I guess one of my main gripes is that currently we have most decisions made for us.
Using the Arbitrum network for example I think was a big misstep. To buy the token right now you need to bridge eth to arb-eth and then buy the ant token on that chain. Already there is a fake ant token on the actual ethereum chain.
All this leads to way less people investing in the network, which is a shame. And is certainly reflected in the price & liquidity.
At least with governance, the network could vote on these proposals and have real input.
As long as @dirvine is there we should be okay and that’s why I agree with
The network is not finished and the community shouldn’t be trying to take over before it is.
Don’t we already have a kind of governance by node runners accepting what upgrade they choose. If someone (not maidsafe) provides an upgrade with everything we want as a community wouldn’t we all be able to just upgrade to that version?
Also isn’t this meant to be an autonomous network?
Yeah I doubt anyone loves this crutch, argument could be made that without it we would be facing other issues to be complaining about.
We need proof of unique human for a less unbalanced governance system. Hopefully someone comes up with a plan that does not involve scanning my eyeballs.
Node runners just provide the storage for rewards. They will provide storage in return for whatever token they believe will be successful. They either sell when received, or keep as an investment if they deem it worthy.
So in the event of forks, they would just choose whichever one they decided was going to be the successful one. So I wouldn’t consider it true governance in terms of decision making for the protocol itself, just a binary run nodes or not.
Right now all the decisions are made by a central authority, having token governance would just give the ability for the token holders to have a say. The foundation could still create proposals for the community to vote on.
So let’s assume Autonomi becomes a planetary system, used by everyone on the planet. If everyone had an equal vote, even those that only used it at the very last stage decades later because it’s mainstream now, it would essentially reduce the IQ of the network to the average of the planet.
I’d rather have decisions made by the visionaries that saw it for what it was near the start, invested and contributed to get it to where it is as having more of a weight in the decision making.
And the foundation has made mostly good decisions. The issue is they are getting more and more constricted by governmental regulations. And having a true planet storage system should not be governed by an individual country.
Yeah I kinda agree, with most of that but think those who vote will have vested interest nonetheless.
My mother who’s cat pics are saved to a network she does not understand or is most likely unaware of is not going to vote.
Then there are those who rise to prominence and mostly control or heavily influence the votes of people who pay attention enough to vote but dont really understand what they are doing.
Its such a mess, nightmare really
I certainly don’t have the answer.
And it’s likely a good thing that those that don’t understand, and don’t care to understand don’t vote. She also likely wouldn’t even hold ANT, and would just pay in some other currency.
Having a vested interest is a good thing. It means it’s in the interest of the holder to have the network succeed.
Those that hold a lot of tokens, and vote in a stupid way will of course move the direction of the network in a stupid way. That allows a smarter minority to fork away from that network. The smarter decisions evolve and mutate away from the ideas that fail.
Or whatever token is attached to the network that best represents what they want from the network. I want a network that is as close to the original idea and hopefully we will be that network. I believe most people want that network aswell even if they don’t know it yet.
Isnt that what the foundation will do when the network is finished? I don’t see the need for another authority to have any say while the network is not fully complete.
The network will never really be finished imo. And who knows where regulations will be by the time we arrive at a point where the foundation determines it to be finished I’d rather just have it in the hands of the token holders now.
So what, why should that guide us into worse decisions, like the mimicking the wealth model we have around us and Autonomi was designed to provide an alternative path.
To plan for the future the model you decide should plan for native being the token as well because hopefully the current one is temporary.
These arguments put up for supporting a wealth model as just smoke screens. You mean well but I fear the allure of making it rich off Autonomi has clouded your thinking and the love of money is kicking in.
Find another path for governance as this model is doomed to repeat history that leads to where the world is today, 10% own 99% of the wealth. To get even more they make decisions through their wealth controlling governments to implement laws to make them more wealthy.
But with your admission that profit making (maybe even profiteering) is a goal here I fear that my words will be countered no matter how much they try to bring this back to the fundamentals of the network and the whole reason it was designed. Like David says this is not a crypto project, not a money (making) project. People earn from providing resources, a worker paid fairly for their work and not the make as much as possible mentality.
