the vote imo.

I still think a vote is necessary before making the change and personally would prefer the community suggesting options, and then voting on those options. Maybe eliminating all but the top X and doing a few rounds till the final Y where then it’s just most votes wins, but how to count the votes is still an issue.

Things like having Team Nimiq make suggestions and community vote yay or nay, or having TN make suggestions that we then vote on would not sit well with what Nimiq is supposedly aiming to accomplish imo.

[Talleyrand]

I would also like to have multiple rounds of voting.
The first one being simply “should we change the supply curve for Nimiq 2.0”.

I understand that voting with transactions is not the most optimal way of embedding but I don’t think a few more kb on the chain are a problem right now.

[Chugwig]

Agreed on it not being a problem now, and if you guys wanted to do so that’d be fine, I just don’t want to encourage it myself. At scale it becomes a problem no matter what imo, even if it’s just detracting from space that could be used for the transactions Nimiq is focused around.

It’s just not what Nimiq is for, a smart contract chain would make more sense. And I’ve never seen any, but a decentralized DB chain would make sense for actually storing data. But imo Nimiq should be purely for payments with data being extra information sent along with the money, not the whole point of the tx.

[Chugwig]

On the topic of smart contract chains, what are everyone’s thoughts on maybe signing your vote with Nimiq and then storing it in an ETH contract. You’d need an Ethereum account + some ETH too, but only for the gas needed to store your vote. Reading would be free, and would require no trust in any API to do the counting, could all be done clientside after reading from the contract (which is free).

I think it’s a much better alternative for voting with NIM that still is 100% your NIM account voting, you could even use a third party ETH node to submit your vote for you (since it’s signed by your NIM account) and maybe they’d front the gas cost. Any interest in such an alternative over the current voting app when it comes to voting concerning the supply?

[Rob]

A short summary of my thoughts - voting on changes (especially protocol changes) should be done and proceeded by majority support.

Such voting shouldn’t be dynamic, i.e. on chain. Not quite related, but recent Steem protocol is an example what can go wrong. I support holding an open vote off chain and implementing changes as voted. Making things adjust dynamically opens too much uncertainty and attack vectors… and is just harder to balance.

Voting on ETH chain with signed NIM Tx-es sounds great, but feels like too much effort for a one-time use - but it could be a great example of decentralized voting and shown as a cooperation of two chains interacting and working/helping each other.

Lastly, majority doesn’t mean right - especially on financial and protocol level. Unfortunately I don’t have a good suggestion how to draw the line between “majority vote” and “what is rightful”. Possibly voting weight based on amount of NIM held, as this is holders incentive to guide the development in a good manner.
It was nicely pointed out that community has more “weighted” NIM than the team, although I do not see the team dumping their part short-term as they are developing and managing costs as well as receiving part of their payment in NIM - this is overall a healthy sign and an improvement in management and commitment to long-term goals. But again, such development can’t go forever by “team Nimiq” as it puts the whole ecosystem on their /centralized/ shoulders - which as been good so far, but as I see it, it should get more and more decentralized and proposed voting on such fundamental change is needed in my opinion.