Holding of accounts on forum - do we have centralization on forum and how it works?

This is for discussion, how we can make Decentralized Governance more decentralized, and to prevent centralization of governance by the small centralized groups Let’s understand how it works in real, and how we can make it works better, in the interests of the community and Cosmos Development If Cosmos Forum is so important part of creating proposals, then this forum need to be the same decentralized as cosmos hub governance, otherway we will have very terrible scenarios And here is a situation, that made me to think about it, because before I was trully belive, that Cosmos Forum is an example of freedom and decentralization, but… We’ve made a community call, where we explain how decentralized governance works in Cosmos There we inform community, that all proposals can be discussed (and need to be discussed) on a forum Many community members joined the forum, but now, several of them wrote to community chat, that their accounts are holded without any reasons Screenshot 2025-08-21 at 15.00.33 878×1966 311 KB Who is responsible for blocking accounts of ordinary users? Who and on what grounds receives such rights? How to check the legality of such…

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As my first thoughts (but maybe we will find even better options):

1. People who have a power to block or unblock community members on forum need to be elected by the community, we can use DAODAO.zone for it

2. We need to change the process of creating proposals, to don’t use web1-tools as forum, but use web3 decentralized tools to discuss draft proposals

Does anybody have any other suggestions?

Could easily make a decentralized forum and launch as a smart contract on hub. I made a wikipedia app years ago: alXandria · GitHub

Could be optimized then tweaked and redesigned to be a forum.

It would be really great! Because such an old tool as web1-forum - is a shame for decentralized governance

really strange…. we want to get involved and share our thoughts on the proposals, and we get banned….. scary times we’re living mates

Antropocosmist: Who is responsible for blocking accounts of ordinary users? It’s possible that now, new accounts freshly created can’t post on the forum without a minimum of read time and engagement. I guess this kind of changes can only be made by an admin. Can we at least confirm if this is new accounts or old accounts ? I never had any issue Personally I support this change because after several years of following proposals and discussion here, 99% of the time you see many new accounts posting it always have been some sort of either bots or uninformed users that have probably been brigaded on Discord’s quests or twitter to make a post only to support a proposal or project they are most likely invested in, flooding the forum discussion with not relevant messages (like : Yeahhhhh LFG I support this proposal), then never come back. Forum is suppose to be a place of discussion, not Tiktok’s comment section so it seems fair to request a minimum of read time. I feel this has more to do with the fact that you’re pissed that your funding proposal didn’t went as expected, looks like more a vendetta than genuine concerns, if not, why did you wait 5 years to make it ?…

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Thanks! Yeah UI wouldn’t be as smooth as this just because each post would have to be a wallet interaction with some low fee and backend would need to be IPFS pages that get updated. Simple from a technical standpoint (and already done like I said with some tweaking), but there’d have to be some push from “higher” to say that’s the new official place or I don’t see anyone using it.

I’m totaly sure that such a kind of tool need to be sponsered from Community Pool

Tbh I don’t want to get involved in the drama of proposals, but if you pursued this and got it approved I’d be happy to build it for you.

Please, less ego, we are here not to read about your feelings, or how you would vote on non-existing proposals
Please, write here about topic

For now, we have several issues:

• To up the proposal we need to discuss it on forum before
• We don’t know who are moderators on forum
• We don’t know how they were elected
• We don’t have any possibility to change it
• W don’t know how they use their power to block users
• We already have dissatisfied community members, who can’t write on forum because of blocked accounts

If you can’t tell nothing about topic, and want only represent your feelings, you are in wrong place

tacolopo:

UI wouldn’t be as smooth as this just because each post would have to be a wallet interaction with some low fee and backend would need to be IPFS pages that get updated.

Could it be just the logging that goes throw the wallet connexion, giving info like past interactions, confidence score.. etc but the rest (messages) aren’t on-chain ? avoiding the repetitive sign Tx for each interaction. I don’t really see the need for the conversation itself to be on-chain but rather the account

tacolopo:

there’d have to be some push from “higher” to say that’s the new official place or I don’t see anyone using it.

100% true

Tagu:

Could it be just the logging that goes throw the wallet connexion, giving info like past interactions, confidence score.. etc but the rest (messages) aren’t on-chain ? avoiding the repetitive sign Tx for each interaction. I don’t really see the need for the conversation itself to be on-chain but rather the account

Definitely could. It sounded like the original posting user was primarily concerned with censorship resistance though. With a Web2 backend, stuff could still get removed. Unless you had a specific implementation in mind that gets around this?