So you see the whole world as neutered? Of course people will communicate and thus require token. i mean you have your mind clouded and cannot see the obvious. David wanted it as cheap as possible while being fair in compensation paid for supplying resource. Your mind is clouded by visions of profiteering off the network and your wealth position.
That does not follow. Like it is so difficult to make opposing social media networks now the same will happen with Autonomi, once mass adopted the place to store, retrieve, communicate will be Autonomi. Just like the Internet is the *only* Internet the world uses as a whole so I suspect it will be with Autonomi when mass adoption kicks in. That is where the data is stored and people communicate on. Forks will end up being for speciality networks.
I am not against governance, we already have it now in one form of the foundation (not for profit one). Just
Find another path to governance the wealth model this mimics too much will end up with all the problems autonomi was supposed to be an alternative for.
Imagine a country having its governance model being that you have to have 100K dollar (or equivalent) to be able to vote for the government who decides. Here its direct no government middle man, but same deal.
The US administration wants to move to that, you pay for citizenship, but it knows they cannot get it passed the houses.
But you have to pay that 100K for one vote for your representative.
But the wealthy can pay multiple times for multiple votes.
The wealthy get to overwhelmingly control all the decisions since it will be their puppet who gets the majority of the votes. Elon spent 20 million in one region to get people to vote at all, imagine he could then cast 200 votes if that model existed over there.
This governance model is actually worse than the governance we have in real life that is letting the wealthy get richer and the others less so.
I hope the illustration brings to light what this model boils down to as its eventual end. Maybe not immediately but the IF gave us a glimpse into what happens with voting when there is “skin in the game”
Find another way to get governance One that is better than we already have and one that is like your country’s voting system where users get to have a say and not just the wealthy
There is no alternative in governance that I can see than vested interest. You buy a token, you get a share to vote with. Buy token = taking risk. The value of the token is just a reflection of other peoples value in the network.
You seem to be misguided in thinking this is just about profit. Profit is just a side-effect. I don’t buy ant token to make a profit as a primary goal. It has a history of being a bad investment. I buy it in the hope that it becomes a governance token and I can have a share of being able to steer it in a direction that I think is good for the network & the world as a whole.
Your example above regarding buying votes is short-sighted, already big money lobbies governments to get them to vote for the benefit of whatever corporation is paying. This is because the shareholders do whatever is good for the company, at the expense of anything else.
At least the token holders would do whatever is the best for the Autonomi network, and that would entail bringing Autonomi to the entire planet. While if it’s just in the hand of the foundation, then that’s not their primary goal. Their primary goal is to do best for Autonomi, unless the government in which the foundation resides determines that regulations have been broken. Having it decentralized means it exists in cyberspace, where governance creates the regulations.
One person one vote is not possible, and honestly not even desirable for more reasons that I can mention.
Right now the networks governance is centralized.
What’s your alternative, just wait for the regulations to clamp down on the foundation?
Nope, but pointing out that the governance model you propose will lead to that, history is a good teacher.
Also your title to the topic is misleading, there is already governance. The title would be better to say alternative governance.
Find a better model than a wealth based one
Nope that is misguided and as I said your thinking is clouded. They will do what is best for them and in the crypto world where this model is lifted from the time scales are minutes/hours, not years like we need.
Some will do best for the network, but the bag holders who get to dominate the voting are typically in it for profits and this model is a golden opportunity for them and so much worse than the governance we have now. What, do we need a board of governors who can veto obviously bad votes? LOL who watches the governors?
I don’t disagree that there is good arguments for an alternative governance but at least the one we have is not motivated by vote by wealth model.
Find a better model than a wealth based one if profits are not your goal.
This assumes there is one. Do you have any suggestions?
I hope there are better options, but incentives are definitely aligned for those holding the most token wanting to see the network do as well as possible, as that is the only way value would be driven to their token holdings.
Bigger network success = bigger profits, and bigger network success depends on big adoption, so they’ll want the network to appeal as widely as possible & provide the best value-add to as many people as possible.
Like node runners have much more concern for the network, but has issues too with the wealthy getting some control by “stuffing” the “ballot box” by spinning up more nodes.
I hate to refer to current political systems but many constitutions have citizens as people born in the country/etc and one vote per person and not based on their wealth. This has the problem that electronically unique human is nigh on impossible to do without privacy invasion or spoofing.
Having not for profit organisation that is regulated and the watcher is an authority that can imprison has some advantages but makes voting difficult for obvious reasons. But moving that voting into an alternative model that can be much more easily co-opted by the wealthy is not one.
Its not on me to come up with an alternative, but as an interested party I can make my opinions made and point out how this is opposing the fundamentals of the network and the particular model proposed seems to be motivated by profits.
This is a network for the world and maybe we need to expand our thinking out of the crypto world bubble of minutes/hours/few-days mentality and into a global one that considers years to be the time frames for any decision make.
A country decides governance with all the citizens being allowed or mandated to vote. Why not think outside the caged box and for a global network have the global audience of users the opportunity to have an equal say. That is what is supposed to happen in free countries with proper voting & monitoring and for the most part gets there even if people think otherwise.
This proposal is such a closed system where the few get to decide for the global network things that will affect directly all users of the network. (the ones using it, not just reading it)
Lets say every store payment could have the opportunity for a vote on a proposal (tiny 1 atto fee) then that also could be manipulated and the wealthy get more votes (assuming they also store in ratio to their holdings). But at least the ones posting on social media get an opportunity. But still not a case of one vote per person, but one vote per upload transaction.
Its not easy to come up with a totally anonymous system of voting/governance and why having a non profit organisation that is responsible to a government body in a country that respects its citizens is a workable in between solution.
Those paying for the network to function getting a vote means that if anyone wants to game it, they have to store a load of data on the network and pay nodes… who can then re-spend it to vote themselves if they desire, so even the very wealthy would not be able to game it to force anything unpopular.
It would also encourage people to put stuff on the network when a vote is on. A long voting period may be needed to prevent spikes in activity.
I expect some mix of different types of vote (uploader votes, node-runner votes, token holder votes, dev votes, OG votes, Maidasafe employee votes, maybe other types) with some weighting between them, and possibly required consensus between different vote categories for changes to become binding could be optimal.
Different voter categories would highlight preferences of those who are motivated by different things.
I agree that the foundation is likely better than only a flawed voting system… but perhaps foundation + a non-binding, flawed community system at least brings some interesting community feedback.
If a great community voting system can be found, then it could add real value in being able to give a voice to the wider ecosystem.
I have about 100TB of data I want to load eventually. So I could swamp a lot of votes in baby network like it seems it will be for some time.
So yes, maybe better but still full of pitfalls.
And fails at giving all the users a fair chance at having a say which any governance should have, Not like the have more stuff have more say that has dominated in the crypto world. Lets face it most of the players (ie traders etc) in the crypto world are money hungry. And that is what these governance models are made for.
And what about the ones, that had no money but invested their time and effort in the network? They will not be allowed to vote?
I cannot agree with that. You can contribute by development, marketing, etc. besides simply buying more tokens.
Sure! The vote power could be based on trust level in some Web Of Trust system. There are voting mechanisms like vote delegation (liquid democracy), quadratic voting etc. as well.
To clarify, my point there was that network success is the only way token holdings will increase in value, so token holders’ incentives are aligned with network success… not that holding tokens was the only way to add value.
I agree that there are many ways people can contribute towards the goal of network success.
It would be great to see something like this working well in a decentralised governance setting.
Liquid democracy type delegation could be great to direct influence toward respected individuals/groups within the ecosystem to give more responsibility for their areas of competence.
I guess the foundation or some committee / web-of-trust would be needed to get it set up, but I like the idea of vote categories for community devs, long-term community supporters, Maidsafe employees (including ex-employees), as well as token holders and other categories of supporters.
It’d be interesting to see how the votes of different groups might differ, and some kind of consensus requirement between groups could be a check to stop one group controlling things or being steamrolled by the others.
The issue is that you need a centralized entity to decide who contributed.
At least with governance in place first it would be in the interest of the token holders to vote to allow proposals to reward these early contributors because that keeps them involved and betters the network itself.
Also quadratic voting does not work from what I have seen, people can have multiple addresses. So that just leads to potentially bigger centralization.
I’d rather just have it in the hands of the token holders now.