After discussing this issue in the chat, I decided to join the forum and check the nuances of its work)

Knowing about the rather strict requirements for “newbies” on the forum, I decided not to write posts or comment right away)

So, I registered 20 days ago, during this time I received the Badges: “Autobiographer”, “Enthusiast” and “First Like”.

It remains to check whether these are sufficient requirements to avoid blocking a “newbie”)

If it is impossible to quickly influence the mechanism of blocking “innocents”, then at least you need to understand the algorithm of its work in order to help inexperienced users avoid it)

@Antropocosmist
Blocked after the first message on Sunday 31.08.2025, and today 01.09.2025 the account was checked and the message was added to the feed. By the way, it’s not that bad

According to feedback from Sochat users, it happened faster for me, but it seems to me that it may be related to the fact that I read the posts, liked them, etc.)

Dmitriy777:

After discussing this issue in the chat, I decided to join the forum and check the nuances of its work)

We can hardly imagine forum administrators blacklisting community participation. That said, at Govmos we will always support and encourage initiatives that aim to strengthen governance transparency and decentralization.

Some of the proposed solutions you outlined are indeed interesting, and a few appear straightforward to implement. For example, the idea of electing a community representative with elevated permissions—granted admin status solely for the purpose of reporting—could be enacted immediately. This role would ensure that any community member requesting visibility over administrative actions could receive transparent and accountable updates.

Regarding the broader suggestion of migrating away from this forum toward a more decentralized platform, we agree this is a direction worth considering for the future. However, from our perspective, it does not currently appear to be a pressing priority.

Above all, we want to thank you for raising these concerns and putting forward thoughtful proposals to improve our governance processes. This type of constructive engagement reflects the spirit we value in the Cosmos community

Did you actually read the whole thing—or even watch the video? He literally targets me, framing me as a “troll” just because I choose to exercise my right to privacy and remain anonymous (this is crypto, after all).

A “troll,” simply because I opposed a proposal where he’s asking for money without providing any receipts or proof of expenses.

Is this really the spirit of Cosmos—dismissing people as “unserious trolls” just because they choose to stay undoxxed? Compare the time and effort I’ve put into this versus him.

Pretty lame, @govmos.

Who is moderator, and how we can liberate this forum from multi-accounts and trolls? FAQ & Guides

This forum is full of one-time accounts of private people, that create bad reputation for the Cosmos Hub community Any governance questions need to be not private, but public there are several new users, that joined just 2-3 days ago, and that are writing FUD on Cosmos Hub Community there is no possibility to understand who are they How can we mute or ban such users? When we have a discussion about public proposals,we need to have such a discussion with public people, who are responsibl…

This thread resulted after criticizing his proposal.

He literally wants to censor me. @Govmos you better seriously have a closer look who you praise as an example of the lovely spirit we want to see in cosmos.

We encourage taking a step back to assess the situation with the necessary distance. To clarify: we do not endorse any individual here, nor do we support personal criticism or labeling anyone as a troll. Our intention was simply to put forward a practical idea to strengthen transparency and accountability . Specifically, as outlined earlier, we suggested electing a community representative with admin status solely for reporting purposes : Govmos: admin status solely for the purpose of reporting In our view, it is essential that this role comes with no authority to act —only the ability to oversee and access admin logs . The representative would not hold powers to censor, approve, or reject actions. The goal is to ensure oversight, not control. We want to be clear that we are not taking sides in the disagreements between individuals. Our sole concern is identifying a potential governance issue and offering a low-risk, non-intrusive solution . Even if this mechanism proves ineffective in practice, it carries little downside and could help build trust. For these reasons, we see it as a net benefit worth considering, and we support moving the discussion…

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Should there be a transparent and community driven moderation policy for blocking accounts? If yes, how can we implement it?

This may seem off topic, but you and everybody here should know that we long as you’re not doxxed, your opinion doesn’t matter to the Author of this thread.

@Olivia

Why you are so toxic?
You need to work with your soft-skills
After conversations with you, people start to think that Cosmos Community is very toxic, so, please, change your behaivor, be more kind, and stop to write toxic things, in the interests of Cosmos Community Reputation

Please, stop to be so egoistic, we are here not because of you, and topics are created not because of you

You are not the center of the Cosmos, and even if you want to think this way, I would never do something against you

I’m not interested in you, I even don’t know who are you, and you are private person

All I do, is trying to develop Cosmos on all levels, and your development - is your own interest, but it would be great, if you will change your behavor, because your behaivor is very selfish and toxic

insted of discussing topics, you write something about your personality or how somebody else want to do something bad to you, or about your feelings…

Please, keep healthy social envieroment here. If you have any personal problems, I can share contacts of very good psychoterapists with you, they will help you to feel yourself better

Is there any risk of centralization in how forum accounts are created or maintained?

Antropocosmist:

Why you are so toxic?
You need to work with your soft-skills
After conversations with you, people start to think that Cosmos Community is very toxic, so, please, change your behaivor, be more kind, and stop to write toxic things, in the interests of Cosmos Community Reputation

Its not toxic it’s a fact. Saying that private people should be excluded from discussions is censoring all those who want to make use of their right to privacy.
Good attempt gaslighting me tho.

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Friend, I don’t want to be involved in any dramma too
I don’t have any dramma, and I don’t know why @StunZeed think that I do something because of him
I would be really glad if he will stop to write in any topic, that if I do something, I do it because of him
I have nothing against @StunZeed and I arrived on this forum 4 years earlier than him, and I’m in Cosmos not because of him

So, please, don’t belive that I have any conflicts, let’s develop tools for Cosmos together!

If you have Telegram, write me: Telegram: Contact @Antropocosmist

Hello, long time no see, but it’s time to make Cosmos better. I would like to start with the anonymous trolls on the forum, because you keep talking about it, and it seems you really don’t understand how things work. To make the forum completely non-anonymous, we would need to set up full KYC checks for each account that joins. Do you think it would be a good idea to run KYC for the forum? In my opinion — no. If you’re just talking about requiring nicknames and profile pictures, then it’s very strange, because I can name my profile “Leonardo DiCaprio,” “Cristiano Ronaldo,” or any other famous person, and you would not be able to prove it’s fake without KYC. I can even run the same profile as you, call myself “Vladi from phmn,” and again, you would not be able to prove I’m fake. Without KYC, it’s only your suggestions, not straight facts. So, your idea is kinda weird and obviously won’t work in any normal community. Good communities are built on trust and respect for each person, not on profile pictures — which you can’t verify without KYC. Because maybe I am Taylor Swift — how will you check that? Without verification, you’re not able to prove I’m not Taylor Swift. I hope…

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Don’t think the actual identification has ever been requested. Personally I’d be okay with you were Taylor Swift. it’s between you and her if you are an impersonator

Having a consistent “brand” with a history of having interest of the ecosystem in mind is a meaningful metric that can be easily measured to a certain degree

As for the general topic I want to point that the forum is running on Discourse and I recommend checking out how the permission system works there

From the technical standpoint I believe there is a way to configure a custom category or a topic with the limited access. Some of the discussions like those related to governance proposals can have a participation requirement of Trust Level >= Regular

The general question is: if I would name the profile Taylor Swift and put her photo will I stay be an anonymous troll or it will be enough to be a normal person? No one can proof I’m not Taylor without KYC in that case

If you contribute in any meaningful way over a significant time-period then it’s at least more than that. You’re a troll for the trolling messages

Personally I don’t care what your name is beyond that. However I also don’t consider my forum presence taken alone to be passing the criteria I mentioned

Other people here might have a different opinion

Participation filters can help raise the quality of discussion but they only work if they’re transparent & measurable. Otherwise the optics = gatekeeping. The challenge of openness v. noise is real. A balance need to be struck and that means clear thresholds, fair rules, and tools that make informed participation easier, not harder.

The forum is useful for discussion, but it’s still centralized, admins control accounts and moderation. On-chain governance is what’s truly decentralized. Maybe in the future the forum could integrate wallet logins or decentralized IDs to align better with Cosmos values.

We should do hybrid forum. Web2 + wallet integration for people who want more visibility, discover premium features like tips, super likes, bring more visibility to some posts ….

Again, easy to build, but no funding. I’ve made other apps like the escrow one, but leadership is not concerned with paying any attention to individual creators, even with visibility.

No, we don’t need to make a forum completly non-anonymous

This topic is not about anonymity, it’s about centralization of forum, and it means - centralization of preparing proposals

If we need to discuss proposal before on-chain voting, than the place of discussion really matter

And if forum is centralized, it means it will affect discussion on proposal and vtoing on proposal on-chain